Business

Capitalist Sage: Talking with Lisa Proctor on Resources for Local Businesses During COVID19 [Podcast]

Published

5 years ago

April 7, 2020

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Every business is looking for answers on how to survive the changes in the world right now.
Luckily Lisa Proctor, CEO of Sanford Rose Associates Lake Lanier and founding member of the Peachtree Corners Business Association (PCBA), has some ideas and tips for businesses. In this episode of the Capitalist Sage, Karl Barham and Rico Figliolini video chat with Lisa to talk about all the ins-and-outs of handling business during this ever-changing time. Recorded socially safe in Peachtree Corners, GA

“We’re committed to be open and honest with each other. We’ll have open dialogue, but we’re finding other things for them to work on that will position us to be ready when the market comes back. So whether it’s doing something, you know, re-engaging with good candidates, reassuring other people, even if it means doing some sort of community service or doing something to keep the positivity going, but trying to make sure we’re positioning because we don’t know how long this is going to take.”
Lisa Proctor

Timestamp:

[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:03:54] – About Lisa
[00:04:22] – Essential Businesses
[00:06:11] – Innovation in Remote Business
[00:09:30] – Expenses and Cash Flow
[00:12:59] – Loans and the CARES Act
[00:22:52] – Using this Time
[00:25:43] – Helping Your Employees
[00:35:15] – Networking Amid COVID-19
[00:38:59] – Closing

Podcast Transcript

Karl: [00:00:30] Welcome to the Capitalist Sage Podcast. We’re here to bring you advice and tips from seasoned pros and experts to help you improve your business. I’m Karl Barham with Transworld Business Advisors. My co host is Rico Figliolini with Mighty Rockets, Digital Marketing, and the publisher of the Peachtree Corners Magazine. How are you doing today, Rico?

Rico: [00:00:50] Good. It’s great.

Karl: [00:00:52] Isn’t it fabulous that we have adapted our podcasts from our usual home in a podcast studio to virtual as this episode is being recorded and filmed from our homes as we are abiding by local ordinance for stay at home due to the coronavirus and COVID-19. So today, it’ll be a little bit different, but through this pandemic we’ll offer you tips and local insights on and helping you survive and thrive during the global pandemic. Rico, why don’t we talk a little bit about our sponsor before we get introduced to our guest?

Rico: [00:01:39] Sure. So like, we’re, we’re being socially responsible at distances, right. And one of the great effects of what we’re doing is, is being supplied by fiber and optic cable, right. Unless you’re on a wireless device. But one of our main sponsors is Hargray Fiber. They’re new to Peachtree Corners and into the Metro area. They’re a company that provides fiber services to businesses as well as homes for businesses, is really where they’re at. And they are actually the backbone of the 5G network. An enabled highway of Curiosity Labs at Peachtree Corners. So if you’re looking for a company that can get you working well with site teleworking, with turn three key operations and actually with free software that you can use during this time, reach out to HargrayFiber.com and you’ll find that that can help you. Great friends and good sponsor.

Karl: [00:02:34] Well. Thank you for that. Well, we’re going to jump right in today. On today’s Capitalist Sage Podcast, we are so honored and blessed to have Lisa Proctor, who is a local business owner. She’s the president and CEO of Sanford Rose Associated Lake Linear, a global recruiting firm that helps place people in the right positions all around, all around the world. She also is the president of the Peachtree Corners business association. And we’re here to talk today about how small businesses in our community can find the resources locally to help them, not only just survive through this, this global pandemic that’s impacting everyone, but also ways in which they can thrive and support local businesses. Well, thanks so much for joining us today and being flexible with the arrangements for this.

Lisa: [00:03:31] Hi Karl. Hi, Rico. I’m glad to be here. It should be a fun, fun afternoon.

Rico: [00:03:36] Yes, it’s going to be, yeah, it’s going to be good, hopefully if we don’t have some technical issues.

Karl: [00:03:41] Or bumps.

Rico: [00:03:42] And we’ll be just fine.

Karl: [00:03:44] Yup. I just wanted to start with you telling us a little bit about reintroducing yourself to folks a little bit. You’ve been a member of Peachtree…

Rico: [00:03:52] Member of Peachtree…

Karl: [00:03:53] Corners.

Lisa: [00:03:54] Sure. I am actually one of the founding members of the PCBA and I’m the current president, and I’ve had the privilege of also owning my own executive search firm. So I’m right in the trenches, getting everything that other small businesses are seeing. I’m living it, feeling it, and seeing exactly what’s going on in the job market and then the unemployment. So, the great thing is you see it all in the community.

Karl: [00:04:22] Absolutely. Well, first, just want to maybe start off with, what have you heard as far as what, local businesses should be doing? I know we had only non-essential businesses being shut down. Maybe you can give, just share with us, for folks that may not have heard all the details of that. Just give us a general idea of what types of businesses and how it’s impacting people today.

Lisa: [00:04:50] Well, the biggest challenge I think is, people are trying to figure out the definition of essential businesses or whether they can use like restaurants or how to use restaurants or, and whether they can go to you know, get their car fixed or different kinds of things. So the big thing about the essential businesses are the easy ones are healthcare and you know, things like that. But even what you realize is learning how to work with the city of Peachtree Corners, because they also are doing some of the stay at home and the distancing. So making sure you take advantage of the resources, making sure that you really think about things in a different way. And one of the things that we found that we started doing is kind of trying to figure out how we could support businesses cause we were getting a lot of phone calls and a lot of questions. And one of the things that, the city is doing is they actually sent us a form that we were able to send out to multiple businesses that they can actually tell us what kind of services they are able to offer and what kinds of change in time and everything is, we’re all trying to find one central place to get information. I think that’s the biggest challenge is people are going in a lot of places, but they can’t get the right answers.

Karl: [00:06:11] So I, I know that grocery stores and our community gas stations, restaurants that can do takeout or delivery services are, and medical facilities are still operating in the community. What if you have a business where you’re allowed to operate remotely? You’re so good, at least function. Mostly those continue to work. And is there anything that would be impacting those businesses?

Lisa: [00:06:39] The biggest thing that I found is, a perfect example is a business that’s able to work remotely that might be, I’ll use an example that might even be doing something like they provide cigarettes to the local, ma, co, QT or one of the markets or something like that. They’re not allowed to work, but yet they can still work remotely, take orders if somebody wanted to do. But now they’re going to have to use a delivery company. And or some other way to get their services delivered. And so what I, I think the biggest thing that I’ve been the most impressed with though is restaurants that have also come up with creative ideas. Like, I know Taqueria Del Mar has come up with like, pantry idea or lazy dog. Those are the ones that I think have found a way to take the situation and turn it around and, and I think that helped.

Karl: [00:07:36] That’s one of the great things. Innovating in times of crisis. And one thing we’re telling a lot of business owners is to think about finding new ways to play. You may not be able to reach you, you may not be able to offer the same thing, but if you could find either new customers that can use your services in this time, or you may be able to have access to your supply chains or resources to offer something else that could help families at home, whether it’s delivery submits, you might have a pro, you may have access to products that are in high demand. Figuring out ways to pivot your business quickly and do it. And I’ve been seeing that throughout with a lot of restaurants, coming up with great ideas to do that.

Lisa: [00:08:23] Well, in fact, who would have thought like, one of the best commodities is offering free toilet paper, or you know, something that all of a sudden I’m like, what? There’s toilet paper. Yeah, that’s where I’m going to order from, and I’m laughing going, who would have thought? You know, that’s the big commodity right there. But I think that’s, it also is so simple in the way of saying, yes. Think out of the box right now. People don’t need big ideas, little ideas and little ways to help each other go a long way right now.

Rico: [00:08:50] Yeah. I’ve noticed actually some, some of the restaurants. Different restaurants, right? The higher price restaurants aren’t able to actually compete with the takeout in the curves. Some of the chains are doing better. Some of them have closed for the temporary. So it really varies. Who’s out there and who’s doing, you know.

Lisa: [00:09:10] Well, and it varies even by day. Like all of a sudden you’ll say, Oh, this is a great resource and all, and that was one of the things that we discovered when we put together the resource guide in the community. We finally had to put a date on it and say, look, this was accurate as of X date, because as soon as we put it out, we already had to have three changes.

Karl: [00:09:30] So I’m wondering, so we go through and look at people’s expenses right. Because this is a time where all businesses really have to pay attention to cash flow in their business. Pretty consistently, most retail businesses, one of their largest expenses is going to be rent and the liter that they owed to their landlord. There’s no, there is no universal answer to the rent payment. April 1st just passed. A lot of people have to pay. Have you been seeing what, what have you been hearing of what landlords and longtime, tenants or landlords in the
community, commercial tenants. Are you seeing them helping or being proactive and helping there?

Lisa: [00:10:13] I have not seen, I think a lot depends on how large your landlord is. If your landlord is also a small business and they’ve got a big mortgage on the building, I’ve seen that to be a little bit tricky. But I’ve seen, one thing I really liked that the city even did is they set up a program, that they’re calling it community partners, where they’re trying to encourage landlords to consider even just deferring the rent. I don’t even if they don’t forgive it, if somebody would defer the rent for two months. While I have a chance to get possibly one of those other SBA type loans or one of the other funding options, that helps me with saying, okay, well I try and adapt to this. Can I just not worry about cutting big checks? And I think that that’s what, but I have not seen a lot of forgiveness recently. I’ve heard a lot of calls and I’ve had a lot of people reach out and say, Hey, are you seeing any landlords that have been? But I personally have not seen a lot of that.

Rico: [00:11:17] Yeah. I don’t think we’re going to see more.

Karl: [00:11:19] Of fines or communication. And I love the concept of community partners. The landlord isn’t served well if businesses aren’t, don’t survive this, and they act except a partnership. One of the things that, that, one of the things that folks can do is open up the dialogue with the landlord and not asking for forgiveness, but I think deferral when there is a time to renegotiate the agreement for this period of…

Rico: [00:11:51] For this period of time, I’m sure.

Karl: [00:11:53] Or be able to come up with creative ways. That they both can be successful.

Lisa: [00:11:59] Right. Well, one of the things that I did with my landlord is they also provide me some administrative service, but we’ve even talked about, look, I still need some of that work done. Can we figure out how that administrative work can also be done remotely? You still want to be able to pay those people. You still want me to, you know, don’t cut my services, don’t, you know, let’s figure this out. And so we’re working through that dialogue and we’ll see how that works. But rather than just assuming they’re going to forgive it, they’re not going to forgive it. But the deferment might be an option.

Rico: [00:12:37] Is that an office suite?

Lisa: [00:12:39] I am. I’m in an office suite. And the challenge is the building itself is available 24/7, but part of my office suite includes answering my phones and being there to do. But if those services aren’t being provided, that’s where it’s, it creates the start of those conversations. Karl: [00:12:59] Right. So negotiating and make sure you’re communicating and writing any agreement. And I think it serves everyone to figure out a way to work through this together. The
secondary, I know a lot of folks may have loans and the SBA, we won’t talk much about the federal response and all the differences between that here, but, but one of the things that I know people can do is talk to their local banks. The CARES act and the loans that are being offered through that are going to be administered or processed through banks that are approved by the SBA, those local banks in this community that a lot of the business owners, it’s time to have those conversations with them as they help you with paying for those loans. Some banks are going to do it, some banks may not. But can you talk about some of the partners in the community on banks, that people need to, to get in communication.

Lisa: [00:13:59] Definitely. That they like, I know I’ve talked to, BB&T I’ve talked to Iberia bank. Bank of America, are three of them. Them that I know that have been doing, they’re training their staff too. That’s one of the things that I have learned is the challenges. The news media is giving you a lot of information quicker than the individual banks actually have had a chance to go through the training even themselves. But the good news is they’re gearing up, from what I understand, tomorrow is supposed to be the day that the banks are going to be accepting them. And I really think that the biggest thing the businesses need to be able to do though is make sure that they are, they come with their information ready to go. I think the challenge that we’ve had is some people tried to jump out there immediately. And they don’t have enough information. And so, I know I’ve also been talking to people like, Bill McDermott with, McDermott financial solutions cause he’s been working with a lot of people and doing the SBA loans. And the number one thing I’ve consistently heard from BB&T from Bank of America, Iberia is making sure that you have your, you understand what information to pull and that you’re prepared to provide that information before you start the process.

Rico: [00:15:27] So the loans, after that the, if I understand correctly, that are going to be available or some of it can be forgivable loans.

Lisa: [00:15:35] So some of it is grants. I’ve really seen it broken down in three pieces. There’s a loan that’s a traditional loan that you need to pay back and you need to be prepared to pay it back. There’s a second loan that has a forgivable portion as long as you actually use those funds for what they were intended. So it’s intended for payroll and payroll taxes. And one of the things that I’ve even been telling people is talk to your landlord saying, look, I’m applying for this loan. And part of the hard part of this one will also go towards paying the rent and paying those things. But if you give me this deferment, you give me time to get that money. And so I think that’s been, you know, and then the third, the third option is a grant that you know is a forgivable grant. And, but one question even I found myself unclear about is, Hey, if I applied for, you know, one of the, the grant can I also still apply for the loan? And that’s where I’m still tracking down saying, I’m not sure you can do both.

Rico: [00:16:42] Yeah. I think I saw something in their disclaimer saying, you cannot borrow a second, a second loan during the period of 2020. So the light, but you can’t do it at the same time. There’s thresholds for some of this stuff, right? Also because some of it’s that basing it on income, like for example, the personal checks coming out through, it’s either based on 2018, fall
2019 based on 2019 or if you filed it already. But ultimately it’s going to be based on 2020. So we may have to pay it back anyway. You are in that threshold part. Right?

Lisa: [00:17:25] Right. And I think that’s the, when people are hearing all of those pieces, that’s what gets everybody in that analysis paralysis is they want to jump, they want to do, and then they’re like, Oh gosh, I did the wrong thing. And that’s what I found when I was talking to the banks. Even like talking to Iberia, talking to, you know, the different bankers. They were saying, look, we’re having to be trained too, because when people are asking us questions, we have to give the right answers.

Rico: [00:17:53] There’s also a choice that has to be made, right?

Lisa: [00:17:55] Small truest is the BB&T and the SunTrust. That’s right. I forgot about that.

Rico: [00:18:01] As far as making that decision to take the loan, you also, you know, you want to. Pay your employees, right? That’s part of it. But what if you don’t have the work. You, this is a tough decision part. You don’t work. You want to keep your employees because you don’t want to furlough them necessarily because then you, I mean, they’re going to find another job somewhere else maybe, and then you’ve got to find new employees. But what if there’s no work and they’re taking this loan on to do this?

Lisa: [00:18:34] Well, in fact, the reason I’m slapping is you must have heard the conversations I’ve had with my staff this week because as we saw companies pulling their searches, you know, for us, if companies are pulling the jobs, that means they’re pulling the, the work right out from under us. And we walked into this two months ago thinking we were going to have the best year ever in 2020 and Hi-Fi in and being so excited and all of a sudden I was like, we have two feet on a banana peel and are sliding down the hill and didn’t even know what hit us. And trying to deal with that. And so what we’ve also been doing is I’ve made some commitments to my team saying, look, I’m committed to get some of these loans. I’m committed to keep you. We’re committed to be open and honest with each other. We’ll have open dialogue, but we’re finding other things for them to work on that will position us to be ready when the market comes back. So whether it’s doing something, you know, re-engaging with good candidates, reassuring other people, even if it means doing some sort of community service or doing something to keep the positivity going, but trying to make sure we’re positioning because we don’t know how long this is going to take. And it could, and you know, anybody who went through the 2008 recession, I literally opened my practice, my recruiting firm, like the two weeks before 2008 fell apart. So, you know, learning that and going through it, you realize you’ve got to think out of the box. And we all may have a 16 ounce glass with 8 ounces of water in it, but if you can find the positives and focus on the things you can do. My, it’s really helped my staff, but it’s also, I think it’s good to be honest with people. If you’re afraid you’re going to cut, it’s okay to say, look, we’re in it together and we’re going to try not to, but if we have to, you need to be prepared.

Rico: [00:20:36] And communications is best just because. I mean, you don’t have to, just, companies don’t have to let their employees totally come. They can do part time. They can adjust their pay. I mean, there’s options. It’s not just all or nothing.

Lisa: [00:20:50] Well, one of the things that I found that’s part of the CARES act and it was one I found, I was, probably a week ahead cause I tend to be pretty analytical. I jump out and start researching it. But probably one of the things that is part of the CARES act is the fact also, you don’t necessarily want people to be taking money out of their retirement. But if people have a 401k, some of the changes from the CARES act is where they took the threshold from, if your plan allows it, you can take your loan. You can take out a, from a $50,000 loan up to a hundred thousand dollar loan, but it’s based on 50%. You know, there’s thresholds. You have to have money in your plan, 401k but have employers. One of the things that I was talking to my staff is, look, if this is something, basically you’re borrowing, be prepared. You need to pay us back because you’re borrowing the money from your own retirement, but the interest you pay is your interest. So instead of getting the interest from the market, you’re getting that interest, and it might be some of that, that money that can help you get that. It’s real, and right now, as long as you pay it back, you’re not withdrawing it. You’re not taking it out of your long term future. But it’s a simple way to get some cash flow.

Rico: [00:22:12] I think also there’s an option there, and I’m not sure what the details of it are that you’ve, that they are waiving the 10% penalty.

Lisa: [00:22:20] They are. If you’re withdrawn, they are. If you’re not, if you’re not over the 59 and a half, they are waving that penalty. But you know, one of the things I was encouraging my team too is if you don’t have to, and the loan is allowed, do the loan, if you know you’re going to pay it back because then the money’s still there and you haven’t, you haven’t taken your, your long term future. You haven’t been into your retirement, but if people need to, at least they are waiving that.

Karl: [00:22:52] So there were some other things, and you highlighted something that was really powerful is this is a time for successful business owners to get to work. When, when times were busy and your customers were coming at you left and right, you didn’t have enough time to train in, have time to market prospects enough. You didn’t have time to think about your business plan. And investments and things you’re doing in the future. This pause that a lot of small business owners may give you an opportunity to work on the things that never got to the top of the list cause you were so busy. And we’ve been really promoting that. Let’s all business owners, most people that have been successful have lived through one or two of these cycles. And we’re what, what stands out from the ones that are successful? They actually work harder during the time they’re working on the things that are on the business versus in their business. So we advise folks, you know, if your business is now closed, there is not enough marketing prospecting. There are investments that you could be making in people training. You can conduct a Zoom training meeting. Well on different things, and even when you get back, when things open up again, we’re in a world that might’ve changed a little bit. Your
safety practices might have to change because now it used to be safety glasses and steel toe shoes. In some jobs we may have to be more, address viruses and, and contact with people. So what does that look like? What are the true, how do you retrain your staff to be safer in that now’s the time to execute those plans and train?

Lisa: [00:24:41] Well, and what I’m finding with my staff is rather than them just having to come to me with ideas, what I’m saying is, look, let’s put it together, our Santa Claus list. Let’s put up together some of our big ideas. What are things that maybe you think. That we can do, and I find just having that dialogue, number one, they’re coming up with some good ideas and they’re coming up with markets of, look, if we know that this is going to be, what are markets that maybe we don’t currently work in, or what are markets that we need to do the research we need to do the heavy lifting now, but because they think they’re part of the solution, I’m finding it also keeps them from thinking about what they’re not doing and what’s not there. And we’ve done a lot more of those kinds of things. And I think you make a good point is we want to be positioned to come out of it. And this is, instead of looking at it as a negative thing, we’re actually able to do some things that we haven’t, we haven’t been able to do.

Karl: [00:25:43] How have you, I know one of the things that, that’s a real practical thing is what if one of your employees and what should be business owners be thinking about, and helping both the employees and following… have you heard or ahead of any advice or thoughts on that?

Lisa: [00:26:07] Karl, I didn’t hear part of your question. Would you mind repeating it?

Karl: [00:26:12] Yeah. what if an employee got where to where to get tested for COVID-19 and one of our small businesses in our community. What are some of the things that a business owner can do to help support that? Or what would be some of the right things they should be thinking about doing? If an employee were to test positive.

Lisa: [00:26:31] I, in fact, what a great question. I think that, we’re even experiencing some of that, not directly, with my business, but we’re experiencing some of that with my husband’s and being able to do simple things like, you know what, it’s reaching out to the family, reaching out to the, to the employee, seeing if is their meals. Maybe you could deliver to the family or some just little things. I’m finding it doesn’t have to be big things. But also making sure people feel like they’re doing good things, but also giving the other employees who haven’t tested positive, giving them a platform to kind of talk about, do you have any concerns or, you know, are there some things, because if it was an employee that tested positive. And they had been in close proximity or they had not been working remotely. Working through some of those fears and making sure some of those resources are being addressed in that direction is critical because it creates quite a buzz. When all of a sudden somebody hears, especially with HIPAA, you know, you hear from HR, Oh, you know, there’s a person in our department that has it, but you know, we can’t tell you who it is. And everybody’s looking around going, well, I can tell you who’s not here today. And so you kind of can figure it out, but
everybody’s kind of being careful with privacy, but at the same time want to be there for really supporting each other.

Karl: [00:27:58] Yeah. I think you’re making a good point. I mean, I would definitely consult with both HR professionals and so on. So you’re following that along with many of the acts. There’s the HR 62 Oh one that has included COVID-19, related illnesses and, the family medical leave act and some of those other policies. So some of the protections as well as some of the benefits of that. Also, if you check out a lot of the costs that might be associated with, employees that suffer or going to, there’ll be some tax advantages and, and credits that are due, you can consult with your tax professionals and advisors on some of those, but the main point that the government, the federal government is they’re building the support structure to allow on earth to make good sound decisions, to protect the safety of the individual employees and everyone else there. So one of the things is to create a culture where people disclose. If you create a culture where people are afraid or have fear of telling the truth, they’re not in cause they’re fearful for their job, they might put more people at risk. But this is a time for business leaders to step up and display leadership and communicate with the people what your policy is, how you respect their privacy yet protect them and support them as they navigate through this and those that are successful and new that might have employees for life.

Lisa: [00:29:33] Right. Well, and you brought up such a great point with that. And what I’m also finding is. Reach out, you know, to your healthcare insurance provider as the employer, if you have it, now’s the time to reach out to them to understand too. Are there any other things that we don’t know about with a particular insurance policy that we need to be aware of? Are there benefits that might kick in that they’re aware of that we just haven’t had time to research? Because there’s so much information I’m finding you know, being able to reach out to the CPA, being able to reach out to those people. They are experts in their niche. And then we as small business owners don’t have to try and be an expert at everything. We can leverage their resources.

Karl: [00:30:18] One of the things that, you know, will, may, become a new norm that everyone locally, we haven’t seen, but, I know Rico and I are from New York and I have a lot of family up there and when I hear what’s going on there from friends that are in the medical profession, are there, it’s serious what’s happening there. They’re taking it seriously. They’re under an awful onslaught. But what they advise to places that are going through that is following the recommendation. So when we say social distancing, I think at the beginning there was a perception. There was some ticket that kind of meant more like a spring break approach. Also distancing versus really hard conscious decision to keep the six foot, recommended, distance from people, all of those things. But now we’re hearing things like masks starting to appear. I’m not an expert and I don’t know the medical opinion on whether it’s good or bad, but what I think we can do in the community is if we see people. Wearing masks in the grocery stores or checkout, we could, we could not react to it as if there’s something wrong with that person, I think. I think the mask is, the strategy around masks is actually a base assumption where you have it and don’t know it and you’re protecting from passing it to someone else. And so if people
are doing that, it’s almost a sign of respect to the other person. That you’re trying to protect them cause you don’t know. We don’t have the testing at the volumes that we need yet to, to distinguish that. So I could see that starting to ship most places you go a few gloves, a few masks, but in the next couple of weeks, if we start seeing masks or we still could nod, but that might become a new norm for a while.

Lisa: [00:32:08] Well, and I think that you make a good point because I actually happened to be somebody that has an autoimmune disease. I have asthma. And so I have actually been working from home, for the last three weeks, and I’ve been very aware of. You know, wait a minute, this is, I’m used to being out there, you know, right in front of people jumping out there, you know, being on the front line and so is my husband, and all of a sudden we’re saying it’s okay. Not because we don’t know, because he’s been going to Emory every day and he’s totally around all of that. With all of those things. Emory’s a test center, and they’re doing the trials. So there’s every opportunity. And so even if we just have said, we’re not wearing the mask because we’re afraid of somebody else, we’re wearing it to protect each other or to be that protective. And I think that once people kind of shift to go, wow, it’s, I’m doing it because I care, not because it’s some strange germaphobe or something. I think when people start realizing it’s because we care about each other or why we’re starting to think that way.

Rico: [00:33:16] Isn’t that funny how, you know, we look at the Asian society, China and South Korea in those areas, they are always wearing mass to a degree or another for pollutants in the air or for you. Mainly for that, actually, I know I’ve had a couple of people that I know that went, that lived and all back from South Korea. Half the time they had to wear the mask because of yellow minutes. If you went to China, I mean, it was just as bad in Shanghai and even Beijing, not so, not that much better I bet. But here, it’s almost like you’re Americans are afraid to, where we’re almost like John Wayne, that we know we don’t need to wear it. We’re good. I can already see the guys in New York, Brooklyn say, well, me, forget about it. We don’t need to do that. And that’s bad. You know? It’s a behavior shift as a society and as we all can pick apart in how we respond to it. So you know, if you feel that you should feel you need to wear a mask or, or as policies change or recommendations change, just, you know, realize just for the time being, it’s still being neighborly to, to wear a mask. And until we can get this on the control and get the numbers down and start to turn the corner on it.

Lisa: [00:34:36] No, I think it’s, I think it’s really critical and I even find that because of why I have asthma, I even have to wear a mask just regularly. Sometimes when I work in my suburban office, because even though it’s an executive suite, if somebody is using paint in the office or somebody is doing a trigger for me there are strong smells and so paints and stuff, so I wear it as much for my own protection. So I’m not doing that. But the first time I did it, I had that feeling of, Oh my gosh, why am I doing this? This is so strange. But once you realize it’s really for the right reasons, I think people get much more comfortable with them.

Karl: [00:35:15] There’s one more thing I wanted to ask you about the many businesses here that, networking was a big component of how they built relationships and built their business.
And now that we can’t physically meet in places, what are some of the things the future corner business association and other groups are doing to allow people to still connect with others even though we’re socially distancing?

Lisa: [00:35:42] Well, in fact, we are actually rolling out a whole PCBA resource center. And then the second thing that we did is we created an expanded area for our members where they’re able to now post, if they’re doing their own webinars, their own. You know, everybody’s doing a lot of, you know, whether they’re zoom info meetings or WebExes or whatever, and what we’re doing is making sure that people can put out what’s relevant to them. You know, we have people to do, so we’ve got that up on our site. We’re, we’re definitely going to be doing, some informational type, webinars and things. we’re trying to find creative ways because let’s face it, we’re all so used to being able to get together face to face. And so we’re, we’re definitely working on that. And then the third thing that we really have said is, if somebody is not able to do it face to face, if somebody says, Hmm. We’re trying to encourage people to do some like member blogs or information blogs that we can share out, whether it’s in, in different ways, through, you know, member directories or different things so that people know like, Hey, there’s resources right here. They can help you with setting up maybe your employees working from home. I know you mentioned Hargray Fiber can help people. And so there’s just a lot of great resources and tools. There’s some technology companies. And making sure that people are taking the time to update their, like their membership directory listings, making sure that people really know what people do and, you know, take the time to reach out and have coffee. Just have coffee over Zoom instead of having coffee at you know, one of our local restaurants and get to know each other. Take that. It’s that same idea of, Hey, you’ve got the time set up. You don’t need us necessarily to set up formal things. We’ll make it easy for you guys to jump in and talk, but talk to each other and, and make those face to face connections.

Rico: [00:37:46] You know what’s funny, I was talking to Pastor Jay Hackett the other day we did a podcast together and all the churches and talking about the ultimate, not networking, but the ultimate people gathering, right? A church is no, no better example. And they’re thriving. They’re doing Sunday services, even though that’s prerecorded on Monday, but they’re doing a lot of the, One-on-one or group 20-30 people in a group that’s zooming it. They’re all out there doing all sorts of, you know, fellowship things and outreach and stuff. So it can be done.

Lisa: [00:38:21] It can be done. In fact, our March business after hours, one of the things that we did is we were supposed to do a business after hours networking at Marla’s. And so we’d talk to Marla and we said, look, we all know that we’re going to have to just order our food, and we will just walk past each other as we’re walking to pick up. But Marla gave us discount, and we all, during 5:30 to 7:30 people could go pick up food and we could wave to each other in the parking lot, but we just couldn’t, couldn’t touch and couldn’t shake. And, you know, but I think those are the kind of things people want that interaction. And I think that’s, we got to have some fun with it.

Karl: [00:38:59] Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on. We’re going to continue to do more on keeping, connecting with people, making sure that they’re able to connect. But, we
want to thank Lisa Proctor, President of the PCBA, the CEO of Sanford Rose Associates Lake Lanier for just coming out and giving encouragement to the local business community. And I think you, you said it great. Even though for now we have to do this social distancing, that doesn’t mean we have to stay distant. We could still communicate, just use technology and do it a little different ways, to stay connected. So if you need help, what are some of the places that they can reach you?

Lisa: [00:39:52] Definitely check out on, on our website, we’re going to be, we’re about to launch. It should be live by the end of today, but we’re going to have a business COVID-19 resources center. We’re also going to have a tab out there for webinars and different things. Our members are doing different hot deals, different. We’ve got restaurant guides out there. We’ve gotten just lots of good tips and tricks, but also, guess what? The telephone works great. Our phone numbers are still there. Even if we’re not able to catch the limelight we can call people back. We’re happy to answer questions. We’re still doing emails. And so I think the good thing is just hearing each other’s voices is probably as critical as everything else. And we’re still there and we’re there for each other in different ways.

Karl: [00:40:45] And I just want to say, thank you so much for that. And the one thing that I’ll challenge everyone out there in the community that’s out there, we’ve taken a practice of eating out, an extra day a week. And we try to rotate it as best we can through the restaurants that are served, but continue to support the communities. If you think about it, when you’re hanging out to lunch or going out to dinner with colleagues in the community, you’d be spending. And so for, for us, we’re going to try to continue to support that. And if everyone did a little bit of that, that would really help a lot of those local restaurant businesses. But also some of the other businesses that may be able to get gift certificates for the future, if it’s massage or hair or some of these other locations. So there’s lots of ways that we could all pitch in and support the small business community that really drives our economy. I’m Karl Barham with Transworld Business Advisors of Atlanta Peachtree, and just want to tell everyone, please be safe and hang in there. Rico?

Rico: [00:41:52] I want to, you know, hopefully everyone can stay safe out there over the next few weeks, through until the end of April almost. I guess that’s where we’re going. We’re still publishing Peachtree Corners Magazine. We’ll actually hit the post office next week. So all 18,800 households in the city of Peachtree Corners and beyond will get a copy of the magazine. We are covering how the school system is handling COVID-19 and digital learning days and weeks, cause spring breaks almost offer, and they’re going to be going back to digital learning next week. So that hasn’t stopped. We’re also talking, there’s a story about doing good and homegrown nonprofits. We’ve done some stories that were in the planning stage about youth baseball and middle school soccer. So we’ve gotten some of that in there. And we have an article in there about how the city is working through this crisis and how some of the businesses are going through that. And I want to thank Lisa for helping to provide some background information on that. So that magazine will be out there. We’ll be publishing this stuff online, and we are doing between the Capitalist Sage and Peachtree Corners Life. We’re going
to be doing more podcasts. I just did one, like I said with Jay Hackett, we talked about Peachtree Corners Baptist, and how faith institutions are working in this COVID-19 environment. So a lot of stuff coming up.

Lisa: [00:43:17] Great. So thank you.

Karl: [00:43:22] And thank you Lisa for joining us today. Take care.

Rico: [00:43:26] Bye guys.

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Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Business

Innovation, Security and Connectivity

Published

5 days ago

April 5, 2025

Arlinda Smith Broady

A group of men wearing hard hats and worker vests surveying cable pathways in a large, open-spaced building

How NetPlanner Systems powers businesses with tech-forward services and solutions

Anyone who’s been in business for more than a decade — maybe even less than that — can attest to the changes one must make to stay relevant. Such is the case with NetPlanner Systems.

During a discussion recently with Southwest Gwinnett magazine, CEO Clint Bridges explained that NetPlanner was an outgrowth of another company he started in 1983, initially in Mableton and later moved to the Peachtree Corners/Norcross area in 1985.

Middle-aged white man with short, balding hair and glasses wearing a light blue button up shirt. There are trees and a lawn in the background and he's smiling. — Clint Bridges, CEO of NetPlanner

The first company manufactured printer and modem cables, which were in high demand during the early personal computer market boom. The company transitioned from manufacturing to providing networking services in 1987 due to the shift in the market and the desire to stay in a service-oriented business.

“Those cable assemblies sold for higher margins in the early days of the PC market. Rapidly, a lot of that manufacturing went offshore, and the margins went down, and a number of my competitors decided just to become brokers in that field,” said Bridges. “I didn’t really want to become a broker. I am very technical, very hands on, and so I sold that first business in 1986.”

Services and market reach

The contacts and trust he’d built with customers prompted him to go another route.

“Local area networking was starting to come into the marketplace, and so instead of manufacturing cable assemblies, we started to do networking, which involves putting network cabling and related hardware into commercial buildings,” he said.

NetPlanner built some of the earliest networks in the area.

“This was back in the days before there were any standards for this,” Bridges added.

Two tech workmen in a large empty conference/classroom. They are standing at the front of the room next to two large screens on the wall, discussing audiovisual installation. — Installing audiovisual; photo courtesy of NetPlanner

Today NetPlanner provides complete design services, installation and ongoing maintenance of all communication systems in commercial buildings, focusing primarily on hardware. The company also runs a network services division that offers help desk support for small businesses without their own IT departments.

“That’s what really caused NetPlanner to be formed in 1987 — the desire to be in a service business and to provide a service that was still working with the same sorts of clientele in the computer marketplace,” he said.

NetPlanner works with a variety of commercial enterprises, as well as K-12 schools, colleges, universities and large hospital systems.

“Everything that wasn’t on the IP network in a commercial building before 1990 started to fall onto the IP network,” said Bridges. “Things that we never anticipated, including telephone systems, which were totally separate back in the 1980s, now all operate over IP-based systems.”

In addition, things like security and access control, video surveillance and similar systems all work on IP networks.

A workman in a white hard hat and neon utility vest standing on a ladder installing a video surveillance camera in the ceiling of a business. — Installing a video surveillance camera; photo courtesy of NetPlanner

“So as time has gone on, NetPlanner has received requests from our customers to install these other systems, and we’ve embraced the other technologies that are now a part of almost all commercial buildings,” he added.

The company is now expanding its services to include nurse call services for hospitals — one of the newer markets for NetPlanner.

Security and access control systems

With ever-changing business technology needs, NetPlanner successfully keeps current with trends. With heightened security concerns everywhere, the company installs biometric readers and smart camera systems for access control.

“We provide a wide variety of smart camera systems, where they can do recognition, license plate recognition, facial recognition — all those kinds of intelligent systems for commercial spaces,” he said.

Building relationships with a wide variety of manufacturers who provide different types of software systems is how NetPlanner meets the needs of its clients.

“We work with whatever software system the particular enterprise feels is most appropriate for their needs, depending on whether they want to do license plate recognition or face recognition,” said Bridges. “We do a tremendous amount of security camera work in schools all over the southeast. And that is becoming more top of mind in school systems now.”

A workman in a white hard hat and neon utility vest on a ladder outdoors installing an antenna system at a business. — Installing a distributed antenna system; photo courtesy of NetPlanner

But there’s more. NetPlanner also provides distributed antenna systems (DAS) to improve cell phone coverage in commercial spaces.

“Cell carriers are concerned about not just signal strength, but also channel capacity — the ability to have a much larger number of users that might be around a particular cell tower at any given point in time,” said Bridges.

When installing a DAS, NetPlanner’s proficiency in coordinating with the carriers ensures compliance with carrier requirements and optimizes signal strength and coverage throughout the building.

Evolution of the technology-driven company

Anyone who knows Clint Bridges shouldn’t be surprised that he’s right in the thick of the technology boom. He started his first company at 19 and attended Southern Tech for a while before focusing on entrepreneurship.

“My passion for technology goes back to my earliest years. I’ve been fascinated by electronics and computers since I was very young. And I always had a home laboratory in the basement of the house as I was growing up,” he said. “I knew when I was in high school that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. During my time at Southern Tech, I started my first company and realized that’s what I wanted to do more than be at Southern Tech.”

NetPlanner is not only a local company. It operates fully-staffed branch offices in Augusta, Columbus and Savannah, as well as in Nashville, Tennessee; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Tampa, Florida. It has also provided services in every U.S. state, as well as parts of the Caribbean, Canada, London and Puerto Rico.

“We do projects all over the country, including some that are for companies that need to do national rollouts,” Bridges said. “A lot of our customers want to see the exact same approach used consistently throughout all their facilities across the country. So they’ll look to a company like NetPlanner to go and provide that consistent installation of all their communications technology needs in all their facilities across the country.”

Community commitment

Whether it’s working with manufacturing facilities and distributors, some of the largest big box organizations in the country, small retail businesses or anything in between, NetPlanner never loses sight of the local community.

With a home base in Peachtree Corners, the company has strong community involvement — including adopting a roadway section for clean-up efforts and participating in local chamber of commerce activities. NetPlanner has been active in several community events, such as shoe drives, food drives and charity walks, demonstrating its commitment to giving back.

Workmen in hats and neon utility vests on the side of the road near a pick up truck, doing roadside clean up as part of the Adopt a Road program. — Adopt a Road program; photo courtesy of NetPlanner

“Since 2018, we’ve adopted a roadway section in the community through Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful,” said Michelle Bruck, marketing specialist at NetPlanner. “We go out about five times a year, clear debris off of that roadway and just make sure that it’s beautiful and that it’s safer for people who are walking or driving in the area.”

Nationally, NetPlanner participates in Toys for Tots and Walk to End Alzheimer’s.

“Not only [do we give back] in our headquarters location, but all of our branch offices look for ways to help, get involved and support our communities that we’re part of,” Bruck added.

NetPlanner’s marketing efforts include social media, direct marketing and trade shows, with support from Vox-Pop-Uli for branded materials and printed media.

“When we first started using Vox-Pop-Uli, we had just a straightforward vendor relationship, but they very quickly became a partner to us,” said Bridges. “Vox-Pop-Uli has actually set up a company store on our behalf where our employees can purchase branded material, branded clothing, ball caps and those sorts of things. And they also handle printed media — things that we would use at trade shows.”

Looking forward

With technology moving at a warp speed, NetPlanner relies on a lot of repeat business.

“Bandwidth requirements are increasing year after year,” Bridges said. “Fiber optic cabling that we might have installed 10 years ago won’t support the data rates that are needed today, so it needs to be changed out in many cases.”

Many of the customers that he’s been with for several decades use NetPlanner’s services over and over.

“We’ve gone into the same building and re-cabled it over and over again as the different category levels of copper cabling have advanced,” he said. “The demands on fiber are now way beyond what they were even five years ago because the capacity has increased so much.”

And as everyone is embracing artificial intelligence, Bridges said he’s working to keep up.

A tech workman in an orange hard hat, black shirt and neon utility vest standing in front of an open access control panel — Wiring an access control panel; photo courtesy of NetPlanner

“Everyone is well aware of what’s happening in the artificial intelligence space. And what’s really amazing to us is the number of new data centers that are being built across the United States by all the major players,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to imagine even being able to keep up with all that. We do a lot of data center work ourselves, and are trying to engage with more of our customers to help build some of these newer data centers.”

He added that the artificial intelligence boom is causing so much additional strain on the network infrastructure across the country, there are concerns about how it’s all going to be powered.

“I think everyone’s concerned,” he said. “Everyone that’s involved in this is wondering how we’re going to meet the bandwidth demands, the capacity demands, the power demands to make all this work.”

Staying ahead of the curve

With decades of experience, Bridges offers advice for all types of businesses starting out — put technology needs into your business model early on.

“The companies that struggle the most with technology are the ones that wait until after everything with the building is developed and completely built before they realize that they need Wi-Fi or some other network installation done,” he said. “It’s just a much more efficient process if we’re involved as early as possible to help design the network, along with the building structure itself.”

He also emphasized the importance of staying ahead of technological advancements to avoid falling behind.

“As fast as technology moves, if you get behind the power curve, it’s really hard to catch up,” he added.

The Local Thread: This business profile series is proudly supported by Vox-Pop-Uli, championing local stories and the communities we serve.

Business

Peachtree Corners Business Shines on “The Blox”

Published

6 days ago

April 4, 2025

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

A man with chin-length blonde hair wearing a blue shirt and a cap standing in front of an illuminated archway.

Peachtree Corners resident, Bill Frey, founder of Illuminating Design Inc., has stepped into the limelight on the acclaimed reality series The Blox to vie for the coveted title of the greatest start-up company in the nation.

The program follows Frey and his fellow contestants as they tackle a series of high-stakes business challenges, offering viewers an unprecedented look at the trials, triumphs and transformation of an emerging entrepreneur.

Now in its sixteenth season, The Blox bills itself as “the largest live-in entrepreneurship competition in the galaxy.” Over the years, it has evolved into a trending docuseries, available for viewing on multiple platforms — the free mobile app (for Android and iOS), on Prime Video, at betablox.com or on Facebook at BetaBlox.

Joining The Blox

Twenty years ago, Frey saw an opportunity to bring exceptional service, quality design and accountability to a rising lighting industry. Guided by his entrepreneurial spirit, he has sought opportunities to take his business to new heights and found just that in The Blox.

Unlike conventional entrepreneurial competitions, The Blox, a brainchild of MTV reality star and entrepreneur Weston “Wes” Bergmann — best known for his appearances on shows like The Real World and The Challenge — offers a new, groundbreaking format. Participants are immersed in a unique environment, living together and confronting a series of challenges that test their entrepreneurial acumen.

Frey’s talent and vision propelled him to be among the fortunate few selected to compete on show out of an impressive pool of 50,000 applicants.

“I am humbled and honored to be a part of The Blox, a game-changing platform that has given me the opportunity to evolve both personally and professionally,” he shared. “The show has been an incredible learning experience, and I am grateful for the chance to showcase my business and its potential on such a remarkable stage.”

You can follow Frey as he is featured competing in different entrepreneurial challenges throughout the series, which is divided into an eight-episode arc that premiered on March 23. New episodes are released weekly.

For more information about Bill Frey and Illuminating Design, visit illuminating-design.com.

Business

Expanding Horizons: How KGM Technologies Balances Defense, Medical, and Precision Manufacturing

Published

2 weeks ago

March 27, 2025

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Kyle Grob on innovation, diversification, and the future of skilled trades

In this episode of UrbanEBB, host Rico Figliolini speaks with Kyle Grob, CEO and founder of Peachtree Corners-based KGM Technologies, a precision manufacturing company specializing in firearm suppressors and expanding into medical device production. Kyle shares insights on growing a business during COVID-19, navigating ATF regulations, and how Georgia fosters innovation in manufacturing.

The conversation also explores the future of skilled trades, the challenges of hiring motivated workers, and KGM’s commitment to workforce development through partnerships with vocational schools. Whether you’re interested in business growth, advanced manufacturing, or the evolving job market, this episode is packed with valuable insights.

Key Takeaways & Highlights:

Adapting to Change – How KGM transitioned from automotive and defense contracts to firearm suppressor manufacturing and medical devices.
The Impact of ATF Regulations – Digital processing has drastically reduced wait times for suppressor purchases.
Workforce Challenges – The decline of skilled trades and the difficulty of hiring motivated employees in manufacturing.
Medical Technology Expansion – KGM’s role in producing stroke rehabilitation devices and scaling medical manufacturing.
Networking & Diversification – The importance of industry connections in finding new opportunities.
The Value of Trade Schools – How partnerships with Maxwell High School and other vocational programs are shaping the next generation of skilled workers.
Patents & Innovation – KGM’s goal of filing at least one new patent every year.
The Role of Suppressors – Their use in law enforcement, hunting, and protecting hearing health.

Kyle Grob (Photo by Rannulf Media, George Hunter)

Transcript:

00:00:01 – Rico Figliolini

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Urban Ebb here in the city of Peachtree Corners, just north of Atlanta. I appreciate you joining us. We have a great guest today, a Peachtree Corners-based business, very different and unique industry, Kyle Grob. Appreciate you being with me, Kyle.

00:00:18 – Kyle Grob

Oh, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

00:00:19 – Rico Figliolini

It’s going to be a good discussion on a bit of company, a bit of work, and manpower, the lack of. But before we get into that, I just want to say thank you to two of our sponsors, EV Remodeling, Inc., and the owner, Eli, who lives here in Peachtree Corners also. His family does. And he does great work from design to build. Whole house renovation, or if you need an extension on the house, he’s the guy to look for. They’ve done over 260 such renovation work. So check them out, evremodelinginc.com. And then also Vox Pop Uli also family owned, also in Peachtree Corners. And they’re a company that if you have a brand and if you’re a business and you need to bring that brand to life, pretty much you can do it. 1,600 vehicle wraps I think this past year anything you can want, imprinted, embroidered, silk screen, whatever it is. If you have a logo and you want it on an object of any sort, challenge them. I can’t tell you how many different things they’ve put logos on. So all great stuff. Check them out, voxpopuli.com, where you can find them. So, now that I’ve taken care of the sponsors who support us for our journalism and podcasts. Kyle is the founder and currently CEO of KGM Technology. Yeah. So, based in Peachtree Corners, tell us just quickly a little bit about what the company is.

00:01:42 – Kyle Grob

So, the company started in 2012 as a kind of a fabrication, job shop, machining fabrication. And we kind of evolved out of the automotive space and got into the defense world and slowly grew over years. And then we moved into this building in 2019 and have been growing ever since.

00:02:03 – Rico Figliolini

2019, COVID.

00:02:05 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, so COVID was actually very good for us. It was wide open, running multiple shifts. While many businesses were shut down, we couldn’t hire enough people, we couldn’t build enough products.

00:02:17 – Rico Figliolini

We’ll get into that because it may be a bit of what you’re going on now. So your business is military suppressors, which is the biggest part. You told me once at one point when I took a tour earlier, a week ago, you said we’re precision manufacturers.

00:02:34 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, so the back end, the wholeness of the company is precision manufacturing. Our forward-facing product is suppressors. That’s mainly what we sell to commercial, law enforcement, military, overseas, all kinds of stuff like that. But we’re in all kinds of stuff. Contract manufacturing, medical device manufacturing and supply, all the way down to machining and research and development. And it’s just a little bit of everything. But again, forward facing is the product line, yes.

00:03:02 – Rico Figliolini

Sure. And you’ve done this since 2019, right? Actually before that.

00:03:07 – Kyle Grob

Well, no, no. Yeah. So we started suppressors in 2015, 2016. And then, but it was kind of a side product to what we were doing. Really grew in 2019. And then really kind of just kept growing through COVID. And this is kind of where we are now.

00:03:22 – Rico Figliolini

Interesting. So your family is steeped in military? In all branches, I guess?

00:03:25 – Kyle Grob

Yeah. Army and Navy.

00:03:27 – Rico Figliolini

Army and Navy. And you hire veterans?

00:03:29 – Kyle Grob

We hire a lot of veterans. We have a lot of veterans that work for us. I try to hire as many as we can. They make very good employees. But, you know, it could probably be a whole nother podcast in itself, what happens to veterans when they come back from service. And so we try to search them out and give people a chance.

00:03:34 – Rico Figliolini

Getting involved in this type of market since, you know, you started, has it changed in the way you do business?

00:04:03 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, because we are so highly regulated from, you know, the ATF regulates us pretty heavily. The ability for consumers to essentially purchase the product and all the paperwork and background check that goes in it has evolved since we started. It used to be nine months, 12, 15 months to get a product. So you buy it, wait for your paperwork for a year or more. You’d almost forget about the product. And then all of a sudden it’d pop up one day. Well, last year, everything went digital. And so now everything’s digital. You go from months or years wait time to days, hours, weeks.

00:04:38 – Rico Figliolini

So you can order this stuff online and get it shipped to you?

00:04:41 – Kyle Grob

No, so you can’t really ship it to your house. So you still have to go to a dealer or go like that. You’re still submitting fingerprints. You’re still submitting your photos. But the process is now all digitized. There’s no manual entry on the ATF side. Everything goes through much faster. And again, we’ve seen, you know, three hour wait times. Where you fill out your paperwork, go to a long lunch and all of a sudden your suppressor is approved.

00:05:04 – Rico Figliolini

So if you have a gun permit or a carry permit, does that make it easy?

00:05:08 – Kyle Grob

It doesn’t really because it’s a completely separate background check. So this, every suppressor you purchase is its own background check. So you treat it like a firearm purchase every single time, except it goes through a kind of a different, it goes through the FBI on the NIC side, which is their background check service. But it goes through separate checking on the ATF side as well. So it is a little bit more involved process than buying a handgun or a rifle or something like that. But similar agencies touch it, I guess.

00:05:38 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. This being the state of Georgia, other states have different ways of doing things. You’ve been to trade shows. You’re involved in the industry a bit. Do you see Georgia being a good place to do business here in this market?

00:05:52 – Kyle Grob

Georgia is a very friendly state. And even just manufacturing in general, you’ve seen all the companies that have moved here. You have, you know, most major automotive companies are either building or about to build here. You got SK batteries. You have some big companies that are moving to Georgia. And then film. I mean, film is massive here now with all the tax breaks. And so you see a lot of stuff coming to Georgia from an industry standpoint, but it’s also very firearms friendly. There’s a lot of big companies here in Georgia. You have Glock here in Georgia. You have Daniel Defense. You have a lot of really big companies. I think Remington’s got a place here. So it is very, you know, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina. There’s a lot of very friendly states when it comes to manufacturing and firearms.

00:06:35 – Rico Figliolini

So how do you go about selling your product then? I mean, if you go to trade shows, RFPs?

00:06:40 – Kyle Grob

So on the military side, it’s more RFPs, it’s more contract basis. We partner with a lot of firearms companies because a lot of submissions for weapons systems require, you know, we’re viewed as kind of an add-on to a weapon system. Yeah, it’s an accessory. And then on the law enforcement side, we go demos, we have dealers. And then on the commercial side, we have distributors that distribute to dealers. And then we have dealers that essentially are walk-in brick and mortar stores. And we sell directly to them as well.

00:07:07 – Rico Figliolini

So for most people that may not know, why would someone want a suppressor on the gun? Why would a police officer, let’s say a SWAT team, want to suppress it? What makes it?

00:07:17 – Kyle Grob

Really the biggest one is health and safety. It’s the biggest one. So from an officer-involved shooting, or say if he shoots without ear protection, every shot is permanent hearing damage. So if he shoots one in his entire career, he’s permanent hearing damage, he’s on disability from an auditory standpoint. You look at, you know, what you could do, and then you look at, you know, God forbid all the school shootings we’ve had and school resource. When you shoot inside of a building, it’s even magnified. So it’s very, very loud in general, and then you put it inside of a building and it gets worse. So there’s been cases where you’ve seen lawsuits where, you know, a SWAT team or someone’s gone into a house or a building and essentially, you know, saved someone, but they discharged their short barrel rifle inside the house. And then everyone that’s not wearing ear protection, i.e. the family, they’re all deaf or hearing damage, and they end up suing the city. And we see it a lot. And so from a health and safety standpoint, there’s that. You could look at accuracy. And then you look at, on the hunting side of being more courteous to neighbors. It allows you to hunt closer to, you know, other people and stuff like that. Yeah, so there’s so many things that add to it. And then you add, you know, on the military side, it helps with being able to, you know, hide your location and just be more effective. Suppress flash and stuff like that. So a myriad of uses, but really the bigger one is the health and safety side of things.

00:08:40 – Rico Figliolini

I was speaking to a person today that on his old farm he used to shoot his rifle and stuff. And he told me he said, this ear? Pretty much gone. He says now hearing aid. Because he didn’t think that he needed a, you know plugs or anything. A suppressor probably would have helped him. Well at least the plugs might have helped a little bit. But no one thinks about that.

00:08:59 – Kyle Grob

You don’t, you don’t. And you look at the law enforcement side and kind of the heat of moment, you don’t think about it. It’s not something, you’re either fighting for your life or, you know, your split moment decision. Like you don’t think about putting your plug on or throwing a plug in or something like that. It’s a split second decision. So with suppressors, you can really mitigate a lot of that risk. Now, does it make it the Hollywood movie side? No. The only thing that gets even close to that is 22. And it’s because the subsonic is very quiet like that. Any centerfire rifle cartridge you’re never going to get away from supersonic crack. It’s only so quiet you can get it. It is a suppressor, not a silencer. And that’s a probably a very heated topic. It’s a movie thing, yes. But in practical application they do a lot of work for the size of the product and what you use it for.

00:09:50 – Rico Figliolini

So now going from suppressors to the medical industry. You know when you showed me around and you talked to me about mechanical therapeutic systems for a company you’re doing work for inside the perimeter. That you almost had to double the size of your floor space, essentially.

00:10:07 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, so it’s kind of an interesting story. We go back to, we’re a precision manufacturing company. We make contract stuff. We do defense. We do a little bit of everything. And it was kind of a friend of a friend. Their business was scaling and really needed help scaling the manufacturing side of their product. And it was really a right place, right time. It kind of fit in our warehouse. While it’s not exactly what we make, precision assembly, scaling, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, all that stuff. That’s what we do every day. So I’m just building something a little different versus what I have been building. So it was a great opportunity. Again, the right side of the perimeter is Atlanta company. And it was just a really good right place, right time. Good fit for what they were looking for. Good fit for us on the diversification side. So it’s just it really worked and we’re growing weekly. Yeah, we’re blowing walls down and yeah we’ve tripled the space twice now since we yarded in like October of last year. So it’s very very quick.

00:11:07 – Rico Figliolini

When I walked through and you gave me the tour, I mean there were quite a few people just in that place doing the assemblage. I think you even told me, you said well, how far down can you? Millionth of an inch? Precision?

00:11:21 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, so it’s like our EDMs and some of our stuff, we calculate microns, millionth of an inch.

00:11:27 – Rico Figliolini

So that’s an industry, obviously, you want to get more into.

00:11:30 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, it is. It was interesting. I had kind of heard about the medical manufacturing side, and the more we dug into it, the more I realized how many companies like the company we’re helping are out there. And they have a great idea, a great concept, but they’re either doctors or they’re pcs or biomedical. You know they’ve developed great product but they don’t know the manufacturing side or they don’t know how to scale the logistics. Yes, scaling. So it’s, there’s so many good ideas that maybe never ever come to market or never could reach the potential they could because they don’t know the back end. They don’t know the manufacturing, they don’t know how to. Make five of something is very different than making 500, is very different than making 5,000. And it’s just a different skill set. It’s a different knowledge base. And we’re very good at it. And it was a really, really good fit. And it’s something we believe in. We believe in the medical stuff as much as we believe in the defense. Every day we’re building something to help someone else.

00:12:29 – Rico Figliolini

And to get people to understand a little bit, this particular thing was a therapeutic.

00:12:34 – Kyle Grob

Yeah it’s a, without going into too much detail, it’s a stroke therapy device. It’s used for rehab of stroke patients so that they can actually rehab at home versus having to go into a therapy office. And so it’s just grown immensely and that’s, the product’s done well.

00:12:50 – Rico Figliolini

So how do you go after that market? You know, so if another business person, you know, when you, when you diversify, it’s not easy, right? You’re all set in one way. You have 100% of the direction going one way. How do you do that? If another company was listening to this, how would they be able to diversify? So what challenges did you see?

00:13:10 – Kyle Grob

The challenges, like I said, we very much stumbled into this one. Not saying we weren’t looking, and that’s kind of how we did it, but honestly, it was network. And the guy that owns this company, owns another company and he’s an investment group with another other. So a lot of it is networking and being open and willing to take on a challenge that you may not. Be like, oh I have no business in that, well if you’re good at what you do over here and you can see you can cross the lines you can compare, you’d be surprised what you can do. And then you go to the trade shows. Like there are medical device trade shows. Go to those and walk around and say, hey I’m a manufacturer, or I’m this, I’m looking at getting into this market. Do you have a need for X, what I do? Putting yourself out there and going like, look, this is out of my market, but I’m good at this. I would like to try this and just be open and willing to, A, to fail because you’re going to fail more than you succeed, but be willing to try. And that’s the big thing was the leap. Like we took a leap to do this. I had a good feeling that we could do it. But at the end of the day, like you still have to take the leap.

00:14:17 – Rico Figliolini

You’re a CEO now and you were a founder, but you were on the board. You were chairman of the board?

00:14:22 – Kyle Grob

No, no, not chair on the board. I was more on the technical side. So as we were growing the business, I was CTO. And so we were heading kind of down a different path and it was just a the board kind of wanted to see a different change in the way the company was run. And again, my background, why I said, I wasn’t running the day to day, most more on the manufacturing side and technology and patents and stuff like that. And so, board made a shift and I took back over the company. You know, I go from running it many years ago, to running again. Which happens a lot in small companies. And it was a, we wanted to head down the manufacturing path and that’s what I know. So we made a change and I stepped back in last year and been riding the train ever since.

00:15:11 – Rico Figliolini

Good, good. It’s great to have a company expanding and doing well in Peachtree Corners.

00:15:13 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, yeah. Happy to be here.

00:15:17 – Rico Figliolini

Being an employer of veterans, being steeped in family military and stuff, you do outreach, you do community fundraising in that field, in that area.

00:15:29 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, we do, again, more in the defense space, but we do some charity work with several organizations. And again, we donate product. We do stuff for raffles and fundraisers, and we do a lot of stuff like that. Because I really do believe in giving back to the market and giving back to those people. So it’s something we do a decent amount of. I would like to do more this year. That’s kind of what we’re trying to find some other organizations that do stuff with. But we try to do as much as we can. There’s one group, and I’ll be happy to say the name, but Guardian Group. And it’s Guardian Long Range. And they have a precision rifle series. It’s a shooting competition, but it’s for fun. And they have four or five stops all around the U.S. And we outfitted all their rifles that they let people use for trials and stuff like that. We outfitted all the suppressors. So maybe their first competition experience is with a suppressed rifle. So we do stuff with them every year. A guy named Gary is the one that founded that. So great group. But he has a lot of, most of his stuff is for foster kids. He’s a foster kid himself, and he does, every single dime of that goes right into helping foster kids, helping place foster kids, and stuff like that.

00:16:41 – Rico Figliolini

Wow, that is neat. That is cool. I didn’t think about that. So, you know, leadership, company, what comes to mind when you’re, you know, when you’re looking ahead for the next few years?

00:16:55 – Kyle Grob

Really, my biggest push is diversification. Is trying to grow the medical side for sure, grow my contract manufacturing, and really try to build some stable streams around. Everyone knows the firearms industry goes up and down. It’s always cyclical. And so trying to build a larger company where I can have some overlying pathways and diversify and stuff like that so that I can clip the waves and be able to grow the business without relying as much on a very cyclical market. So that’s really the big try. We’re pushing a lot of technology. We’re trying for a patent a year, or a patent every two years. Yeah, we’re four deep already, with two more applied. So we do a lot on the patent side, a lot on the testing and development side. But yeah, growing the medical is really the big one I’m focusing on in the next year or so.

00:17:45 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, one of the things you have in the house is a firearm range. You told me, and you can put a .50 caliber?

00:17:52 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, so we shoot up to .50 caliber indoors. Yeah, so we have a, it’s a lab as much as it is a range where we can do all of our instrumentation and we develop based on data. So we use it. We shoot it in almost every single day. We’re doing testing and development. We do, you know, demos for customers and stuff like that. But yeah, we’ve, pretty extensive room back there.

00:17:54 – Rico Figliolini

Yes, it’s amazing. Small. Smaller than this conference room.

00:17:58 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, yeah. It’s not, it’s not very big. It’s not a big long range, but it’s heavily instrumented.

00:18:22 – Rico Figliolini

I can’t even imagine shooting a 50 caliber in there, how that would sound.

00:18:25 – Kyle Grob

Oh it, unsuppressed it’ll lift the ceiling tiles. It’ll pressurize the room, yeah so.

00:18:31 – Rico Figliolini

So lots of work yeah expanding you’re looking towards the future and stuff. One of the biggest problems I guess, and we’re going to go right into that is finding employees. Finding skilled employees or motivated employees. Maybe not even skilled, maybe motivated. How does that?

00:18:49 – Kyle Grob

I’ll trade motivation for skill. I’ll trade because what we do is kind of unique. Even on the manufacturing side, we have very nice machines. We do things to a very, very high tolerance. And even with machining background, we’ve found that some people have either preconceived notions or bad habits or stuff like that. We’re getting to the point now where I would rather have someone that has a little bit of mechanical aptitude, some basic knowledge, or someone out of trade school, and I’d rather just teach them. And finding someone that’s willing, even on the medical side, I’d rather have someone come in that wants to just come in and work every single day, take pride in the product they put out. You don’t have to even be that knowledgeable about what we do. I’ll train you and do whatever we need to do, but someone to actually come in and do it is one of the biggest struggles we find. We’ve had you know, multiple staffing agencies and all stuff like that. And we have people, we had some people the other day that came in for four hours, just left during lunch, never came back. And yeah, just it’s, the workforce is, it’s been disappointing, I guess. And seeing, especially on the technical side, I mean, the craves, the trades, the crafts, like a lot of that stuff is dying. Like people are not, you look in the like tool and dye. Oh, that’s enough. That’s no, so most people don’t know how injection mold stuff works and like that. The craftsmen that build those tools, that is a dying art. There’s only one or two schools in the U.S. that do it. I don’t know any of those guys that make less than six figures. None of them. And, you know, you look at plumbers and electricians and welders. I come from a welding background. I knew plenty of welders in the nuclear field that have multiple houses in multiple states. They never wanted for money. They always had plenty of money because it’s such a very small niche thing and there’s not many people that go into it. And so what we found with the growing, we’ve had to do a lot of automation because we cannot get the people. So we’re putting robotics in, we’re putting automation system in just because I have a certain number of parts that I have to make a day and we’re not hitting the numbers with the people we have. And it’s really hard to find people that want to come in and work. And we have a climate control facility, the nicest machines, our oldest machine, CNC machine is from 2018. It’s the oldest machine we have in the whole building. Most stuff is within two years old. So we work highest machines, highest quality product this, and just having someone come in every single day and want to work. It’s been very difficult to find. And that’s it. It’s been. I guess upsetting a little bit of how hard it’s been.

00:21:25 – Rico Figliolini

I think we talked a little bit about that when I was here last time. And you’re on the board of Maxwell High School Technical, I think?

00:21:33 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, so Maxwell High School, it’s a vocational high school, essentially. It’s a trade high school. They’re over in Lawrenceville, I think. So high school kids in Gwinnett County, if they want to go to that program, I want to say it’s junior and senior year. If they are heading down that path, they essentially will get bused to Maxwell for half their day and come back. And they have machining and welding, hvac, nursing, culinary, carpentry, all kinds of stuff. And you can get some vocational certificates in high school over there. And so I sit on the board over there and I help advise of curriculum of what do kids need to learn if they want to head down this path? They want to head down, I don’t care if it’s machining or engineering or anything like that. Like what are basic skills. I mean we have people that come in their 20s that don’t know what a screwdriver is. I mean, it’s like, that sounds crazy, but until you meet people and you know, I don’t think the school systems are doing people favors. And so I’ve been really trying to help where I can and you know, try to like, look, let’s try to teach people young. I didn’t have that when I was in school. Like I had to learn everything the hard way.

00:22:42 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. And you were talking about this. You started at 15, I think.

00:22:46 – Kyle Grob

Yeah. So I started machining in, you know, high school. I started welding at 12. I grew up on a farm.

00:22:51 – Rico Figliolini

12.

00:22:52 – Kyle Grob

And so it’s one of those that, you know, I had a very good upbringing. Like I was shown, my great grandfather was a master carpenter. Great uncle was a master machinist. Like I grew up in a trade family. And so like, I got exposed to that stuff very, very young. I was very lucky. A lot of people aren’t like that. Most of their parents are maybe in IT or finance, and they want to go be a machinist or be a welder or something like that. So there’s no, you know, maybe the parents don’t know how to get into that. And so the kids find out at a later date. Well, what if they could start finding out in high school? They start learning, you know, your STEM schools, your vocational schools, that kind of stuff.

00:23:31 – Rico Figliolini

I think like Paul Duke STEM, for example, they’re a hybrid school, right? So it’s, you have kids that are technically STEM kids, but then you also have other kids who are learning CAD and 3D printing and stuff like that. So more of technical stuff that they can actually leave the high school knowing that stuff and then find the job doing it. So that’s the only place I know that’s like that, short of the Gwinnett Science and Technology High School. I forget where that is now. But when I grew up, I mean, granted this, you know, my high school was 50 years ago. Half a century. That’s horrible. Okay. But when I grew up, we had shop classes. So metal class, printing class. In fact, I took printing. I should have taken the auto class because that really works now. But I took printing. And when I was going to college, I worked at the print shop right around the corner. So I made good cash because there weren’t that many people that knew it. And I literally could run two or three presses at the same time. They were small presses. But there were even people back then that would be like, well, what are you in a rush for? Why are you doing what you’re doing? And I’m like, because I’m getting bored running this long run in this one press. I could do this other one while this is going. So it is to some degree motivation, some degree technical knowledge.

00:24:50 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, but a lot of it still drive. Strive.

00:24:53 – Rico Figliolini

Yes. For sure. To be able to make that money. I mean, most parents think, well, I don’t know about most parents. What I think is people got into this four-year college degree thing. Which is way more expensive now than it used to be. And you’re looking at people, who was it, the head of OpenAI, was essentially saying you don’t have to go, the head of NVIDIA was. It was like you used to want to be able to send your kid to do computer programming. And he’s essentially saying, you know, you don’t need to be doing that anymore because it can be done in plain english on OpenAI, essentially. So where are they going?

00:25:36 – Kyle Grob

Good question.

00:25:37 – Rico Figliolini

I see signing bonuses for 10 grand on HVAC here in the metro area sometimes. How do you solve that? I mean, you’re on the board of the high school, but how do you?

00:25:48 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, but it’s one high school. And it’s one high school in a state. And I know there’s other vocational schools in other states. A lot of it just seems to be the state has to look at it holistically in the whole state. And go like, look, this is worth putting money into. This is not football. This is not baseball. This is not your support sports like that. It is an alternative path that is not your commonplace. So it really has to come. And I’ll give the state of Georgia and even Gwinnett County very, very good accolades of, you know, taking the leap on that school and funding that program and pushing it and keeping to push it and grow it. And so, but it has to start at a state level. The state has to be able to go,this is worth putting money into to future. Because you have to do it now for the kids that are coming up. You know if you want to get, if you want that kid that’s in elementary school right now to look at that that program, it already has to be in place so that he will know about he or she will know about it by the time they get into middle school and then by the time they get in high school they can apply for it.

00:26:50 – Rico Figliolini

I think the stigma, but the stigma needs to go away also, right? Because there’s a stigma of like, you’re not going to college?

00:26:57 – Kyle Grob

Yeah. You’re not going to amount to anything if you don’t go to get a four-year degree.

00:27:02 – Rico Figliolini

And it used to be okay if you knew computer engineering and programming. You’d come out of school. Some people, some leaders in that industry would say, don’t waste the four years. We’ll train you during the four years.

00:27:13 – Kyle Grob

Come work for me now.

00:27:15 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Google used to do that. Some of these other companies started doing away with four-year degree minimums to be able to do that because they weren’t finding what they needed. But now they’re finding it in a different way. But I agree with you. Funding that type of stuff makes a whole lot of sense but it’s taking that stigma away to say, you know.

00:27:33 – Kyle Grob

It’s okay to be a plumber. It’s okay to be a carpenter. It’s okay to, you know wash cars. Because I have a friend of mine who started washing cars then he managed a car wash. Now he owns six of them.

00:27:46 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah again, it’s a bit of drive.

00:27:50 – Kyle Grob

Yeah, but he had the drive and he knew that he had to start somewhere. And I think a lot of people are scared of starting at the bottom of something. And but, it’s one of those that like they’re all these crafts all these trades are very inviting they want people. They’re begging for people to come work.

00:28:06 – Rico Figliolini

You know what? You don’t you don’t need to drive as much. You need to be able to, I think take pride in what you do. You don’t need to go into something and say, well, I want to start my own business because some people don’t want to. They want to do a nine-to-five. That’s fine. They can make lots of money doing nine-to-five.

00:28:22 – Kyle Grob

They can make good money doing nine-to-five, yeah.

00:28:25 – Rico Figliolini

Check out the company. Alright, so we’ve sort of come to the end of our interview. Is there anything I’ve left out that we haven’t talked about that do you think you should mention?

00:28:37 – Kyle Grob

No, I said I can go on for days about the labor and trade schools and stuff like that. But no, I said this. It’s kind of a little bit of my story and kind of where we’ve come from, where we’re heading and what I’m passionate about individually and what I want to do for the community.

00:28:52 – Rico Figliolini

Excellent. So if you all want to find out about the company, check out the website. I’ll have the, actually, what is the website?

00:28:58 – Kyle Grob

It’s kgm-tech.com.

00:29:01 – Rico Figliolini

I’ll have the link in the show notes as well. If you have any questions for Kyle, just email him off the website. Or leave your comments in the, you know, depending if you’re watching this on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, or if you’re watching this on audio podcast, just send the comments to me and I’ll forward it to Kyle. So, but thank you everyone. Thank you to our sponsors as well, to Vox Pop Uli and to EV Remodeling Inc. Appreciate you all being with us. Share this UrbanEbb podcast with your friends. And if you look, if you know anyone that’s looking to get into the technical field, Kyle could be a good mentor probably. I would think. Thank you Kyle.

00:29:41 – Kyle Grob

Yeah. Thank you sir.

00:29:41 – Rico Figliolini

I appreciate it. Thank you guys