The Chris DeBlasio Podcast

How do you run a business through economic hardships? C-Level LIVE with Salon Bellezza

That is the only thing that we can do right. Especially if you're in the retail environment is push content.  I always tell everybody, I say, give your best content for free because you're helping people especially in times like. They cannot go into your salon, they cannot go into your restaurant. Teach them how to cook the recipe that they enjoy. When the market picks up they're gonna want to go back to you and have you do it because they don't want to do the dishes, hair, they don't want to dye their hands orange you know. So the fact that you are willing to give that information for free is gonna give you the upper hand. The fact that you're on social media and pushing content is gonna make you stay relevant during these times where a lot of other people are gonna even close their doors and or throw their hands up and say well I can't have anybody in my shop right now so I guess that's it.  It's not it! You can get on social media.  Ashley, Rebekah give me some background on both of you guys.  How did you start Salon Belleza? - So I had done hair for at that point probably 20 22 23-years.  To start my own salon because mainly the business and the industry had been really good to me and I wanted to create a place where I could have other stylists who could experience the same thing in my industry. It's an amazing industry. You can get anywhere especially with the entertainment industry being here in Atlanta. You can just be as little or big as you want it and so I really wanted to create a salon where I helped other stylists who were like me grow. As corny as it sounds really like realize their dreams and fulfill the need be creative so that's really how it started how I started it and then Ashley

Are you helping other companies and clients during the crisis?  Guest: Attly Aycock of Remington Medical

As leaders, we make decisions all the time and I think now especially it's a day-by-day decision. Things are changing so much. I hear everybody saying it's uncertain, we don't know exactly what's gonna happen. I always say well I don't have a crystal ball, I don't know exactly how this is gonna play out so the only thing I can do is make decisions on a daily basis depending on what's happening. I think those are the things and don't beat yourself up you're gonna make some great decisions you're gonna make some not-so-great decisions. The worst thing that you can do is not do anything. What we need right now with the coronavirus going on and somebody that's actually, you know it trenched entrenched in the medical profession such as yourself so so Attly give me a little bit of background on you and the company and let's dive right into it yeah sure so I'm Attly Aycock CEO of Remington Medical we're a medical device manufacturer located just out of Atlanta Georgia we have two facilities up in Alpharetta Georgia and a third facility in the Dominican Republic and we have kind of two divisions one where we make the Rimington branded products that service the cardiac rhythm management space urology interventional radiology and some other areas as well and then we have a contract manufacturing side of the business where we manufacture other medical devices companies on their behalf and then they go and take this market and market and sell those so that reselling so you're making all the equipment and then they resell it on I guess to hospitals and yeah so we're making our own brand and we're selling that directly to hospitals and then other device companies use us as like an outsourced manufacturer for them so it's their IP their design passing it over to us and we're making that for them...

Leveraging Social Media during the Downturn | How do you do it?

We are gonna get through this. This is going to come to an end and if you're preparing yourself now and getting all this stuff out of the way when it does come to an end you're gonna be that much more ahead when everything gets back to the way it was before. I'm super excited for today's episode because we're going to be talking about social media and the importance of being active on social media especially in times like now where everybody needs to stay connected talking about a bunch of different things. But Before we jump into that I want to get your background I want to know how did you get started all this and get some background on you. Yeah, I appreciate you having me Chris. It was, let's see I was born in Sarasota Florida and January 1st as a wee little guy won't go that far but I worked for GM out of college and we were teaching car dealers about the internet and we were doing this sort of Roadshow and I learned very quickly that when you talk about technology or anything different new to people but if you don't do it in an engaging and layman's term kind of way you'll lose them and so ever since then that was back in 2000 I've been technology and at the time it was internet with websites and then marking in that social media digital marketing and I wrote a couple books one called e boot camp another one called social media overload got a third one in the works that I hope to get done here sooner than later and I own an agency called impact social media and we do social media marketing for other businesses and I'm normally speaking about 30 or 40 times a year but right now I'm not people face-to-face at all because you're in crisis that were right now how are you handling that cuz I know a lot of events you know kind of kind of shut down and a lot of us speakers I do a lot of speaking as well so how how are you kind of navigating that a lot of alcohol it's been hard man I mean it's #CLevel #ChrisDeBlasio #SocialMedia

How to sell in times of uncertainty

This is out of people's control right? It was an unexpected event but as a leader you know we got to roll with it we got to roll with it and and and maintaining that positive attitude and maintaining you know the direction for your team is going to be really really important because again the attitude is everything very excited about this episode so we are actually broadcasting through a webcast because of obviously the situation coronavirus and cant roll the film crew but this is going to be very exciting because in this episode we're talking about something near and dear to me which is sales and specifically selling during this time and giving your insights so why don't we dive in I want to get a little bit of background on both of you Marisa maybe if you want to start with you and Stacia I'd love to hear your background how you guys got into all this. So Marisa Pensa Methods In Motion got into this because I attended a program from a company that was teaching sales training and I just found it to be very non-technique-Y and non-gimmicky and I remember saying to my husband one night on the couch and I was like oh yeah I called that company that has a sales training company and I originally it was franchised years and years ago and I told him I said it's a franchise no way and I remember he said to me he's like why cannot you'd be great at that you should go for it and it was because of his encouragement that really pushed me and in so Stacia who's on the phone was on our line rather was a mentor to me for years and so anyway so that's a little bit of background but it's just non-technique-y non-gimmicky just a straightforward way to build relationships and grow your business and I'm Statia skinner president of creative training solutions I've been doing this let's just say for a very very long time Marisa and I you know kind of partnered together we wrote a book together which was a lot of fun called competitive selling the guy booked a proactive calling in a reactive world

Stacia Skinner  Email- [email protected]  Phone # - 847-840-3480  

Marisa Pensa  Email - [email protected] Phone # 678-574-6072 Website - MethodsNMotion.com   

YouTube - Chris DeBlasio=  http://bit.ly/2ZiBH3c

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He knows INVESTMENTS! Stacy Chitty Managing Partner of Blue Vault Partners LLC

I've always said that you know, take any corporation in America, they didn't start out the way that they are today. It took a long period of time to develop into what they are today. Blue Vault is no different. We started out with one idea, a simple idea. We gonna cover non-trading REITs and we gonna tell a little bit about their performance metrics and we gonna keep advisors and broker-dealers and asset managers and others in the industry better informed. That was the one singularly focused idea that we had but we've obviously grown from that point in time and we had to. If we did not adapt, then we wouldn't be here today.

So, the German by the name of Leo Wales that I had known for a few years and that's how I originally got into the industry and I learned or found out that I enjoyed it.

No, I did not study finance. I was a, it's really not what we do financiers is technically not yet but I was, I had just recently worked for someone at the time who was a former Congressman well, who was a Congressman, Saxby Chambliss was a former US Congressman. He later became senator of Georgia. But I was his finance director. That's just a fancy word for helping him raise capital, helping him raise money sorry, not capital, helping him raise money for his re-election and so, that's one of the ways that I had gotten to know Leo and I had an interest in politics but didn't wanna work in it any longer. So, I left and Leo was one of the first individuals that I called. So I remember, the Executive Director of Wells, he like told me one day, " You know Stacy, this is really not, "you know this is "really not real estate, "this is more about investors, "this is more of the "securities industry." So, I had a big learning curve but that was interesting to me, it was a pivot from politics into the securities industry and that's how I got started.

- Because at the heart most companies that are really successful have to have that core element that has some level of innovation or difference or connectedness or opens up a market that's new and in order to do that you're going to have to kind of stay focused and bench press a lot of weight. And the only way that most people can do that is to have the heart in it.

So John, Emmett, I am so excited to have you guys on the show. Today we're gonna be talking about one of the things that a lot of CEOs and visionaries don't think about but it's really important is finance. Both of you guys have big finance backgrounds. So I want to start off, let me get some background on you guys, like how'd you get into all this? Where'd you get started? How'd you meet?

Long time. But I got out of school and went into a banking career first in New York, then here in Atlanta. The large banks and then started a bank called Atlantic Capital with a couple of other guys and then Emmett spent his 30-plus year career as a CPA and a CFO, and so together when we formed Practical Growth Advisors, focused on serving and working with privately held companies, we find that we bring kind of complementary strengths to the table in serving the companies that we work with and the business owners.

- Right, so would you say that, what's the most important, to bring somebody like you guys on, where, is it like right in the beginning, startup phase to bring 'em on to get all their finances in order before they start going, or kinda working through that themselves? I know a lot of entrepreneurs are like I'm just gonna jump in and do it. What would you recommend?

How do you get to the top of the restaurant business? Ryan Pernice has the answers

- Despite the fact that there's this mythically high failure rate for restaurants, it is very tough. But if you go into it clear-eyed about what the challenges are, and you've orchestrated your life and your day-to-day to be able to meet those head-on, it's not easier, but your chances of success I think are much greater.

Communication is Key... Monique Russell of Clear Communications coaches us on the best way to communicate in the business world!

- We're missing connection, that's what we're missing. We're missing connection and all of it is not influenced just at your job, you are a whole person. So you bring all of your life experiences, you bring your successes, your wins, your divorce, your loss, your grief, you bring everything with you to work. So as the leader, it's really selfish of you to think that you can leave that outside the door and just focus on work and produce and execute.

- Yeah.

Does he have the best job in Sports? Most people will say yes! What does Eric Oberman Do? Find out!

- Without our integrity, without our character, what else do we have? You could have 40 years of amazing work experience. If you're not a good person, you don't treat people well, you don't work hard, it's gonna come back to bite you. So those are some of the intangibles that I tell when I'm talking to, to folks who are looking for experience.  

- So Eric, hey, thanks for having me out. This is a pretty impressive office here. I mean, you've got all the, all the basketballs and, and, so, I wanted to learn a little bit more about you, get into your background, you know, and we're gonna talk about a lot of different things, like leadership, and team development, and what, how to identify talent and stuff like. But tell me a little bit about you. Where are you from, and how'd you get into all this? 

 - Absolutely. I'm from Ohio, born and raised. Went to the Ohio State University, very proud of that. And graduated, got into sports communications at a pretty early age. I love sports, and my major was in the school of journalism, so. 

 - Specific, specific sport you were interested in, or just sports in general? 

 - You know growing up in Columbus, the only, I joke, the only pro team we had was college football. 

 - [Chris] Right, right.

  - So, cut my teeth on college football and major league baseball. Ohio State Buckeyes and Cincinnati Reds were my, my two passions. And started at a small agency in Columbus, and from there I moved to Chicago. A lot of my friends wanted the bigger city, so we all moved up there. And my career took off at that point. I realized that communications was, was my passion and anything I could do to bring sports into the mix, I did. So for example, my first client was, was with Procter and Gamble and it was Crest toothpaste.  

- Uh oh. I'm hearing product placement. That's Procter and Gamble. 

 - Well, but Crest sponsored a program tied to the Cincinnati Reds and the Cleveland Indians where, every time one of their players got a base hit, they would donate money to charity. Then they'd get a local sponsor to match it. So even though 95% of the work I did had nothing to do with sports, that 5% that did was really what made it worthwhile to get up and go to work each day. And that, that took me to Chicago, where I worked at Ketchum. I worked on Motorola was a client, and they sponsored the PGA Tour Western Open. So again, 90 something percent was, cellular technology, and cellular phones, new products. But just enough with sports to, to really light the fire and keep the passion going.

Sports and Music go hand in hand. Learn how from Brandon Bissell of Ballpark Music

- I'm very, very fortunate in that I'm able to marry two things that so many people love each of them. And so many people love both of them. So, being in the middle of all of that, it's really unique. And there's something about music that just, it moves people in ways that and so do sports. I mean, both of those have such passion behind them.

- Yeah, it's a win win. And really, it comes down to an economic thing too, because if you go to we've had Sam Hunt, Chris Stapleton, those types of guys you're looking at, man a $65, if not a lot more for just the concert ticket. In baseball they have tickets as cheap as $12 or $15. I mean, obviously you can get nicer ones and spend more money. But it becomes such a value proposition of now you're getting a full concert and a baseball game for 15 bucks, if you want, and then even when the concert starts anybody that leaves you can move closer and so it's really for a value for the fan of the artist or the team or both. It's a great set up. That's it just can't get that for, I mean can't go to a fast food place and not spend 15 bucks anymore.