Cyberside Chat

COVID-19 forced many businesses to adopt temporary 'work from home' policies. For many managers and employees alike, this has lead to frustration. Whether it's a lack of visibility into employee activity or a case of miscommunication, concerns are voiced time and time again. As businesses transition to the new normal, the reality is work from home will remain, either out of necessity or desire. Today my guest is Patty Crabtree, president of Crabtree Group. Patty will share her own experiences and success in managing a remote workforce for more than 13 years and help us understand how to be successful in making this transition and overcoming these pains.

I'm your host Jess Coburn, CEO of Applied Innovations and Cyberside chats is where we dive into new and emerging technologies to help business owners, CEOs and leaders understand how they could use these technologies on their own business. Today we're going to focus on online marketing, automation, and e-commerce. Let's face it, how we do business has completely changed in 2020 and those changes are here to stay. My guest today is Jeffrey Kostick from Flying Chimp Media. www.flyingchimp.com

Once restricted to just large enterprises, Machine Learning is now accessible to small and medium sized businesses thanks to Kurvv.ai. In this episode of cyberside chat, I sit down with Jeff Croft, Chief Revenue Officer at Kurvv.ai and we talk about the opportunities that Machine Learning as a Service offers small and medium businesses, especially those in hospitality and e-commerce.

Welcome to another episode of cyberside chats. Today businesses across the globe are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and these first few episodes focus on what business leaders, owners, and CEOs can do to not just survive but thrive amid crisis. In this episode of Cyberside Chat, I sit down with Charlie Janes, Technologist, Entrepreneur, and Business Coach. Charlie helps his clients accelerate profitable growth, plan for a successful exit, and to build processes and infrastructure so that they can spend more time living a great life. We discuss what's to come, what's next, and how we engage with our clients and prospects today. I'm your host Jess Coburn, CEO of Managed Cloud, IT and Cybersecurity Company Applied Innovations.

elcome to another episode of cyberside chats. Today businesses across the globe are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and these first few episodes focus on what business leaders, owners and ceos can do to not just survive but thrive amid crisis . In this episode of Cyberside Chat, I sit down with Diane Geller, Attorney At Law at https://www.foxrothschild.com focused on helping her clients stay compliant with the ever-changing federal and state regulations governing the workplace, assists them in drafting documents for their businesses. We discuss what employers need to consider as they are looking to bring employees back and open again for business I'm your host Jess Coburn, CEO of Managed Cloud, IT and Cybersecurity Company Applied Innovations.

 

A Cyberside Chat Live - Making Financial Decisions For Today...

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

businesses, virus, participants, withdrawal, robert, loan, plan, money, remote, parts, year, business owner, 401k, employee, bit, furloughs, pay, matching, act, market

SPEAKERS

Robert Young, Jess Coburn

 

Jess Coburn  00:47

Morning I'm Jess Coburn CEO replied innovations and this is another episode of fireside chats. Today I have with me Robert Young Robert, could you talk a little bit about

 

Robert Young  00:58

money thanks guys for having me on. I'm Robert Young. I'm the principal investment manager and actually compliance officer for ra called young financial services. We're essentially a hedge fund, we have two parts of our practice. We manage money privately for individuals, but we also have a corporate side that we manage corporate pension plans. And that's, I think, what has more bearing on today's conversation than the private money management side. There's some exciting things happening that could help business owners and that I'm sharing with you. 

 

Jess Coburn  01:32

So you've been doing this for a while, Robert,

 

Robert Young  01:34

over 25 years, had the old practice before then, like most advisors came up through a training program or training system, licensed through 766 and then eventually reached a point in the amount of money that we managed. We go directly and be registered with the SEC and through FINRA, so that's it.

 

Jess Coburn  01:55

For a business that has a 401k What is it exactly that you do?

 

Robert Young  02:00

So on a 401k side, we manage the investments in the available for participants. We analyze those and make sure that they're operating against their peers in the lowest cost or best performance, then we also act as fiduciaries. we oversee a number of back office parts of the plan. And then we educate participants and we use some of the information for private money management side, and just give that to participants to help them and advise them on the best strategy to reach their goals. So that's really it. And that brings us some things happening today that you might be aware.

 

Jess Coburn  02:38

Yes, I'm curious. I know there's been a ton of changes. I'm curious how that impacts, let's say the business owner, let's start there.

 

Robert Young  02:44

Alright, so actually, we'll start with the business owner and then business owner slash participants. Perfect. So the first thing is, with course the virus is shutting down and throwing businesses, although we're reopening. I think there's a lot of trepidation on moving forward there, simply furloughs still going on, not every business is rolling out. and business owners are finding we're finding that some are having some challenges on revenue and some concerns about cash flow. So the first and most important thing that was now available to a business owner is if you have a 401k and you are using a match a safe harbor metric 3% match or better, you can suspend that or you can lower that matching rate. Normally, you couldn't do that in a year that could really helping a cash flow or expenses that businesses is being impacted by definitely. So

 

Jess Coburn  03:47

probably gonna say and then if you needed to do that, it's fairly straightforward and easy to do it well.

 

Robert Young  03:53

Yes, it is easy now normally wouldn't be that their plan amendments have to be done and With your every platform out there from paychecks and ADP to john Hancock empowerment and power and Transamerica, all of them are making it user friendly for a trustee to be able to make those planned amendments, and then be able to engage or initiate a reduced matching program. And again, if you're somebody who's used to paying out 10 1520 $100,000 a month in matching, suddenly you get to eliminate that. There is a caveat though, of course, it's no good deed goes unpunished, right. So, at the end of the year, if you choose to suspend that your plan would now go under testing or top heavy testing and there's a possibility that people who are used to putting in the maximum amount may have had some of that redistributed back to them because the plan doesn't meet certain IRS RQL or labor criteria. So But you need cash flow today, you willing to maybe have some people get some money back in the future? It's an option.

 

Jess Coburn  05:08

Yeah, definitely an option. Definitely something to look at. Now, as a participant, what's my options there?

 

Robert Young  05:14

Alright, so I'm glad you went. Thank you. So we now have two things for participants. Typically, when a participant, there's a caveat to that, and I'll get to in a second, when a participant wants to take a loan now, their limits have always been 50% of the current value up to $50,000. So rounding numbers, to get the 50, you have to at least have an account value of $100,000. And then when you take that loan out, there's some there's some restrictions on that. That has been eliminated, you can now take 100% of the account value up to 100,000. So basically, everything becomes double. So if you have an account value of $100,000, you can now take that out as long as you pay yourself with the course next five years. So that's one of the most significant parts of loans. And then there's a withdrawal change has been made, it's probably a little bit more exciting. If I touch on that, please. So on the withdrawal side, if somebody has to take money out, the virus is now considered a catastrophic event. Typically, you couldn't take a withdrawal out, unless you're in Florida hurricane came through or you're about to lose your home for economic reasons. You have now mounting, excuse me, get mountain that's mounting as a result of medical expenses. The virus is now considered one of those tragic events. So someone could take him to draw out, draw them out, they can now take up to $100,000 out. But here's the exciting part. The mandatory 20% tax withholding for the federal government has been waiting to not have to withhold 20% of that hundred thousand I use that as a round number also So if you're under 59 and a half, you're no longer currently 10% of the drop, empty. And then finally, what's best is to not incur all the taxes on that withdrawal. And that current tax year, you can spread that out over three years. So using the example of 100,000, you could put 33,000 this year on your tax report next year 33. And then the final year 34,000. It's also important is, let's say take the withdrawal out, and somewhere in the next three years, you come back into 100,000, you can pay yourself back that hundred and walk away without any penalty at all. No taxes paid.

 

Jess Coburn  07:40

So you have three years that you could you could withdraw from your fun and pay it back over here. 

 

Robert Young  07:46

Withdraw this year, you have three years to pay back the taxes. So let's say you said Okay, you know what, I'm going to take the hundred thousand out this year. But I know by the third year, I'm willing to gamble, I'll have all hundred thousand back I could put it back in so I'm not going to pay taxes for the next two years, I'll wait to the third year 2023 to count that hundred thousand. But in the next 24 to 36 months, you put that hundred back. You're free and clear. 

 

Jess Coburn  08:13

That's I mean, that's fantastic. Right, that's a excellent opportunity to get access to funds that you normally wouldn't have access to. And then with the loan, so you could actually do a loan to yourself as well from your funds.

 

Robert Young  08:27

That's right, you've always been able to, but the limit is now been increased from 50 to 100,000.

 

Jess Coburn  08:33

And is that taxable as well,

 

Robert Young  08:35

it's not you're paying yourself back the loan rate since the Fed fed Fed funds rate is around zero. Your loan rate could be anywhere from point four and a half 2% just depends on what your plan platform dictates. And you'd look at those individually.

 

Jess Coburn  08:53

Now, is this the right time to be taking money out of your 401k though,

 

Robert Young  08:57

if you're furloughed, out of work and you need funds for, I guess that's really up to the individual. Exactly in their MBA tax plan. Now,

 

Jess Coburn  09:10

Robert, let's kind of switch gears a little bit. So a lot of people are focused on the stock market right now. Right? It's starting to come back. Is this the time to buy? Is this the time to sell what's going on in the market?

 

Robert Young  09:23

So my opinion, not to be confused with facts.

 

Jess Coburn  09:26

Fair enough. Fair enough. We'll even give you the the ticker banner there. Thank you. 

 

Robert Young  09:31

So we believe in value investing. And we also believe that the idea that the market has priced in the worst case scenario of economic news that you hear in the, I guess, financial stages, we don't believe that that's natural. We think that there may be a possibility of another dip. Definitely the Markets be choppy. So if I were going to enter back into the market if I went to cash a long time ago, do it slowl

 

Pivoting Retail Commerce to Online with Manish Hirapara

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, customers, e commerce, people, digital, amazon, world, commerce, pivot, online, peak, business owners, ways, activity, tools, opportunity, merchant, thinking, services, cyber

SPEAKERS

Jess Coburn, Manish Hirapara

 

Jess Coburn  00:45

Hey welcome to another episode of cyber cyber chat. I'm your host Jess Coburn and with me today I have Manisha her partner. Manish Can you talk a little about yourself and what you do?

 

Manish Hirapara  00:55

Sure. Happy to be here Jess and thanks for having me on the My background is primarily in e commerce and digital digital marketing digital technology. We I'm the CEO of a software and marketing firm based in South Florida, called peak activity. And our goal is to help our business partners really use digital techniques, whether it's e commerce, better web experiences, better technology, really changed the game with their business and use those techniques to add skills and technologies to to really advance their business. So they can they can ride the coattails of the Facebook's and the Amazons of the world that are really changing our business models as we speak. And what we're trying to do is bring those learnings that companies like Facebook and Amazon have created and bring those to the masses and bring those to business owners that are looking for a competitive advantage.

 

Jess Coburn  01:55

Nice if you've been doing this for a while you've got a pretty strong background. I know you'd mentioned at one point that you'd started at Office Depot and kind of got your start there.

 

02:05

I did. Yeah, I actually started very early in my career as a software developer, and working on their e commerce platform. We helped build what, what still is today, a top 10 online retailer, when when I left Office Depot about five years ago, started this company, they were doing over $7 billion in transactions online. So really, enterprise scale worldwide operations, there's some significant things you can do in e commerce. And what I chose to do was to take a lot of that experience at a large enterprise, great organization and kind of distill it down understand what the best practices for and bring those to our business partners.

 

Jess Coburn  02:46

Now, at peak activity, you've got a large workforce and like the rest of the world, you were you were hit pretty quickly and unexpectedly by everything that was going on with COVID-19. How has peak activity adjusted Do it.

 

03:01

Well, the good news for us has been we were already ready for remote work. We have employees worldwide we we already use tools like slack and Google meat is our preferred video conferencing solution. So we already had some of those pieces in place. But just like everybody else, we had to understand digest what was going on and really, make sure from a human resources perspective, we're doing the right things for our employees. You know, being a digital first company we we pride ourselves in already have been ready for that. So we haven't had to adjust to too much. We do have an office that is it for the moment closed and we are kind of working a little bit more remotely. But you know, fortunately for us, we we've already had relationships with our customers over already over email and over slack channels and other digital techniques. So we've already kind of plumbed everything, and now it's really just been helping our customers or business as partners get up to up to speed on on things, working through challenges in communication working through how do you how do you effectively run projects completely remote. So it's been a transition for us to make sure that we can keep up with the pace of which this this change has happened.

 

Jess Coburn  04:20

Now, throughout the US, a lot of states are starting to come out of lockdown and businesses are starting to go back to work here in Florida, with the exception of some Florida we're seeing pardon me we're seeing a lot of open up how do you think businesses need to adjust as we're coming out of the lockout lockdown?

 

04:41

it's it's a it's been a really interesting challenge for us with our customers. We've actually created some new techniques and published actually the website on this product that we've created around low touch commerce. And we do work with a number of customers that are in retail for example retail, that means have been non essential and it's been Chuck for a month and a half. And unfortunately, that means revenues are declining and and you're not seeing, you're not seeing any traffic at all. What we've what we've really said to our customers is look, think through ways that ecommerce can help. Think through ways that calendar and appointment setting online can help. Think about using live chat or live streaming tools to engage with your workforce. So don't just think, gotta have everything locked down, but also think through how to advance it as quickly as you can using digital tools.

 

Jess Coburn  05:39

So let's dive into a little bit right because a lot of the customers you work with aren't traditional e commerce companies, in the sense of you know, that you would go to Amazon and maybe buy their products. In some cases you do, but generally you don't. So for those businesses, this has been an extremely difficult transition right? And you touched on that concept of low touch commerce. How are these businesses adopted? And can you give some examples?

 

06:08

Sure. So we have a number of furniture retailers now that we work with and furniture traditionally has been the last industry to get into, into buying online and using e commerce. However, there are companies, for example, wayfair, that and Amazon have really taken a lot of share in this market. And it's a complex product to deliver. It's a complex product to sell, you get to think about how do you visualize your room? And how do you how do you want to know that that sofa that you're buying is going to fit? And how do you feel like it's gonna match the surroundings. But if you if you also think about the fact that we all have a smartphone, and we have devices in our pocket that let us take photo videos, have live streaming with with somebody who is an expert. And so the things we've really thought about have been if you're comfortable going Get to a retail store. Go ahead and try to make an appointment, go into sales associate, that's your best expert, right? If you're not comfortable trying to get your expert on a device that most people are already leveraging and happy communication service with and take advantage of live streaming tools take advantage of a lot of SaaS software products that are out there that will enable you to have a new way of communicating and capturing revenue. Think about payments with e commerce, you have the ability with with two simple solutions like stripe or authorize that net to set up credit card processing, PayPal, there's great solutions out there. You don't build all this in ecommerce infrastructure like you might have 10 or 15 years ago.

 

Jess Coburn  07:43

So that's a great example. Right? A lot of businesses don't realize in the past, if you wanted to get a merchant accounts online, you had to jump through all kinds of hoops with stripe PayPal and these services. You're set up like that and you're online and you're ready to go. Like and if it It's implemented correctly, it's secure, and absolutely free with that. The only you know, the other thing that you pointed out there that's really important I think a lot of businesses lose track up is you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Yep, you know, you can reuse what's off the shelf software, and move quickly and be agile in this time. A great example as when you shared with me with one of your customers where they work off of that showroom, and they've set up the kind of the appointment thing and you guys came up with that idea for them.

 

08:34

We did and and really, Our idea was to go and just research and we and fortunately for us, we've been researching these for a few months already. We've already been a little bit at the ball there. But our idea was to research. open source tools are openly available tools, you sign up for a license, and you're ready to book appointments, you sign up for a live streaming service, you're ready to have face to face interaction. The the economy in the digital world today is as much Buy and assemble as it is built, right. So you don't have to have a bunch of software developers working nonstop for six months to assemble something, you go a couple clicks, and and sign up and you're in business. And that's a lot of the advice that we're providing to our customers is, let's find the right tools and solutions. They might not be perfect. You don't want to let great get in the way of good but at least you're in business and you're seeing 1020 30% of your revenue come back right away. While we wait for the for the the curve flattens, and we get back into the into the new normal would be, which will take some time.

 

Jess Coburn  09:38

Yeah, that concept of just in time execution is really important. And a lot of people lose that you get, you get paralyzed by looking at the little details and trying to get it just right. I want to take a quick break here and just mention that we are live on Facebook and YouTube. And we did it kind of impromptu going live. I appreciate you jumping on with me like that, because we're live it Appreciate anyone that's there. If you're seeing

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, customers, cloud, people, home, teams, moving, calling, technology, company, point, cybersecurity, manage, computers, ways, malecon, helping, talk, vpn, add

SPEAKERS

Jess Coburn, Malik Khan

 

Jess Coburn  00:17

Welcome to another episode of cyber side chats. Today businesses across the globe are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. In these first few episodes focus on what business leaders owners and CEOs can do to not just survive but thrive amid crisis. In this episode of cyber side chat I sit down on Malecon CEO point click analogy. So one of my closest friends, we discussed the importance of giving back during difficult times and how competitors can come together for mutual benefit through competition. I'm your host Jess Coburn, CEO of manage cloud it and cybersecurity company applied innovations Hi, welcome to another episode of cyber side chats today I have my very good friend Malecon with Bhima leak CEO point click technologies. Blake, can you tell us a little about point click and yourself.

 

Malik Khan  01:19

So point click is a managed services provider focused on cloud services. So, you know, everything we do is all managed cloud, whether we managing infrastructure in our data centers in Raleigh, or in our primary choice with cloud hyperscale, which is Azure. So you know, we provide cybersecurity making sure customers have backup and disaster recovery 24 seven support of the applications making sure that performing so this is our primary business model today. And not only that, helping customers move infrastructure from on premises to the cloud, and then making sure that they're not compromising any of their, you know, security to customer service. And just feeling like you know, they own the data that's sitting in the cloud. So we try to bridge that gap of making sure that the customer is in a very stable environment in the cloud. But then they also working with a very stable partner that knows how to manage the information and keep them up and running.

 

Jess Coburn  02:16

Thanks, Millie. I appreciate the introduction. So one thing some people know they know me and you is they'll know that we're good friends, and we have been the best of friends for almost a decade now, if not more than, and a lot of people say gee, Jess, you run a managed cloud it cybersecurity company and Moloch runs a managed cloud it and cybersecurity company. Aren't you guys cooperate? Aren't you guys? competition? And we like to refer to it as Co Op petition. Correct?

 

Malik Khan  02:44

Absolutely.

 

Jess Coburn  02:46

Because we find we find we find that we, I mean, we've helped each other tremendously over the last number of years.

 

Malik Khan  02:54

Yeah, I think it's been, you know, I was telling my wife like, and I wonder where my business was. With the headliner meet, Jess, just because at the time, you are much bigger company I was, you know, tiny, I'm still tiny. But I learned so much from from you the way you operate your business. Older approaches were a little bit different. So I was able to learn how to take some of the things you were doing and adapted into mine. And then you also learn some of the ways that we were using certain tool sets and certain practices that you were also able to incorporate in your business. So, you know, it kind of at a point became where we're not competing with each other. But we're trying to actually help accelerate and grow our businesses as much as we can by sharing the information and the knowledge base that we have within the industry.

 

Jess Coburn  03:43

Really, I don't think you give yourself enough credit. I've learned just as much if not more from you, as you've taken from me, I assure you that So, but I appreciate that. Um, which is an interesting topic on kind of why I wanted to start with it right now a lot of businesses are flipped upside down. They don't know which way To go. And, you know, traditionally in business when you have when you have competition, it's you or them and only one man can win. Right? It's that that fight. Going to be number one, I'm going to be number one, there's only room for me. Do you think this concept of competition would be useful for these businesses? And based on what's going on in the industry today? Or not in the economy today?

 

Malik Khan  04:24

Yeah, absolutely. I think every business is unique. I don't think there's typically businesses that are 1% a, like, um, there are some that are like that. But in many cases, you know, everybody does something differently. Everybody brings their own ingenuity and they know how into their own businesses. So I think, you know, as this this world is going on, especially with social with the rise of social media, you see a lot of businesses that are, you know, posting white papers on how they do certain things or best practices. So we all kind of learning from those, you know, those channels of how we can see what somebody else is doing. And we can adapt into the ways that we do our businesses. So I think that's already happening. Maybe not in an intentional manner. But it I think it is the way to go for all of us to kind of see how we can leverage each other and Co Op cooperate, you know, Co Op, co op petition, and be able to kind of help all of us grow,

 

Jess Coburn  05:21

as well. So that's interesting, too, right? Is because you're talking about giving back, and that's something that you do a lot of with, with your company. Can you talk about that?

 

Malik Khan  05:33

Sure. You know, so point click technologies was started back in 2007. Prior to that, I worked a regular job just like everybody else. So I believe the company was started on the notion of giving. You know, my wife at the time worked for the Red Cross, they have some issues at the office. I went there help them out. They say, Hey, can you help with all this other things? So looking at helping them and then keeping a job just didn't mesh so I decided to quit my job. helped a an organization that needed it. So giving my knowledge, I know how and my skills, I was able to start pointing technologies. And that never changed. So we still continue to do that with a lot of our customers. And as of late, you know, I'm originally from Gambia, which is in West Africa, I've decided that, you know, because technology is moving a lot slower in that region. What can I do, to kind of give back to my community. So we recently, you know, started our business there, opened an office there. And to kind of help boost the ecosystem for technology, we made our office much bigger, and splintered off into a co working space or an innovation hub. So we've been doing a lot of work in that region to kind of just help educate on modern ways of doing work, you know, through Microsoft partnership. And also, you know, just just cloud in general, whether it's public cloud or private cloud, so bringing all that no How and sharing it with the local ecosystem has been really invaluable for us. So those are one of the things that we're doing in Africa today. And it's, it's, it's a challenge, but it's moving forward and I think is very much appreciated. And, you know, we continue to give back in that way. But you know, it doesn't give away from all the stuff that we do in the US. We also open an office in Spain, and have a lot of our staff in India. So we operate in four countries, where we're doing a lot of giving, and, you know, just learning from each environment, especially in this time is very difficult. You know, seeing now the US is taking over with this Coronavirus how rapidly is spreading. You know, prior to it getting there, you know, I was I'm here in Spain, you know, we heard Italy was really getting really bad. And then now here in Spain is getting, you know, just as bad as Italy and now the US is taken over. So Africa is also you know, doing that so just two days ago. I thought what can we do to help in that nature. to kind of help prevent this, because the biggest challenge in those markets is they don't have it like us. You can't take your laptop home, and then VPN or just open a web browser access your applications. Because everything is in files, you know, you can you rarely see a person working with a computer on their desk. So you're like, wow, you know, what exactly are you going to do if you are forced in a divorce you to work from home. So right now I'm helping them with a strategy on how to effectively make people safe. That way they can work effectively from home. It's difficult because if you don't have the platform or the environment to do it, it just suggests a challenge. But again, it's all part of our DNA of giving, where we're always looking at ways of improving other people's environments or lives. And I think eventually it comes back. We're able to benefit and reap some of that from us to help us grow our company as well.

 

Jess Coburn  08:54

So you touched on what's going on in the Gambia and I appreciate you guys for that. But I really, you know, I found that when you first told me about building the operation in the Gambia and started explaining to me how technology is there, it was difficult for me to grasp. Because, you know, you look at I've been using computers since I was 12 years old, you know, we always had TVs and all this stuff in our house. My kids have had iPads and tablets, practically they came out of the womb with it, right? So for us, we're used to being connected like that, but in the Gambia, so they're still doing business, the old school way with files and

OVERVIEW

In this episode of Cyberside Chat, I sit down with Georganne Goldblum, Vistage Chair and CEO Coach and we discuss lessons learned from economic crisis in 2007 and the hard decisions ahead for CEOS as we prepare for a potential economic downturn. 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, ceos, vistage, members, employees, decisions, people, hear, recession, georgia, webinars, helping, florida, plans, business owners, group, company, key, speakers, coach

SPEAKERS

Georganne Goldblum, Jess Coburn

 

Jess Coburn  00:00

Welcome to another episode of cyber side chats. I'm your host, Jess Coburn, CEO of managed cloud it in cybersecurity company applied innovations, where we help businesses identify risk and address it before it becomes a problem. Today, businesses across the globe are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. In these first few episodes, focus on what business leaders owners and CEOs can do to not just survive but thrive amid crisis. In this episode of cyber side chat, I sit down with George Henkel VISTAs shared CEO coach. We discuss lessons learned from the economic crisis in 2007. And the hard decisions ahead for CEOs as we prepare for a potential economic downturn. So sit back, relax, and let's chat. Welcome back to cyber side chat and I'm just covering it today. I have with me George angle Blum Georgia, can you talk a little bit about yourself and what you do? 

 

Georganne Goldblum  01:03

Sure. Morning, Jess. So, um, I'm Georgia and goldblum. I've been a Vistage chair for over 18 years. And I also have my own firm coach for exempts, which works inside companies, with the leadership team. And they're developing leaders to make sure they have the skills, the alignment, and to meet or exceed their goals. And then I also coach business individuals. So that must be important to help businesses and leadership teams really understand what they're doing. It is especially in times like this, but 18 years ago, I didn't quite have an understanding of a business background. But when I started with Vistage it's an incredible asset for CEOs for key executives. They have a platform that is over 60 years old, over 22,000 members worldwide, and they help their members. They help them with three things, helping them be better leaders make better decisions and getting better results.

 

Jess Coburn  02:17

Okay, so Vistage is really there to help any business or Can anyone try and how does that work? What give me a little more about Vistage. For those that don't know? 

 

Georganne Goldblum  02:26

Well, there are size parameters, and it's primarily for businesses that have at least 20 employees. Well, this ditch has, has really three elements. The first is a pure advisory group, which allows CEOs and the key executives to have their peers who can hear their challenges can hear their opportunities, and ask the right questions and can approach it from different perspectives. So that there are multiple solutions, not just one and allows that CEO to work on their business, not just in their business. It also we have one of the most amazing reset of exceptional resources. We bring in speakers. We obviously during times like this, we can stream in speakers. And through Vistage International. We have webinars and podcasts and white papers and the ability to really Select and Refine that information so we don't overwhelm the members but give them what they need in whenever they're looking for it to be able to make those better decisions. And finally, the last piece of it is coaching. And we do that one on one. once a quarter. We do it as a triad three members and myself meet and allows the members to get to know each other better, deeper, and to help each other in managing making decisions for their business. Yeah, this has been fantastic for me, Georgia, as you mentioned, I've been in it for well over 10 years now. And I joined right after the first recession. So the businesses that I got to interact with her really coming out of having to make those hard decisions and everything, what lessons could we learn from what the businesses did during that recession? And what we're faced today realizing that I realized this is a crisis now or pentatonic, but a lot of people feel that it's going to lead to a downturn in the economy, what what can we learn from that? So it was interesting, back in 2007, we got when that a recession would be coming. And we started planning them and I had all of my members Look at their business and say if we go down 20%, what am I going to do? What do I have to do for expenses? What do I have to do for labor? What do I have to do for vendors, they had a detailed plan laid out, they looked at key indicators that rolling 12 trends to realize when they may need to make decisions. They did it for 20%. They did it for 40%. Maybe some did it beyond that. And they use them. Almost every one of them had to use those plans during the recession. And that during the recession is when I started your group, because I looked around and I said the economy is going to be continue to be volatile and the world is going to be volatile, and that CEOs need a place to go with their peers more than ever, and so that's why I started That second group I we started in six weeks, we had 12 members and now we're up to 21. So it's been a valuable place. And we've had a used we call them def DEF CON plans, I come up with the name that the members dead from the military, and they have updated them and continually have them at the beginning of last year. You'll remember I asked everybody to do these DEF CON plans in case we had another recession and to be ready, and most of the members have done that. And there they have them. And the key to it is you're making tough decisions before you're emotionally involved in have to do that or you're emotionally stable. And then when you have to make these you're ready, you just execute. And it doesn't make it easy, but it makes it easier.

 

Jess Coburn  07:01

And that would be the advice for anyone today that doesn't have her DEF CON plan is to start planning now. Absolutely. I mean, I would start with the very first premise and I was speaking to one of my members yesterday who's been with me for all 18 years, Dred Scott would say, he was the owner of a switch Florida and he passed away. But his saying is cash is king cash is cash. You need to know what your cash position is going to be for 90 days from now. And you run various scenarios with different accounts receivable wells, different accounts payable levels, you rate you run different templates, and make sure where you're going to be because we can't count on whether we're going to get that government money in time. And you want to make sure you're in this for the long term that your business is going to stand up.  That's great feedback. Great advice. You know, one of the things I really enjoyed About this session that you touched on was that we get to meet as a group, you meet a group of CEOs from different industries that have varied backgrounds, and it's really enjoyable. Now, the pandemic has put a hold on that. But you were quick to act on that and make changes for us. Can you talk a little about that and what we're doing there?

 

Georganne Goldblum  08:20

Sure I become a digital star. Every day, I get ready for the my photo shoot. And we've been using zoom and we also some of my members uses US team because they're Microsoft. But we began early. The most important thing for my members and for my groups is communication. And to be able to talk with each other to be able to talk with their people, and it's constant and it's educational, informative and up the booklet Because you guys are the leaders. And so I and I always hope that I'm a role model for my members. And so I jumped on zoom we started to do instead of, because we only have a once a month meeting, we started having weekly meetings with everybody on board at a regular time so that we could talk through a day It seems like a month because things are changing so quickly here. And I'm also there, they're communicating through emails and sending information to people so that everybody is up to speed. I cross pollinate information across the groups so everybody hears this, which Florida has provided some webinars. We had one with Markham so that again, you're getting the best and most relevant information without overload because you don't want to overload it. everybody's busy, everybody's trying to execute. So it's a balance of those things, the one to ones we also do with zoom and teams, and also the triads. So we've been able to go virtual and we're living in a virtual world now.

 

Jess Coburn  10:19

So that was a great pivot that you made, though, where you took the group to those weekly meetings. Initially, I thought, oh my god, here we go. We're gonna have a weekly Vistage meeting. Come on, it's hard enough to find time for once once a month, right? How am I gonna find time for this? It's the same crybaby stuff everybody tips at every meeting. They come in, they go, Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm here. I'm so busy. I got so much going on. At the end, that's Oh my God, I wouldn't miss this for anything. I got so much probably. I really know how I'm gonna handle that issue that I was struggling with. But what's nice about the weekly meetings and what you're doing there is that the situation's changing so quickly. It's so fluid that to have that group there and to build you know, It's assist has been invaluable to me. And I'm sure it's a lot of them.

 

Georganne Goldblum  11:05

And I hear I hear from because we have a weekly meet

Today businesses across the globe are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and these first few episodes focus on what business leaders, owners, and CEOs can do to not just survive but thrive amid crisis. In this episode of Cyberside Chat, I sit down with Jamie Delsing, Managing Partner of Consultis IT and we discuss the importance of culture in business and how to continue to build your culture when going remote as well as how the staffing industry is preparing for our recovery. So sit back, relax and let's chat.