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New Huge Medical Campus, 1200 new jobs; Two Autonomous Vehicle Companies; and National Attention

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What company just announced a $500 Million investment to build a medical campus in Peachtree Corners and add 1200 new jobs to the area? What 2 models of autonomous vehicles will make their debut in late August on Curiosity Lab’s 5G enabled 3.0-mile test track? Plus trees, trees, trees. Some talk about Georgia Power and continued tree removal and trimming.

Timestamp:

[00:00:30] – Opening
[00:01:28] – Intuitive Surgical Coming to Peachtree Corners
[00:33:04] – New Autonomous Vehicles
[00:39:42] – Georgia Power Tree Removal
[00:48:14] – Closing

“I know I beat the drum of Curiosity Lab merely because this magnet for activity that we created has a name. Other people have named things too at different times with different things. But I bring it up just so that the residents here are kept updated on the benefits that we derive from having a reason for certain companies to come and kick the tires here.”

Brian johnson

podcast transcript:

Rico: [00:00:30] Hi everyone. This is Rico Figliolini host of Peachtree Corners Life, and today with Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager, Brian Johnson. Before we get into that, just want to say thank you for everyone’s support on Peachtree Corners Magazine, which is a host of these podcasts. And also that today we’ll be talking about some really exciting news that’s going to be happening over the next few days. Certainly one that was announced today about a company here in Peachtree Corners that is going to be expanding into huge medical campus. So we’re going to be discussing that. We’re also going to be discussing a little bit about Curiosity Lab and the new vehicles that are going to be happening and coming this year to Technology Park. So we’ll be discussing that as well. For the first time in the expanded probably the largest amount of autonomous vehicles on live, living, street like ours in the nation, if not in the country, but certainly in the nation. So we’re going to be talking about those things today. So let me bring on Brian, thanks for joining me.

Brian: [00:01:27] Thanks for having me.

Rico: [00:01:28] Yeah, this is good. Every month that we do this it gets people to know a little bit more about what’s going on in Peachtree Corners. Also, I just want to remind people that I make my commentaries because  I make my commentaries. This is my show. and if I have a comment about something I’m going to make it. People will disagree, but I just want people to understand Peachtree Corners Life, Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager, it’s something where I can make my comments about issues of the day. And I just want people to know that. Let’s talk about the first thing that’s happening, which is unbelievable. You were telling me, sharing with me this morning a little bit about it just before the show. And it’s a company that has existed here that’s based in Silicon valley, has an office here, but this is a huge thing that’s happening. So tell us what happened today with the governor and all this.

Brian: [00:02:14] Well, let me back up six months and start this story because there was a big announcement by the state of Georgia about a company that exists here in Peachtree Corners called Intuitive, a publicly traded company. And they are a maker of robotic assisted surgical suites. There’s a number of them. The most famous, if you will, the one that’s sold the most units, most prevalent out there is called the DaVinci device. And this is a operating suite in which the patient sits underneath a covering in which there are four arms that come out. And this is used for patients that are undergoing soft tissue surgery. So it’s not for your bones. And oftentimes it’s a very complicated surgery that would normally either require a very, very, granular level of skill. Like say excising a tumor around something that’s very sensitive. Or it would normally require cracking somebody’s chest open, like splitting them all the way to get to some organ that’s difficult to get to. Instead they put in four ports, if you will. Almost like the size of a straw, maybe a little bit bigger into the torso, the area that they’re going to operate. One of them contains a camera and the other three contain arms. Almost like a snake in that once it’s through the port, into the body, the head of that device can move wherever and they can snake it wherever they need to. And then the end of it has removable tips. It could be a blade. It could be scissors. It could be claws, it could be a cauterizing device. And so it can go places in there in a less invasive way then cracking the thing open. The other interesting part about the DaVinci device is the surgeon is actually not over the patient. The surgeon is sitting next to the patient, looking into, goggles with their hands, into these grips and what their hands are doing is what’s actually happening next to them inside the body. And they look in the camera.

Rico: [00:04:41] That’s amazing.

Brian: [00:04:41] It is amazing.

Rico: [00:04:43] It’s almost like virtual reality working on a patient.

Brian: [00:04:46] Robotic assisted surgery is certainly the wave of the future and where there’s going to be more and more of it. So, you know, it’s used for those types of things. This company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. And about six months ago, they started a process of building an east coast campus. They did not want to expand in California, they are in a very aggressive expansion mode. And a lot of it is because they are doing very well and they have market share in this particular market and they want to get in to hospitals while the competition is as far behind them as they currently are. So they’re in an aggressive expansion mode. They decided they did not want to expand into California for their own reasons. And so they started a process of identifying where on the east coast they wanted to go. And so about six months ago, they approached the city and they informed us, essentially that they were taking a look at places. And prior to, and to a degree, sometime after they did make their decision, which they said would be in the not too distant future. They also informed us that they had purchased one of the buildings right behind where their current office is.

Rico: [00:06:19] Which for those people that don’t know is across from the post office.

Brian: [00:06:23] Right next to the USTA building on Spalding, basically at the corner of Spalding and Data drive. And they also, one of the buildings they purchased behind there, the one directly on Spalding, they wanted to gut it and they want to start assembling the DaVinci devices at this. Not manufacturing it, but taking all the component and chip sets and having engineers assemble them together and then do quality control testing. And then when a hospital buys the device, the device ships to the hospital. Then they install the device in the hospital. And then part of the purchase is, there is training by surgeons that go and get trained on how to use the device from hospitals that bought it. And when they invited us over there, the ‘they’ is the mayor and I, they actually walked us through their current facility. And that building that’s right on Spalding is unique in that one of the floors we had to essentially get covered, almost like scrubbing into surgery, to walk down one of the halls. The reason we had to do it is because it’s set up, it almost looks like a hospital. If you’re walking down the hallway of a hospital. And each of the rooms down the hall actually had a surgical room in it, a surgical suite with the DaVinci device and on the operating table was a cadaver. And that’s where surgeons come in and they actually practice using the DaVinci device and get trained and certified in how to use it. And then they go back to the hospital and they start using them for surgeries. Right here in Peachtree Corners. And the mayor and I were both like, we knew what Intuitive was, but we didn’t know what all they were doing here. So they’re going to assemble those devices and then they’re going to do it on the east coast. So we knew there were at least going to do that. But they said, look, this assembly that we’re wanting to set up, it’s like temporary. We are really in a rush to get it up and running, because again, we have market share. Whatever location we choose as our east coast headquarters, that’s going to be where we’re going to build the permanent assembly plant. So we were like, okay, this is temporary. Whether they expand here or not, it’s temporary, but so they talked to us about speed. And so we started, I gave them some assurances, talk to my staff, and we started doing the permitting. Well concurrent to that, they started a process of elimination, ‘they’ being Intuitive. And got the locations that they wanted to expand to down to two locations, one here in Peachtree Corners and one in a city in the research triangle area of North Carolina. Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area. And when they got it down to that, those two, then they retained a firm, Deloitte, to be their agent and they officially submitted an investment commitment to both states and they asked the state to come back with the state’s incentive package. What Intuitive committed to in their investment proposal was for them to create about a $600 million campus and to create 1200 or more jobs with an average salary of these 1200 or more jobs of $130,000.

Rico: [00:10:21] It’s just phenomenal. That’s better than Amazon. It’s unbelievable. So they’re going to have a big campus. How big is this campus going to be?

Brian: [00:10:30] I can’t remember. I want to say it’s going to be like six buildings- ish. So what you’re going to have here is you’re going to have the assembly building where they’re assembling. Their sales team for the east coast is going to operate out of here. They’re going to have research and development at this location. They’re going to have a number, not all, but some of their C-suite people are going to be here. The chief technology officer, the chief operating officer, chief sales officer, all those C-suite. Some of them are going to come here. They’re going to also have all of their training. So another by-product of this is they’re building a much larger version of that floor that I just told you, for people to come in, for surgeons to come in and train. And so the turnover on a regular basis of surgeons coming into the city to train for a week or more, depending on what level, they’re staying in our local hotels.

Rico: [00:11:39] And they’re coming from all over the country.

Brian: [00:11:40] They’re all over the east coast, however far there. But they’re coming from all over the country. But again, they come to the city for a temporary period of time and they’re going to stay in our hotels. So we not only have permanent 1200 or more jobs at the average salary that they are, but then you’ve got all of this reoccurring temporary hotel activity of these surgeons coming into town to get trained. And yes, this was a very interesting project. And so the state of Georgia. said, receive, we’ll get back to you. And we started the process. And so the city, the county, and the state. Well, we first got together and we came up with an incentive package that we would offer back. And the incentive package was presented to Intuitive at an all day meeting amongst representatives from the city, the county, and the state, and from the department of economic development. And then Intuitive had some senior people fly in from Sunnyvale, led by their chief finance officer. And the purpose was to talk incentives. And what was strong enough? What was it? All that kind of stuff. And Deloitte, they had a number of representatives from Deloitte, from various offices in the country that concentrated on certain things and we presented ours. And, the mirror image of this happened in North Carolina.

Rico: [00:13:13] Sure. What were some of the major incentives? Or major incentives that the state provided and the county and the city?

Brian: [00:13:20] So I’ll start with the city. So we did a waiver with not to exceeds of  certain permit and inspection fees. So regulatory fees. So our incentives, especially since we don’t have property tax, city property tax, our incentives were on the regulatory side. And it was all in the form of what future revenue that would have been owed us or future permit fees, inspection fees that would have been owed us. And we waived it. I think we were do with the value of all the construction. We’re going to be due around $6 million in permitted inspection fees over the $600 million or so campus.

Rico: [00:14:07] That could take over several years, three to four years.

Brian: [00:14:10] That’s correct. I think 2024 is their date for them to be done with all this. So it would be over multiple years, obviously. And this was total, but we capped it at 3 million. So about half. And we waived stormwater user fees, which will be of course generated off of the impervious surface that they are going to have on their campus. And don’t let me forget about talking about trees and all that kind of stuff, how this will play out. But anyway, we waived those fees up to a certain maximum. I think it will essentially be, they won’t pay it for about three to four years and then they’ll start owing us that. That really was it. So it was all regulatory stuff. Oh, their business license. So based on their forecasted gross revenue, we waived their business license for again, we capped it. And of course our business license has a cap anyway, because if not, they would owe us a really significant amount of money every year. But I want to say, it’ll be to where they’ll go about three years before they would start owing us, just because it was a value. As soon as they hit that value, then that incentive goes away. Our total is, like three and a half million dollars.

Rico: [00:15:24] So it’s deferred to somewhat, to a degree not deferred payment, but they don’t start paying until maybe three years into their…

Brian: [00:15:32] That’s correct. It’s almost like Rico, you say, Hey, I want to think about doing something what’s in it for me? And like, you’re going to owe me money at some point Rico. I just won’t have you start paying it until the notional value of what you would have owed me gets to a certain point. And then that’s, I’m no longer going to waive that fee. Now you’ve got to start paying it forever. And we do that because if we got into a situation where somebody had an endless waiver of something, then you find that  you all of a sudden don’t have any revenue from business license because you waived it for everybody at some point. And two during the construction phase, there’s a lot of upfront costs. I think we’ve all moved. You know, oftentimes when you move and build new things there’s other costs on the company that are not born by the local jurisdiction. They’re going to relocate a couple hundred, I believe employees from California to here when they open their assembly operation here. They hope within the next four to six months. That’s the one thing they have started on the existing building, demoing the inside. And that’s costs, that relocation costs for their employees that they have. And so we generally try to give them incentives that are tied to their expansion relocation phase. And then once all the dust settles, when they’re operating normal, then they need to start paying normal. So that’s what we’re doing.

Rico: [00:17:01] Just so that people understand, the 1200 jobs that they’re looking to create here, a few of them 200, 300 may be coming relocated from the west coast it sounds. But the majority of the jobs they’re saying they’re creating, these jobs here in Peachtree Corners for employment, new employment.

Brian: [00:17:20] That’s correct. I don’t believe that the 1200 jobs that they’ve committed to create include either 180 or 120 people who currently work in that building or the relocated. They’re talking about creating 1200.

Rico: [00:17:37] Excellent. Thanks for the clarification that’s even better. And they also have to live somewhere and who knows? A bit of them might decide to live in Peachtree Corners.

Brian: [00:17:45] I hope more than just a bit because we all like to live close to where we work and keep our little world small. So I hope more than just a bit live here.

Rico: [00:17:53] Yeah, so do I. And the other part of it is, so then, I’m used to maybe a little bit more in the weeds than other people, but I think we all understand that cities that bid for these things the same way, some people may have seen Amazon and how some cities bidded for Amazon’s east coast facility. To a degree, cities, states, counties are all competing for these types of jobs. Part of that norm, when a big company comes in to say what are you going to give me if I’m going to relocate to here versus let’s say Peachtree City or somewhere else. So you have to be competitive.

Brian: [00:18:22] Rico I’m glad you brought that up. That is an important point to make. And that is, first of all, this is very normal. This is how these companies do it. There is a reason why Intuitive retained Deloitte for a very specific period of time, a large accounting firm, to represent them in their quest to play locations against each other and say which one of you are going to be the one that ultimately gets is the highest bidder. It happens in about every industry you can think of. The good thing for us is again, we are only waiving an amount of fees that have not been paid. We’re not counting on it. And it’s just for the expansion part itself. Once they start operating and these things are all capped and they move on, they’re going to be the largest employer in Peachtree Corners. Right now, Siemens is probably the largest. They’re approaching a thousand total.

Rico: [00:19:28] Wow. So when they’re finished within three to four years, that number may even go up even.

Brian: [00:19:33] That’s correct. So then the county threw in, the county abated countywide property taxes that they charge for these parcels. They waived that for a period of time. And they ultimately came out and had a very aggressive offer. Millions of dollars in property tax abatement on that. Again, a lot of this is also for them, future revenue they’re not counting on because this is partly based off of the enhanced value of the property after they put $600 million into it. Again, a very common. And then the state, which has a much broader menu of incentives to choose from, they did actual cash. Where they straight up gave them cash in some cases. And then there were a number of state programs that they are going to be provided to help out like job, what is it, the Georgia? It’s called the work ready? But anyway, Georgia, as long as there’s a work ready state, we have a program. I can’t remember the name of it. It’s for the state. And there’s a state agency specifically to work with some of the universities, as the case may be, or some of the technical colleges to specifically tailor a skill set, that’s being trained there to come in and fill positions. So the state committed to that. The state is involved in relocation services to help the existing ones do that. So there’s a number of those kinds of things that they did. And so between all of us, we came up with a package that we thought was pretty competitive. But we don’t know what North Carolina threw out. We never will know North Carolina threw out because Deloitte was handling and everybody signed nondisclosure agreements. What we do know though is this; they both were pretty competitive. One was not significantly more than the other. And so we believe that maybe it did come down to the intangibles. Both locations, Intuitive had an existing relationship and existing operation. A small one, albeit, but an existing one. The one thing we may have said that may have ultimately separated us from North Carolina was this. And this is a point that I was able to make when we had our full day presentation with city county state presenting to their leadership as to why Peachtree Corners should be the location. And that was about speed of permitting. Very important to them as to how fast we can move. Because again, they’re like, we are in a massive growth mode. We need to get this east coast operation up and running fast. We need to grow while we have the market share that we do. And so they asked us, really me, because the city is the local issuing authority. What can you do to ensure or assure us that you will be able to move as fast as we would like? And what I was able to say is, look, I can tell you how fast we will move. In any other location you’re looking at we’ll have to tell you how fast they will move. But I’m in a unique position where I can have one of your own people, and they have a project manager that was hired specifically to oversee this expansion, wherever it was. But he had been working with us on the current expansion, the temporary assembly that they’re setting up. So I said, look, what I can tell you is best told by your project manager. And that is not how fast I would move if you expand here is how fast the city has been moving to date on your current one. And then he said, I have to say that Brian’s right. They have met or exceeded every assurance they gave us on speed. We have never been waiting on them. They have moved beyond our expectations. Who knows? We’ll never know, but maybe that was enough for them. All things being equal, at least the city has proven that they can move fast. Maybe the North Carolina municipality would have too. But it doesn’t really matter because the governor just announced that they chose Peachtree Corners. And so we are excited to be able to be part of this. We’ve worked hard. My staff has worked hard over the last six months to get us to this position. Mayor and council have been very supportive of what we needed to do and provide when it comes to incentives. And also really just even in the processes of permitting and inspections. Part of this is they’ve been here for a number of years and we have never in any case even before we knew they were wanting to expand, never given them any reason to not like the community that they’re in. And they are excited about what we offer to their  employees that are going to be here. What we have, as it relates to housing and schools and quality of life amenities. And so they’re very proud to be here. And you know, this is one of the largest medical, economic development projects in the state of Georgia in a long time. And one of the largest in general. Just the average salary is the one that is a caker. These are high paying jobs, the average.

Rico: [00:25:35] There’s certainly a lot of medical and biomedical companies that are actually, people would be surprised I think, the amount of companies that are in Peachtree Corners. But also companies that are coming in or expanding here in the health industry. We’re not just, high technology, right? It’s bio diversity, if you will, in the business.

Brian: [00:25:55] One other important point to make along those lines, Rico is this: When their chief finance officer, when we had our full day presentation to them and he was there onsite, we had a lot of virtual attendees, but onsite he was a senior guy. He presented to the Georgia delegation about 45 minutes about the company before we started. And their culture and all this kind of stuff. And I was taking notes and it was interesting how he was bringing up stuff that we were very uniquely positioned to support and enhance. Without him ever knowing it until it was conveyed to him during or after our meeting. For instance, they want to make all their new buildings, net zero. To have a net zero carbon footprint. Well, who do you think is the agency association who certifies buildings as net zero?

Rico: [00:26:58] Isn’t that amazing?

Brian: [00:26:59] ASHRAE.

Rico: [00:27:00] Right, ASHRAE.

Brian: [00:27:00] That came here because of Curiosity Lab. Other things they were talking about, their research and development. They have a lot of research and development on new devices. And even some of the current stuff that they make have components and chip sets made by companies that are partners of Curiosity Lab. Bosch, Qualcomm, Cisco, things like that. That you’ve now got an immediate. Third point, very interested in international expansion. They really haven’t cracked. My calendar’s being monopolized right now by trade representatives, console generals, and others from different countries looking at Curiosity Lab as a pipeline, a conduit, a landing pad for companies that are coming here. Including we’ve talked before, we were identified by the French government of one of six locations in the US for them to be pushing technology companies from France as part of a program called La French Tech that they created. Curiosity Lab, Peachtree Corners, and Metro Atlanta, but we’re on the same list as New York City, Silicon Valley, Austin, Texas. These places, and then we get one of them and then as a result, the French American can chamber moved their offices out of the French consulate and they are moving it into the Curiosity Lab, the innovation center. So all these international connections we have because of Curiosity Lab. Well guess what? Intuitive is going to have a front row seat. They’re a quarter of a mile down the road from the Northern entrance of the track. Which is on Spalding also. As I was writing notes, I was like, I couldn’t have written this better. So I was able to tell him, hey, here are some things. And some of their other representatives, here’s some things that are not going to come out in your average pitch that you don’t realize exists here, just because of Curiosity Lab. So again, we’ll never know what pushed them over the edge, but those are all unique things that Curiosity Lab has done for generating activity. And this could be an example where we’re getting one of the largest medical expansion projects in Georgia. Maybe that’s what pushed them over the edge.

Rico: [00:29:26] And that’s why Governor Kemp will be doing that announcement or has done that announcement. And when a city gets that type of expansion, it becomes news. And also other companies start looking at that as well. Because then now that city, like Peachtree Corners is put on the map even further out there. All these things that are happening in the city or through the city because of Curiosity Lab, because of other things that the city has initiated, really is bringing job and economic impact to the city. Some prosperity because of that and things take time. I remember when Curiosity Lab started up, Prototype Prime, when that all started going and people were like, why are we doing this? And what’s going to come out of this? And it’s like, you know what? If Isabella didn’t fund Columbus to come to the new world, that would never have happened, right? You have to start somewhere. You take a step and you move. And you guys even realized and learned a few things. So you evolved and changed. And Curiosity Lab came out of that. So I’m impressed that the city still continues to be able to do what they’re doing. And we’re a small city with 44,000 people. We’re not a big city here.

Brian: [00:30:35] We are certainly punching outside of our weight class. There’s no doubt about it and we can’t do it without a lot of our private partners. But Rico, you have had a front row seat from the start. You have definitely seen it go from just an incubator, just early stage startups in the bottom floor of the old city hall.

Rico: [00:30:57] That’s right.

Brian: [00:30:58] Rented, leased space, to we own that building. And we have created a living laboratory for various things. And I know I beat the drum of Curiosity Lab merely because this magnet for activity that we created has a name. Other people have named things too at different times with different things. But I bring it up just so that the residents here are kept updated on the benefits that we derive from having a reason for certain companies to come and kick the tires here. And again, even if a group is just here for one day, they’re going to probably get hungry at lunch and they’re going to probably eat in our restaurants because they’re close. That sales tax that comes back to us through SPLOST. Hotel stays generate hotel-motel tax. And then you get a company like Intuitive. Now we’re talking about 1200 plus people who are going to be working here. And again, I would like to think that all of them are going to at least start looking as close to the building they’re going to work out of as they possibly can. This community sells itself. Curiosity Lab is an excuse to get people here, but once they’re here, you fall in love with it. And you’re like, you know what? Wow. So that’s what Curiosity Lab does is it’s almost like a resume to a degree. It’s what got people interested in the area in Peachtree Corners. And then it’s the interview when people come here and they see the community and everything, that is what sells it. So yeah, we’re pretty pleased so far.

Rico: [00:32:39] I think I’m a cheerleader, if you will, of what the city has done. Now some people might look at that and say, oh, you just believe everything the city does. And you know what the fact of the matter is, I like what the city has done. And I might have a debate about that bridge, the pedestrian bridge and the size, whatever. I did disagree on certain things.

Brian: [00:32:59] Rico you have not always agreed with everything that we have done, that’s for sure.

Rico: [00:33:04] No I have not. Rezonings, there’s been rezonings that I totally disagree on or conditions on zonings that I would argue for. That I’ve argued even with you privately on. That there should be certain conditions in certain rezonings because of the nature of the beast. But as much as I’m a cheerleader of what the city does, it is because I believe that what the city does is doing phenomenal work. And some people may say it’s getting too dense. There’s too many people now. Housing is expensive that is the nature of the beast. When a city becomes popular and people want to be there, it does happen. Now we have to look at that. We’ve discussed that about affordable housing because not everyone can afford a half a million dollar home, a $400,000 home, or even a $350,000 home, if you can find it in Peachtree Corners. And the schools are great. Everything’s working well that way. More things that are going to probably be coming. I mean, Wesleyan’s expanding, Cornerstone’s expanding campuses. There are more kids in Norcross and Pinckneyville. My kids came through this, through the whole system, through the IB program. We were talking about how kids can’t write any more just before the show. And how in this city, because of the programs we have here, my kids can write. They tell me now my daughter, who’s doing a master’s program. She’s in a group study within this program. She’s the only one that knows how to write it seems. And the other ones don’t and they’re in a master’s program. And I swear it’s because of the IB program here. So we have education, we have economy.  We are beginning to see more entertainment. Yes, COVID has stifled it a bit, but we’re hopefully coming out of that. Hopefully the variant is not going to curtail some of that. But it is what it is. And I think the city has even reacted well to some of these things. There’s just a lot of stuff going on and we just have to be aware that patience sometimes is needed on some things. We may be back to masks at some point. But that’s okay. We have to go where we have to go. We’re slowly running out of time though. So I do want to hit quickly on something else that I want to talk about. And that is Olli 2.0. Along with Navea, which is a French company, I believe. Two of three companies in the world that have these types of vehicles running in live environments. Where we’re going to see for autonomous vehicles back on the track it seems. Doing work, researching. Can you give us, quickly about what’s going on there?  And I understand there’s a lot of attention being done, even at the secretary level, cabinet level of the federal government, there would be a visitor or two coming soon. So tell us a little bit about what’s going on with Curiosity Lab.

Brian: [00:35:34] Yes. So again, curiosity lab continues to outperform our expectations. We were approached with a proposal by a consortium of companies led by an autonomous vehicle operator company that operates autonomous vehicles as shuttles in different places like Yellowstone National Park, Lake Nona down in Florida, places like that. And the proposal was to use Curiosity Lab for a test. At least the first of its kind in the US if not the world is to take two different autonomous vehicle manufacturers. In this case, local motors that makes the Olli shuttle and the Naveah, a French company. And to have them operate on the test track at the same time. First time that’s been done. And then use our connected vehicle infrastructure, the city street of the future. You can talk to everything out there and test and enhance their ability to talk to each other across multiple manufacturers. To talk to cars that possess in the car, the DSRC unit, so that they can talk. And to do so over a 5g wireless environment as well. So we have a number of partners in this. The two manufacturers of it are certainly a part of it Beep the autonomous vehicle shuttle operator, T-Mobile is a big partner. And then we have a couple other companies that haven’t quite signed. So I don’t want to say it, but some other big name companies that are potentially in talks of doing something to wrap a shuttle, meaning you’ll know that they’re part of this. If there’s a bunch of branding on the outside of this. And for a year, we will have four autonomous shuttles operating on the track. And while they are doing testing on connected vehicles, they still are fully operating autonomous shuttles. So the public could get on them at any time as well. A lot of people before who would ride them sometimes for functional reasons, the Marriott, certainly, and the two other hotels on there certainly had people use it to get from there to Anderby Brewing and back. But the shuttles are again, going to be learning things to make them better. Olli is the name people remember. We had two Olli shuttles the first time they were here and those shuttles taught Local Motors, the manufacturer, some lessons. And they went back and created Olli 2.0 and that’s what’s here. And some of the lessons that we’ve talked about. We have a 13% grade hill here. And when the shuttles were hitting the hill, the LIDAR on the first one, thought it was something in the way because the hill was so steep. So it would jerk until it cleared. And they didn’t realize they had to recalibrate that to take into account steep hills. And they were here in the fall and leaves were covering some of the lines in the roads. And they were having a hard time with that and they did some things to help with that. And so that’s how this technology gets enhanced. It gets the kinks get worked out. And it has certainly got the attention of people at the federal level. Including there is a good chance that one of the members of the presidential cabinet will be here soon to take a look at what we’ve got going on because word has gotten out what Curiosity Lab is. And again, that kind of visibility doesn’t hurt when we’re talking to somebody who may be coming here permanently. You know, say Hey, we’ve had these people here or these companies are our partners and we got this type of testing going on. And while that may be some temporary activity, oftentimes like with Intuitive, it turns into permanent.

Rico: [00:39:42] Yeah, it doesn’t hurt having attention from the federal government in that way. I think people will notice that. Yes. But all that news generating does help. It does help with putting the city in the spotlight. That along with the V2X Live, that’s going to be the conference that’s going to be happening in October, I think. All great stuff. And this certainly overshadows tree removal, but just to end the show, let’s also talk just quickly about the the tree removal that’s happening because this way people know about  what’s happening with that.

Brian: [00:40:17] You know, we like to talk about all this kind of fun stuff and sexy stuff, if you will. Sometimes the activities and operations of a city are more mundane, but not necessarily any less important. But there is certainly right now, some people in the city have already been affected and will still be affected by Georgia power is conducting an enhanced vegetation management operation here. Enhanced meaning it is more aggressive, if you will, of pruning trees back then they typically are. The reason of this was due to some concerns raised by people in the community about power loss in the area. And it being lost more than it should. And so, there was a series of events and meetings and whatever that took place. Some involving public service commissioners and so on and so forth. And Georgia power ultimately said, okay, we’re going to come in and we’re going to be much more aggressive than we normally are. The fine line Georgia power has to walk is this line between, it’s almost akin to a, not in my backyard type of thing. Where everybody is in favor of trees being pruned back as far as possible from power lines, unless it happens to be the trees in their yard. And that’s not to say that they’re wrong. That’s just to say that it does change sometimes how certain areas of the city look after Georgia power comes through. And a lot of it is Georgia power is not, most of the trees, I don’t know of any trees so far that are growing right underneath a power line, those have generally been removed. It’s usually trees that are outside of a power line, but their limbs are such that if the limb fell, it would hit the power line. So what happens is when they remove the limb or limbs, sometimes there’s so many of them and you have to remove it at the lateral, at the trunk. You can’t just cut a little bit. That the arborists are coming in and saying, look, you removed so much of those limbs, that the tree is going to die. And so then Georgia power makes a call. We need to remove the whole tree because if not the tree is either going to fall on our power lines or we were involved in creating what would ultimately be a hazard, if it fell the other way on a house or whatever. And so, there are certainly some instances where it is significant. There’s some places where there’s a lot of either limbs, which affects shade, and some trees. And I want those who are affected to understand why Georgia power was put in this position and for them to try to be as understanding as possible. But by all means, if they have concerns or they want more information, Georgia power does have some senior people and an arborist on staff, a staffed arborist overseeing this, and he is available to meet with anybody at any time on site and talk tree by tree as to why Georgia power made that. I know this because I’ve been at some of these with him and talking about why they’re doing it. And in a few cases, there have been some adjustments they’ve made based on the residents comments. But, I just wanted people to know that this was not a city operation. This is a Georgia power one doing just in a more aggressive way, trying to trim back risks to their power lines to try to decrease the amount of power outages due to some sort of tree or limb falling on their power lines 

Rico: [00:44:15] Are they tagging trees before they cut them? Are they marking them? How can a resident respond back? How is the communication set up? How can they respond?

Brian: [00:44:24] A number of ways. So first the city is putting out information weekly from Georgia power, where we’re conveying to people where the next week’s operations will be. Any time, if you can get on push notifications from the city, we don’t do it a lot so you don’t get inundated with a lot of crap you don’t care about. But get the city app. It’ll push you information, sign up for communication from the city, but that’s one way. Georgia power is also knocking on every door of houses that they’re doing and putting door hangers on properties that they’re going to do something. They do not want to be in a position where the first time somebody sees is when the tree is being cut or is already cut down. And we have had one or two instances where that’s happened. In one of them I know where the people were like, you didn’t try to contact me, I would have known and they’re like we left a voicemail. We knocked on your door twice. And then we did a door hanger and they’re like, no, you didn’t. And then they were literally standing in the front yard and they’re like, it’s still hanging on your front door. They’re like, oh, I never go out my front door. And that’s why. And I get it, but I’m just saying, don’t do things like that at least for a time period. But it’s in very targeted areas of the city. This is not citywide. This is based on basically LIDAR mapping that Georgia power did by putting up a laser radar underneath the power line, up into the tree canopy. And it came back and showed them where the risk of tree foliage falling on that was at a certain point. And that is what’s driving them. They’re not doing this indiscriminately.

Rico: [00:46:11] And certainly that helps because there are tree limbs that I see, when we’ve had power loss or I’ve seen through the city after a storm, you would see tree limbs falling. That doesn’t take into account necessarily tree that may be 20 feet off that will fall. We, I think it was last year with Pinckneyville Middle School where a tree essentially fell on the lines and yanked the cable essentially off the, I think it was off the transformer. And that was down for two days, three days, two and a half days, something like that. It was down for a decent amount of time because they needed someone out there to safely do the things they need to do before they removed the tree even.

Brian: [00:46:48] Well Rico, it was just in middle of June. We had a tree that was in somebody’s backyard. I’m talking about probably 40 feet, 50 feet, off the right of way. Not just in the pavement, but way into somebody’s yard. And the whole tree fell at the roots. Probably got wet, the time the whole tree fell and went over a line there on East Jones bridge. And a lot of people back in the River Field, Wentworth areas back there randomly lost power. And everybody, including myself, but everybody was like, whoa, here we go again. There was nothing that anybody could have done to prevent it because it was way into somebody’s yard and the whole tree just tipped over and fell. And that is always going to be a risk. But yeah, Georgia power is in the position.

Rico: [00:47:41] At least they’re minimizing what may happen. But you’re right. PIne trees that are 50 feet tall, 60 feet tall when it rains as much as it does because they’re short roots, they may fall, and that’s just going to happen unfortunately. Now listen if an arborist went out to check those trees, they probably might say, you know, that tree may come down at some point. But even then, I don’t even know if they would be able to say that right?

Brian: [00:48:05] No, it’s an inexact to try to estimate if a tree’s going, unless you have real evidence. So yeah.

Rico: [00:48:14] We’ve covered a lot. We’ve taken longer than I expected on this podcast, but we’ve covered a lot of really great stuff. And especially two major items and certainly the first major item with Intuitive. Because that’s just a really big deal for the city having that. So I’m excited to continue to see things going on like that. Businesses are opening up. New businesses are starting. More new businesses then I thought in different parts of the city are opening up. And just to point out Stage restaurant just opened in the old Noble Finn.

Brian: [00:48:45] Stäge Rico. Come on now.

Rico: [00:48:49] They should spell it differently or put a little…

Brian: [00:48:53] They put the two little dots over the ‘A’.

Rico: [00:48:54] Does it? I kept thinking stage. Stäge, okay. No wonder. HWA is opening up soon. They just got their license, liquor license approved. So hopefully there’ll be opening up soon. So a lot of things happening in the city. Brian, I appreciate your time as always.

Brian: [00:49:14] Thanks for having me.

Rico: [00:49:16] And thank you all for listening and taking the time to tune in. Thank you.

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

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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

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Business

Why Patient Experience Matters: A Conversation with Dr. Aristo Shyn

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On this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, host Rico Figliolini sits down with Dr. Aristo Shyn, owner of Link Dental Care, to discuss his journey from corporate dentistry to running a thriving private practice. Dr. Shyn shares insights on the challenges of entrepreneurship, how he built a patient-centric practice, and how technology is transforming modern dentistry.

They also dive into Link Dental Care’s community involvement, the role of social media in business growth, and the importance of creating an exceptional patient experience. Whether you’re interested in dentistry, business ownership, or local community impact, this conversation offers valuable takeaways.

Key Takeaways & Highlights:

  • From Corporate to Private Practice – Why Dr. Shyn left corporate dentistry to build his own patient-focused practice.
  • The Power of Technology in Dentistry – How 3D imaging, digital scans, and upcoming Botox treatments improve patient care.
  • Growing a Business – The challenges of launching and expanding a dental office without prior business experience.
  • Community Involvement – Supporting local schools, charities, and offering free dental makeovers.
  • Navigating Insurance & Patient Care – Why transparency in billing is crucial in healthcare.
  • The Role of Social Media – How Link Dental Care’s Instagram skits helped grow their brand and even go viral.
  • Balancing Work & Family – Juggling a growing business while raising two kids.
  • Future Plans – Potential expansion, but always staying patient-centered under one roof.

Listen in to learn how Dr. Shyn built a thriving dental practice while prioritizing technology, patient experience, and community engagement!

Transcript:

00:00:32 – Rico Figliolini

Hey, everyone. This is Rico of Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in the city of Peachtree Corners, Gwinnett County, just north of Atlanta. We have a great guest here today, Dr. Aristo Shyn, who owns Link Dental Care. Thank you for allowing us to do the podcast with you today.

00:00:48 – Aristo Shyn

Thank you for having us. I’ve been calling you our very own Joe Rogan for years now, so it’s an honor.

00:00:54 – Rico Figliolini

I’ve done over 250 episodes. I feel like I could be Joe Rogan. I get the head for it. Before we get into the show, though, let me say thanks to our sponsors. We have two. EV Remodeling, Inc., and Eli, who owns it, that lives here in Peachtree Corners. Great family. They do great work. They do design to build, whole house renovation, or your bathroom, your kitchen, or an addition to the house, whatever you need. They’ve done over 260 homes throughout the metro area. I think you should check them out. EVRemodelingInc.com is where you can find that. Vox Pop Uli, our second sponsor, is also here in Peachtree Corners, also family owned. So they take your brand and they bring it to life. So think about it. You have a brand, you have a car, vehicle. They do, I think this past year, they did over 1,600 vehicle wraps alone. You go to trade shows, they’ll put up a whole setup for you. You need shirts, they’ll do that for you. You need just one or you need 1,000, they’ll do all that for you. If you have a logo and you want to imprint it on an object, bring it to them. Challenge them. It’s amazing what they’ve done. So check them out. Vox Pop Uli is the company, and we appreciate the sponsorship of these podcasts, the magazines, and our journalism. Now that we’ve done the sponsors, I appreciate the conversation we’re going to have today. Aristo’s been, Dr. Shyn has been our family dentist for quite a while for all my kids and my wife and myself. So seeing you guys grow from a very small office that was probably big enough for you when you started.

00:03:06 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah, you’ve been with us since the beginning. Yeah, very humble beginnings.

00:03:09 – Rico Figliolini

So just moving from that, I saw you know you guys were getting more and more patients. The place was getting filled and now you’re in a larger location, a very beautiful place here right on Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Holcomb Bridge Road here. So tell us a little bit about your origins, where you started.

00:03:28 – Aristo Shyn

How far back do you want me to go?

00:03:30 – Rico Figliolini

Where were you born?

00:03:33 – Aristo Shyn

So I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, next to UMKC, which is where my dad went to dental school. And then moved to Alaska afterwards. Stayed in Alaska from ages 2 to 14. And then I moved to Florida, pursued a golf career, and then naturally transitioned to dentistry after that.

00:03:57 – Rico Figliolini

Naturally.

00:03:58 – Aristo Shyn

Yes. And then I’ve been in Georgia since 2012.

00:04:01 – Rico Figliolini

That’s amazing. You went from Missouri, where I’ve never been. I’m a Brooklyn kid. Kid. No longer a kid, but from Brooklyn. So I don’t know that place. Alaska, which is, for me, you know, grizzly bears is what I think of. So you went, right? From grizzly bears, snowstorms, to Florida, alligators, rocks, and hurricanes. And now Atlanta, of which you find almost none of that, actually.

00:04:25 – Aristo Shyn

It’s nice.

00:04:27 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, it must be different, right? But you went to start with a golf career. When did that even take hold?

00:04:40 – Aristo Shyn

In Alaska, of all places. Yeah, I was pretty good at it. Again, we moved to Florida to pursue that, but I think dentistry was my true calling, and I think I made the right choice.

00:04:55 – Rico Figliolini

Well, and you were kind of young too, I think, when you got your dental degree?

00:05:00 – Aristo Shyn

Yes. I try not to talk about that too much, but I was 23 when I graduated.

00:05:07 – Rico Figliolini

I saw that. I was like, that’s amazing. And so you’ve been practicing since then, obviously.

00:05:10 – Aristo Shyn

Mm-hmm.

00:05:13 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. So you’re in Atlanta. You moved here in 2012. You decided to start your business in less than a year of moving here.

00:05:23 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah, I think my first job in Atlanta was a corporate job. It wasn’t for me, to say the least. I think I lasted about seven months before saying, I got to do this. I got to do something else. I got to do this on my own. And that’s how I came to Peachtree Corners.

00:05:45 – Rico Figliolini

So just to be clear for people to know, it’s corporate dentistry is what you were working at. So corporate environment with multiple offices and stuff is a whole different business model, I think. Isn’t it?

00:06:02 – Aristo Shyn

Yes, to say the least.

00:06:08 – Rico Figliolini

Yes. You might not want to say it, but I’ll say it. Corporate dentistry is not that great. When you don’t have an owner that owns the business and doing the work that’s passionate about his patients and his community, it’s way different than dealing with someone that’s billing out of Texas let’s say or they have multiple 20, 30, or 90 offices throughout the country. And they sound like they’re local because they sort of keep the name of the place so they sound local but they’re really not. And so they’re driven by money because they have a big nut to pay.

00:06:36 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah, you’re just trying to get me into trouble right now.

00:06:39 – No, no, I’m saying it so it’s okay.

00:06:42 – Aristo Shyn

Listen, I would, in general, and this is from my own experience and what my colleagues have experienced as well, it’s just a lot of, and I think there are good dentists there, but unfortunately they don’t have the autonomy or the control over the whole operation. So I would say a lot of corporate offices, a lot of chain offices, are profit and production driven versus being patient-centric.

00:07:02 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, I can’t argue with that.

00:07:05 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah, I mean, for example, and this you’ll find often in the industry, when you have your morning huddles, a lot of times at those offices, you’re looking at the schedule for that day. And if there’s not enough production on the schedule, you have to find crowns or implants somehow. And I’ll let our audience use their own imagination for that one. But when we have our meetings, we don’t really talk about that. And we talk about how to streamline logistics and how to improve the patient experience. And these days, fortunately or unfortunately, we’ve been doing some Instagram skits. I’ve been putting my staff through a whole other level of stress.

00:07:58 – Rico Figliolini

You all have to visit the Instagram channel that he has. He comes up with all the skits himself. Some of them are really cool. They’re all pretty good. I mean, some of them are hilarious.

00:08:09 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah, we really, you would expect, you know, before and after photos or us selling something. But I think we’re just trying to have fun there. I really don’t know what we’re selling, but it’s fun. I think it still gives us exposure in a different way. We have a live follower counter there. We’re trying to get that up right now. So follow us, please.

00:08:27 – Rico Figliolini

What is the Instagram? It’s Link Dental Care.

00:08:30 – Aristo Shyn

It’s @LinkDentalCare.

00:08:32 – There you go. So follow them. They want to hit 1,000, like, you know, soon. But no, I think that’s a great team building to be able to do that. There’s a lot of pressure sometimes in doing work and such, and every day is different. I think we would talk before a little bit about how you, you know, you go from one patient speaking English, let’s say, to another patient and speaking Spanish or maybe Korean. So multiple languages here in the office, and multiple challenges, dental challenges, right?

00:09:06 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah. I mean, due to the range of services that we offer from fillings, crowns, to root canals, implant surgeries, sinus surgeries, we get quite the variety of cases here. And then there are days where in one room I’m speaking obviously English, and then next room, I’m speaking Spanish. The other room, I’m speaking Korean. And I think we did a count earlier. We speak a total of nine different languages in this office.

00:09:38 – Rico Figliolini

It’s amazing that you speak three languages, at least.

00:09:43 – Aristo Shyn

Two and a half. We’ll call it three.

00:09:43 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. You get by on it. That’s good. So busy, busy work. Technology, though, drives a lot of dental practices now, too. So tell us a little bit about some of the technological improvements you’ve made here. Some of the technology you’ve brought in.

00:10:01 – Aristo Shyn

Well, everything’s new here. So it’s all digital. All new x-ray units, we have our 3D cone beam imaging machine, we have a 3D scanner, we’re doing really cool stuff with digital photography not just for before and after cases but also to communicate with our lab. We’re doing botox and dermal fillers soon. Busy.

00:10:29 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, that’s amazing. Botox. How does that work in dental?

00:10:34 – Aristo Shyn

I think it’s been requested quite a bit. We haven’t started it yet. We will very soon. It’s not just for, I don’t think it’s just for cosmetics, but it can do a lot with TMJ and related issues.

00:10:51 – Rico Figliolini

Now, when you started on Peachtree Park, it was just you. I think your mom was helping at the front desk.

00:10:55 – Aristo Shyn

No, she wasn’t there at the time.

00:10:57 – Rico Figliolini

She wasn’t there. She came later, maybe.

00:11:01 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah. It was, I think it was a thousand square feet. I don’t think anything was digital at the time. And I had, it was me, one and a half hygienists, one assistant, and one person in the front. Yeah, I still remember I could actually stand in the middle of the office, and if I did a 360, I could see everything. The front office, the four chairs, the lab.

00:11:23 – Rico Figliolini

Yes, I was just thinking the same thing. That’s how small this place was. How many square feet is this place?

00:11:33 – Aristo Shyn

I think it’s just over 3,000.

00:11:38 – Rico Figliolini

And you took on a new, also an additional practitioner with you as well?

00:11:41 – Aristo Shyn

Oh, yeah. New staff, front offices, expanded assistants, hygienists. Another doctor. I mean, she’s been terrific.

00:11:42 – Rico Figliolini

Dr. K?.

00:11:51 – Aristo Shyn

Yep. Dr. K.

00:11:52 – Rico Figliolini

So business has been going well. So that’s good, no?

00:11:54 – Aristo Shyn

It’s been busy. It’s been busy.

00:12:00 – Rico Figliolini

Can’t complain. And there are challenges, right? So let’s go back a little bit. Challenges of opening a business. What would you say to an entrepreneur, to another dentist that wanted to do the same thing? What challenges did you have to overcome when you did that?

00:12:16 – Aristo Shyn

When we first started everything I mean, I was still learning. I had no business experience, I had no HR experience. I mean, I was still learning dentistry at the time so you know the normal course for I’d say acquiring a dental office is, you know you’re usually out in the field for a few years and then you kind of pick up on things and you know slowly transition. But everything happened at once for me so I don’t recommend you do that because it’s quite the learning curve. But going back to everyday challenges, though, I would say half of my stress is just due to my staff, which I love very much, who I love very much. I think we have the best staff ever right now, but you’ve got to deal with staff every single day. So there’s always something. And then beyond that, it’s insurance. Insurance is an issue for, I think, everyone involved in the insurance game. And then after that, it’s just dealing with a wide range of patients and cases that we have coming in, which is also fun for me. But there’s also some focus and stress, and we’re always on our toes. So there’s that aspect to it.

00:13:35 – Rico Figliolini

I think part of that stress probably is because you’re, of your concern for your patients and stuff. I mean you’re sharing that stress with them right? Because some of them, because like you said insurance can be an issue. You know they come in they have to do certain things insurance may or may not cover it or you know, yeah. I mean so, has that changed in the state of Georgia a lot over the past decade?

00:14:01 – Aristo Shyn

I don’t know, insurance is kind of like a foreign language to me. We try our very best to be transparent with everything, I mean not just in my communication with our patients but also you know with our front desk communicating you know regarding finances and numbers. But you know, we try our best, that’s all I can say.

00:14:19 – Rico Figliolini

No that’s good. That you know, I mean that’s the toughest part I think when it comes to medical.

00:14:23 – Aristo Shyn

And our front desk goes to bat for patients if there’s any issues with insurance we don’t just give up and you know tell them that it’s on them so yeah. I know my front desk works very hard.

00:14:36 – Rico Figliolini

Okay cool. You know, the care that you show into the community as well, right? You’re involved with the community. So let’s cover that a little bit as well. What do you like doing in the community? What have you done? Where has Link Dental Care been involved in when it comes to community organizations, events and stuff?

00:14:55 – Aristo Shyn

Well, it’s very different now than when I first started. And I’m very happy and proud of where we are today. For example, I mean, even last year we were able to sponsor the Norcross High School Marching Band, local photography club. I’ve worked closely with Norcross Co-op for quite some years. And it’s, you know, when we interview for dental school, you know, one thing that we’re always saying is we want to be part of the community. We want to be involved in the community. And, you know, that wasn’t the case when we first started. Now that we’re here. Yeah, I plan on staying here and being more involved as time goes on.

00:15:37 – Rico Figliolini

That’s cool. You know, I mean, the biggest thing that we do at the magazine and stuff is that we like to be a cheerleader for businesses that are giving back to the community, doing things with the community, especially if you’re pulling from this community. You know, your patients, your customers, and all that. So being involved makes sense.

00:15:57 – Aristo Shyn

Yeah. And I think we’ve done quite a bit of charity over the years. We don’t advertise it or we don’t really post a whole lot of it on social media. But outside of working at volunteer clinics, we try to take on at least one patient a year and give them a makeover, which they wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise. That’s something I’ve been doing.

00:16:21 – Rico Figliolini

That’s cool. That’s great that you’re able to do that. When the business gets to a certain point, and you’re facing these everyday challenges, right? At the end of the day, what do you do to release that stress, that pressure? I mean, what do you do outside of the office? You’re not playing golf anymore. 

00:16:53 – Aristo Shyn

No, it takes too much time.

00:16:54 – Rico Figliolini

Do you get out of the office? What time do you close up?

00:16:57 – Aristo Shyn

Well, it’s a good thing I still like what I’m doing. But yeah, life’s gotten busy. So the way I see it, I mean, I do have a few hobbies, but really it’s been work and my kids right now. So when I’m working, the way I see it, it’s overtime in a football, basketball scene. And then when I’m with my kids, it’s game seven, triple overtime. So that’s where all my focus has been after work.

00:17:28 – Rico Figliolini

Sure, sure. You have two kids, I think? Two kids. Good-looking kids. So, you know, you’re expanding. You’ve done your expansion. But there’s a future, right? I know you want to stay here. You want to expand. What does the future look like for Link Dental Care? For you? 

00:17:44 – Aristo Shyn

We just moved in here. We’re talking about expansion again.

00:17:47 – Rico Figliolini

Are you really? You just moved in here. How long has it been? It’s been a few years. Can’t you stop?

00:17:58 – Aristo Shyn

I mean, a few. I mean, patients and staff have asked me in the past, what do I plan to do? Do I plan on opening multiple offices or another location? And to answer one part of that question, I think when a dentist branches out to two, three, four offices, there comes a point where you’ve got to stop being a dentist and become more of a businessman. And I still like what I’m doing a lot. And I really want to keep our practice patient-centric and really emphasize that we are a people business, not a tooth-cutting business or a production business. But, you know, I definitely plan on staying in Peachtree Corners. We’re not leaving. I mean, if there ever is another expansion, you can rest assured it’ll still be under one roof. That’s been always important to me. And I mean, going forward though, I think we’re just, we’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing. We’re going to continue to stay up with technology, continue to reinvest in the office and the community.

00:19:19 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. This is a great place. People want to take the tour. I mean, 3,000 square feet is a lot of space. I think you have plenty of space to expand in. What should people know about you maybe that they don’t know? Is there anything interesting that you want to share?

00:19:41 – Aristo Shyn

I can share what our dental practice focuses on. I think a lot of times patients and dentists alike, they emphasize, they put their emphasis a lot on good dental care. And that is absolutely important. But, you know, to us, you know, good dental care alone doesn’t really, it doesn’t always equate to a good patient experience. And I care a lot about the patient experience. So that means the patient experience starts from the first time you call into our office, from the time you walk through our doors the first time. From the way you’re greeted from the front office, from the way, you know, our assistants or hygienists take you back to the clinical area. So, you know, bedside manners and having clear communication. So, you know, when you’ve put in all those factors, you know, the receiving good dental care, although quite important, it’s not the only piece to the puzzle. So that’s been my focus. 

00:20:48 – Rico Figliolini

Cool. Patient-centric, essentially. Well, we’ve been speaking to Dr. Aristo Shyn. It’s a great practice, you guys have. I’m glad that he’s my dentist also, my family dentist. He has been doing a great job. So I appreciate you giving us some time and telling us a bit about your business.

00:21:06 – Aristo Shyn

Thank you.

00:21:07 – Rico Figliolini

Thank you. Everyone, if you have any questions, you can actually check out the website, which is?

00:21:13 – Aristo Shyn

LinkDentalCare.com. There you go.

00:21:15 – Rico Figliolini

And Instagram, it’s the same handle, @LinkDentalCare, right? Anything else you want to share? Count is 455, so we need to get that up to 1,000 apparently.

00:21:25 – Aristo Shyn

It was 200 a few months ago. I’ll tell you one more thing about Instagram before we end this. Within a couple months of us actually trying on Instagram, we actually went viral on one video. We got 1.3 million views.

00:21:41 – Rico Figliolini

Damn, which video was that one? 

00:21:43 – Aristo Shyn

That was last year. It was the one about our 3D scanner. So I thought I figured it out and I was almost ready not to come into work the next day. And then here I am doing a podcast with Rico.

00:21:57 – Rico Figliolini

Sorry, it’s not a YouTube content or TikTok creator yet, but he’ll get there soon. Thanks everyone. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. Of course, we’ll have links in the show note and you can always find Dr. Aristo Shyn here at Link Dental Care. So thanks again, everyone. Take care.

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Business

Burn The Ships: Alex Wright on Committing to Success & Helping Businesses Thrive

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Discover how Alex Wright, a former U.S. Naval officer, founding member of the City of Peachtree corners, and corporate finance veteran, made the bold decision to “burn the ships” and launch his own fractional CFO firm. Burn the Ships Financial embodies Wright’s philosophy of unwavering dedication to success. Wright explains how fractional CFO services can help entrepreneurs navigate their financial journey, from basic accounting setup to high-level strategic guidance.

Resources:

Burn The Ships Website: https://burntheshipsfinancial.com/

Key Takeaways:

  • Burn the Ships Mentality – Why Alex embraced total commitment when leaving corporate America to start his own business.
  • Solving Business Challenges – How a fractional CFO helps entrepreneurs manage cash flow, optimize processes, and grow sustainably.
  • Financial Storytelling – The power of translating financial data into actionable insights for business owners.
  • City Leadership & Business Strategy – Lessons learned from helping launch Peachtree Corners as a smart city and how that applies to business growth.
  • The Role of Technology in Finance – How tools like QuickBooks and Power BI can improve financial planning—if used correctly.
  • Long-Term Business Planning – Why forecasting, budgeting, and understanding financial trends are crucial for sustained success.

Listen in as Alex Wright shares his journey from the military to corporate finance and now to empowering small businesses with Burn The Ships Financial!

Timestamp:

00:00:02 – Interview with Alex Wright

00:02:27 – From Naval Officer to City Leader, Alex’s Remarkable Journey

00:06:45 – Burning the Ships, Commitment to the Mission

00:10:39 – Solving Business Problems as a Fractional CFO

00:13:59 – Optimizing Business Efficiency Through Financial Analysis

00:18:14 – Guiding Entrepreneurs to Financial Clarity

00:21:30 – Providing Financial Guidance and Structuring for Growing Businesses

00:25:46 – Translating Financial Data into Actionable Insights

00:31:19 – Leveraging City Startup Experience for Business

00:37:43 – Helping Others Succeed From Military to Coaching to Entrepreneurship

00:42:14 – Expanding Startup with Passionate Partners

00:45:31 – Connecting with Burn The Ships Financial

Transcript:

00:00:34 – Rico Figliolini

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life. I have a great guest today, this morning, Alex Wright. Hey, Alex. Thanks for joining me.

00:00:43 – Alex Wright

Hey, Rico. It’s good to see you again. Thanks for the invite.

00:00:46 – Rico Figliolini

Sure. We’re going to have exciting things to talk about. But before we get into that, I just want to say thank you to our two sponsors, EV Remodeling Inc. and Eli and his family who live here in Peachtree Corners and the company is based here. Provide a sponsorship to us for supporting our podcast and our magazines. And EV Remodeling Inc. is a company that does design to build. You need a whole house remodeled or you just need your bath remodeled or your kitchen, they’re the people to do it. They’ve done over 260 large projects over the past few years. And you should check them out. Great supporter of ours. Great people. Nice guy. EVRemodelingInc.com is where you can find them. Our second sponsor, Vox Pop Uli, is also based here on Peachtree Corners. Family owned, they are a company, if you have a brand and you want to bring that brand to life, Vox Pop Uli is the people to do it. They do, think about the truck wraps, car wraps that you see traveling around, trade show booths, signage, anything you need imprinted on any object imprinting. They’re the people to do it. You need a backdrop for you, 20 feet by 10 feet tall, they can do it. Any of those things that will bring your brand to life is what they’re doing. Challenge them, and they’ll come back and surprise you. They’re right here in Peachtree Corners and Norcross. So check them out, Vox Pop Uli, and the link will be in the show notes. But if you search them, V-O-X, P-O-P, U-L-I, you’ll find them. Thanks again for your support. So now we have Alex. So let me introduce Alex a little bit. He has a great background. He served in U.S. Naval, as a U .S. Naval officer back during the 90s. He was the founding member of the City of Peachtree Corners City Council and has been a city councilman here in leadership here since 2012 when he was first elected. He was also the guy that originated the idea of Curiosity Lab that set our path on being a smart city and on so many foundational parts that the Curiosity Lab has been involved in including autonomous vehicle, 5G technology, and all that. So without him, I don’t know where we’d be when it comes to that. Georgia Institute of Technology grad, so much more. He’s also a board member of the Peachtree Corners Veterans Monument Association, if you’re familiar with that and the monument that we have at Town Center. So now that I’ve given a really good background, I think, of you, Alex, why don’t you tell us just a little bit more about what what you’ve been up to and where where we’re going?

00:03:33 – Alex Wright

Yes, that was a great introduction. I wish my wife could have heard how great you made me sound she would’ve found that entertaining. Yeah so I, after I got out of the navy, you know I went to the graduate school and then basically the next 25 years was at various companies in corporate finance. Some big ones, Glaxo Welcome, which I guess that was GlaxoSmithKline, Home Depot, Equifax. And then the last 11 years was at a big consumer products company in a divisional CFO role. That was here in Atlanta. And about three, I guess it’s probably November, I made a decision to transition out of corporate America and with some colleagues of mine that I used to work with, formed a fractional CFO company. Some people refer to it as business advisory firm. And it’s called Burn the Ships. That’s the name of the company. And so, yeah, we’re in the process of just getting engaged in the community, you know, looking for companies that could use our services.

00:04:56 – Rico Figliolini

So tell me, I understand the burn the ships part, but really what inspired you to name burn the ships financial?

00:05:04 – Alex Wright

So, you know, when I was making the decision to leave corporate America and, you know, that’s kind of all you know, it’s, you get comfortable with that and to make that, you know, giant career change you know it’s, it can be kind of scary. And I happened to be reading a book at you know during this time when I was trying to figure out and do I want to do this and the name of the book was called actually burn the boats. And the book is about it’s written, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he’s an entrepreneur serial entrepreneur and the gist of the book is not to have a plan b. And you can apply that concept to really anything, whether it be your marriage or training for an athletic event or starting a business, that something that’s going to be challenging and require your full effort in order to succeed, you can’t have that thought of, well, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll just go back to that. It has to be a total commitment. So that phrase is a metaphor for total commitment. You know, there’s a, not to go into much of the history, but, you know, the phrase comes from, not to go into a lot of history, but of Cortes when he was exploring the coast of Mexico. He had been tasked with that. And he gets there and discovers that, you know, there’s the Aztec Empire is there and decides, hey, I want to go into the bowels of Mexico and see what’s going on there. He just had a few hundred men with him. These guys that he had with them were apprehensive, obviously, because he wants to march into the jungle, the unknown. Plus, their orders were to just explore the coast. Well, his solution to that was, I’m going to eliminate the plan B. And the way he did that was he literally burned all the ships. There was now no way to go back. It was succeed or, in their case, die. So that phrase is about total commitment to the mission. And it really, at that time, it rang, just struck a chord with me as I was trying to make this decision because that’s a big change in a lot of different ways. And so I really just loved the story, that idea of total commitment. And so that’s the brief background or as brief as I could make it, where that phrase came from, because I just loved that story about the, you know, the commitment. Those other, not to go on a lot of my other, you know, kind of pursuits that I’ve got in my life, but, you know, different, whether it be especially like athletic things or projects, some of the things we’ve done with the city where it’s only going to succeed, you know, totally buy into, you know, what we’re trying to accomplish, the total commitment. So that’s the, that’s the name. And you know another, some of the advice I got was you need to make the name evocative so when someone hears that name, I think what does that mean? You know versus opposed to a right CFO services.

00:08:27 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, no I totally agree with that branding is key to to a lot of what we do and get people remembering. And I can appreciate what you’re saying too because having, I mean I have not worked in corporate environment except for a couple of years. And I’ve been on and off a business owner and then working for a company and stuff. So I’ve been on both sides of that so it’s a little different. But you’ve, your whole career has been with corporate large companies, so I can appreciate that jumping off the ship almost and not going back is really scary, I’m sure. So your experience has been as a divisional CFO at least for the past decade or so, I guess. How do you think that that’s going to, how does that shape the services that you’re offering through Burn the Ships Financial?

00:09:23 – Alex Wright

So in this role I had, when people say, I worked in corporate finance, that can mean a whole lot of different things because in larger companies, the finance department’s quite large. So the role I had, in this business, and this company had probably 15 businesses, and as a divisional CFO, you’d be embedded in the business. And what that means is you’re at the table with the decision makers actually helping run the business. From generating sales to making, say, manufacturing more efficient to how can we ship more efficiently to negotiating with vendors for better terms, you name it. You had exposure to that. So the relevance of that is you’ve seen, now granted, maybe it’s a bigger scale, bigger numbers, but the challenges of making a business successful, you’ve had exposure to a full P&L balance sheet, just like for a small company. And so that allows you, the reason that’s translatable is ultimately what, when companies hire someone. As a fractional CFO, really what they’re looking for is I’ve got a problem. I’ve got a pain point and I need someone to help alleviate that pain to make that, help take that problem away. So it’s really about problem solving. So running a business in the finance role is ultimately about solving problems as well. So I feel like the skill set is very translated because that’s what I did for 10 years, which was solve problems to make the, our business more financially successful.

00:11:13 – Rico Figliolini

In the practical way, can you give us an example, without sharing the company you worked with I guess or you know particularly, but is there an example that you can give of how that translates in an actual real life story?

00:11:30 – Alex Wright

Yes. So now you know at a larger company it’s especially when it’s publicly traded, you know, it’s all about how do we get our earnings per share up? You know, the company is normally pretty stable. And like, say, a smaller company, they might, in some cases, might be fighting for survival in some instances. So a little bit different scenario, but ultimately it’s about how do we make the company more profitable, whether it be small or big. And so an example of something we did at this larger company is, we were in a market where there wasn’t a lot of growth on the top because it was an industry that was actually kind of shrinking. So how do you grow profit if your top line is stagnant at best or maybe just growing through price increases, very low single digits? So one of the things that you could look at is, let’s look at our product, the actual composition of the product. So we are actually a manufacturer. Are there ways that we can make the product that we’re producing less costly, but hopefully in the process also make it more effective? And so in this instance, the product in this case was grass seed. You’re thinking, well, what can you possibly do to grass seed? But in today’s world, they actually take the grass seed and they put a biostimulant around it so that when the seed goes out, it has a much higher probability of germinating. So what you would look at is, what can we do with the stimulant to change the makeup of it, change the composition where it’s, maybe the germination is even higher, but we’ve substituted some type of material that costs less. So in those instances, you’re working with an R&D department, you’re marketing people. And so in this instance, we did that over a series of five years, switched all of our, you know, changed the composition of our products. And so the ultimate takeaway for that was we increased the margins for the business by about a thousand basis points. So what that means is let’s say your margin was 30%, now it’s 40%. So that’s, and that drops straight to the bottom line through that. Something is, it wasn’t simple, but you know, instead of saying, well, there’s nothing we can do because we’re not growing is to basically look at everything on the pan out. What are, you know, areas that we could look at? I mean, you could apply that to your own personal life. I’m trying to cut back on spending and you go through and look at every expense and explore it. And maybe we don’t need the 1G, you know, internet. Maybe we just need the 500 megabytes and, you know, no stone uncovered. That’s the way we had to operate and I think that’s very translatable skill for smaller businesses because most likely they’re going to be even more cost conscious than you know a bigger company that’s got you know, more resources at their disposal.

00:14:45 – Rico Figliolini

So it’s really looking closely not just at the books but at the process of what companies do, right?

00:14:52 – Alex Wright

That’s exactly right. So one of the things when I’m, and this is before I transitioned, you know people would say well you know what does finance do? It’s just kind of this broad term and I would always describe it as in three pieces and it’s very simplistic, the first the most basic part is the gathering of of information. And that could be billing AR, AP like in a big company that’s completely automated, smaller company it might not even really exist. The next level is you’re taking that information, you’re analyzing it, you’re putting it into a reporting format. At a bigger company, not completely automated, but mostly automated. At a really small company, especially like reporting, the small business owner, his financials might be his bank statement. That might be the limit of what he’s got. And the third part, and this is really where finance differs from, say, accounting, is. You are going to the decision maker and you’re saying, hey, if you pull this lever, this will happen over here. You’re giving them actionable data, advice, if you will, on how to drive the company, whatever the company’s financial goals are, giving them suggestions how to do that.

00:16:17 – Rico Figliolini

So it’s also, I guess. You know, if I look at it from what I do a little bit, from my business and stuff, every business is somewhat the same to the degree there’s peaks and valleys. You might not always have the same trend line of revenue coming in and stuff. So it’s finding how to maximize the use of the money that’s coming in and the money flowing out. Maybe it’s the manufacturing or the service side and how that’s being done. Whether that’s parts being delivered or how it’s being ordered and such. So you’re looking beyond just the numbers on the books. You’re trying to optimize the way a company’s doing business behind the scenes.

00:16:59 – Alex Wright

That’s right. And that’s the thing I was talking about being embedded in the business, being part of the decision-making is, again, looking at the full P&L. You’re not just reporting the news you’re trying to influence what’s going on. So you might be looking at in the course of a day okay how do we make our you know logistics more efficient. You might be looking at hey what’s the ROI on this marketing spend. You know any anything you can do to you know drive profitability. And that you know I guess that’s one of the upsides of a publicly traded company when you’ve got that pressure that quarterly pressure if we got to make earnings you know you’re looking at anything and everything all the time. Now there’s downsides to it because sometimes to make the numbers look a certain way things will be done that maybe aren’t super logical but you still have that relentless pressure to become more efficient to drive costs down as much as possible.

00:18:02 – Rico Figliolini

I think with certain types of business, like you said, the private business, smaller businesses, the owners tend to, the job keeps going, right? Three years will pass before you know it. Maybe they’re not optimizing their cash flow properly. Maybe they’re doing the work, if you will, and not really looking at everything because money’s coming in. Everything seems fine. They may not see even the trend of how things are going where maybe it’s going bad, but they’re not seeing it yet because maybe they have the revenue there. The cash flow is there. They might not see it for the next three months. And all of a sudden, they start realizing, whoa, this is bad. We’re beyond, why didn’t I see this before? So how does the aspect of what you do as a fractional CFO, let’s say, how will you give that foundation to these businesses? What’s the process, if you will?

00:19:01 – Alex Wright

Well, I think that obviously each company is different, right? You have to go in and see what, if any, processes they have. But I think if you make the assumption that they don’t, kind of your point, they’re just, you know, you’ve got this entrepreneur. They’re really good at making pencils. And that’s what their total focus is, selling those pencils, just growing, growing, growing. You know, they don’t really have a whole lot of time to, you know focus on the finances other than making sure they got enough money to meet payroll or buy anything. I think the key thing when you go in, in a situation like that is, you know, to talk to the owner or the founder, you know, understanding what is it that, you know, what are your, you know, try to define the goals besides just staying afloat, you know, kind of help them sit down. Okay. Let’s put this pen to paper. What is it you’re, I’m going to make something up, okay you’re doing 500,000, million in revenue and you want to get to a million and a half in two years. Again I’m just making this up. You know in the larger company it would be you know to be a budget or they’d call it a you know five-year plan it’d be some kind of structure you know a guide post if you will. I think that’s the, I mean you could apply that to your personal life. Like okay I’m trying to you know, retire at age 65 or I’m trying to lose 20 pounds or whatever it might be, whatever that you’re trying to accomplish. You’ve got the saying about if I fail to plan, I plan to fail. So I think that’s the key thing is to understand from that owner what it is you’re trying to accomplish. And then once, because ultimately it’s their business, you’re there to help them be successful. So once they’ve articulated what those goals are, then one of our jobs would be, okay, let’s lay out a plan to see if we can get to that. Because in some cases, you know, my experience has been people that are entrepreneurs, when it comes to forecasting financially, they’re not always the most realistic because they’re normally going to be really optimistic. I can conquer the world, which is you need that to be an entrepreneur. But one of the jobs of finance is to kind of poke holes in arguments, not to discourage people, but to make people think realistically, okay, can we grow from a million to a million and a half in two years? Understanding, you know, what is there a path to do that that’s realistic? And having those conversations with, you know, with these guys, because in some cases you’re bringing up things that maybe they haven’t thought about because they’re so focused on the here and now versus looking a year or two out that that’s just not really what they’re focused on because, again, they’re trying to grow the business.

00:22:08 – Rico Figliolini

So when you come into a firm, for example, you know, obviously people, you know, you want to build that foundation without the cost of a full-time CFO. I mean, that’s the idea, right? So work with me for a minute. In an ideal world, you would come in for a few hours or whatever that first month and then how would the rest of it work like is there a maintenance level that you provide? Quarterly stuff you provide? So give me in brief what that would look like to someone.

00:22:45 – Alex Wright

Right. So again, each company is going to be different but really kind of two levels, and I’m simplifying this, but really two levels of service. And you can pick one or the other or both. So let’s assume we’re talking about a company that we used an example earlier of the finances are literally the bank statement. I know how much cash I got. That’s kind of an extreme example. So we use that one as our example. So in that case, they don’t have a P&L or balance sheet. They don’t really know what’s going on other than, you know, how much cash they got in the bank and maybe in their head, they’ve got kind of a gut instinct of what’s going on. So in that instance, you know, you’re going to have to come in and create a structure that will allow you to build a P&L, which is, you know, the foundation of any type of forecasting or budgeting. You’ve got to have that initial document. And to get to that, you’ve got to go in and take basically all their transactions that, you know, are in their bank statement and create what’s called a trial balance, which is going to have a chart of accounts. Basically, all that is coding where, you know, okay, this is travel and this is, you know, sales and it’s basically, you know, accounting 101, right? And so that base level of service would be something like that plus reporting that goes with it. And that reporting you would get through programs like Microsoft power BI that can do you know anything at the like that but you’ve got to have the you know the numbers formatted. So that would be a basic level of service and the first time that initial transition that would be time consuming because you’ve got to you create something, a structure that’s not there before. But then after you’ve created a structure you know each month you’re just really just updating, you know the results putting them into a P&L format. And if we think back when I was talking about the three levels of finance that’s really like the first two levels combined. So that’d be like a fixed fee you know for that service almost like a subscription. The second level of service it’s more like what that kind of like that third level I was talking about before where you’re sitting down with the decision maker and you’re telling them hey, this is what’s going on with your business. And depending on if they wanted to have, layout objectives, then you talk about the progress each month of how are we progressing versus these objectives that we’ve laid out. And if we’re off course, what things can we change to get you back on course? And so that would be an in-person review where, the analogy I use is that movie, The Matrix, if you remember, they’ve got all the data that’s doing this, right? You can’t read it. And so if you’re not in finance, often people struggle to, you can give them 20 reports, but if they’re not a finance person, they’re often going to be like, I don’t really understand what this is telling me. That second level is, it’s really about storytelling, where you’re taking the information and you’re telling the owner a story, you know, not in a fictional way, but this is what’s going on with your business, but you’re translating it in a way that is easy for them to understand, versus if you’re just talking about debits and credits, they’re going to be lost with that.

00:26:21 – Rico Figliolini

So if they already have QuickBooks online, for example, they’re already getting reports, you’re at that stage already, but you’re able to tell them more than that, what the reports give them in numbers, because you’re looking at all of it, right? Holistically almost.

00:26:38 – Alex Wright

That’s correct. So you know a lot of companies will have you know they’ll have a controller, bookkeeper, you know maybe both of them. And so in my you know previous life I had plenty of accountants that worked for me and really what their job, and I’m simplifying and this isn’t to say anything negative about accountants, like I said I’ve worked in accounting. But their job really is to tell you okay this is the number and this number is correct. But if you ask them well okay that number is that’s a number ten, last year it was a five, why did it go from a five to a ten? That’s really not what their role is in most cases. So they’re challenged to you know explain the why part of it right? And so that’s where, that’s really where finance comes in to explain what is going on. And not just report.

00:27:36 – Rico Figliolini

And not just explain it. I  would imagine if, from my point of view, you might explain why that went from a five to a ten, but you should probably be able to give me advice on, you know, where can we take that from now? You know, why is this? I know the difference is there. I knew it grew. Maybe it grew for this reason, but you might be able to tell me how we can adjust that, right? I mean, the whole idea is, for you to provide guidance. So almost like a, what do you call it? A person that, the accountability partner, if you will, in this.

00:28:15 – Alex Wright

Yeah. Well, that’s the great thing about, you know, having a budget is that you’ve, again, we were using examples earlier, but you could apply it to different parts of your, you know, personal life, but having that objective. If you don’t have that objective, then you don’t really know. It’s like driving a car. You’re trying to get somewhere, but you don’t have a map. You’re going to struggle without that map to point you in the direction you’re trying to get to.

00:28:45 – Rico Figliolini

So now we’ve got here, does technology play a part in what you do as well in financial advisory or in this type of field?

00:28:59 – Alex Wright

So the, remember when earlier I was talking about the kind of the three levels of not services but you know what finance does, and what’s occurred over the last 20 or more than 25 years is that systems like say SAP or Hyperion or for these large ERPs is they have really kind of flattened the work structure of companies because what they’ve allowed is it’s really like an early form of AI. Is  they automated you know tons and tons of functions that before there would have been literally like armies of people you know just doing kind of mindless work almost and so technology, now some of these small companies you know they’re not going to have an SAP or Hyperion but when we were talking earlier about power where that’s like Quickbooks but on steroids the kind of things that can do. But the reality is, whether it be QuickBooks or Power BI, if you don’t have that basic level of the information formatted, the magic can’t happen without that. So ultimately, at the smaller companies, there is some manual aspect of, I’ve got to code this expense correctly, input it. So the technology, at a smaller company, you know, that doesn’t have an SAP or Hyperion or Oracle is really more in the, you know, the reporting phase, the things it can do once the numbers are formatted correctly. It’s almost mind boggling now that the danger there is you can have too many reports. I can produce 30, 40 reports, but it’d be too much, you know, information. And that’s the, so when people talk about, well, I got QuickBooks. or even got Power BI, if you don’t have someone there to interpret it for you, to say, well, this is actually what this is telling you, it’s a very limited value. Like we were, again, using the Matrix example of it’s great, but if I can’t take any actions based off of it, then I don’t really want to do it.

00:31:15 – Rico Figliolini

Right. And I can see that in a world where a company might have two, three, or four different credit lines using them for a variety of reasons. Well, the financial planner might come in and say, why do we have these two where your APR, your interest rate is this high, you’re actually utilizing the wrong credit line or, you know, there could be a variety of things there, right? Let’s look a little bit at experience. As a founding member of Peachtree Corners, the city of Peachtree Corners since 2012, how has the involvement in local government influenced your business perspective? Has that influenced it at all? And where does that go?

00:31:57 – Alex Wright

The thing that I, kind of a, not a comparison, but an analogy is, I was talking to someone about this the other day where we started the city. There was an election to whether to have a city, and then there was an election to elect a council. So we had seven people who, for the most part, didn’t know each other. And I mean that was the city, there was no city staff there was no anything. So the reason that’s relevant it’s almost like a startup where we’re like okay we need to find someone, it’s like you don’t know what you don’t know. You had to go find people to kind of help us get started and then there’s those growing pains of whether it be the relationships amongst the council or you know finding the right people from a staff standpoint to be part of a city startup because if you think about all the cities in the country, very few new cities. That idea of a new city, it’s not unique to Georgia but you know prior to say like 2005 that wasn’t something that was happening here. So it’s that, there’s only certain people that want to take that risk. I guess it was kind of like going from a big corporation to a startup, it’s you got to have the right you know mindset and you know kind of fire in your belly to do it so it’s being part of something and seeing it grow from you know literally the seven of us in a room one day like meeting each other to you know what there is now. It’s what I envision starting a company would would be like. And you know maybe the the comparisons aren’t you know the correlation not completely you know accurate but I would think for sure there’s some you know similarities those same kind of decisions we had to make about bringing the right people in at the right time and you know just being able to get along. Because at a smaller company I would think those relationships are, the importance of them are more pronounced because there’s fewer people. Versus at a larger corporation not that the relationships aren’t important but you know the success or the failure of say like working at the home depot headquarters is it going to be based on you know just a you know my relationship with somebody because there’s 400,000 people that work there.

00:34:17 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, I think part of it too is you’re starting, you know, the city started with just, you know, with a certain amount of revenue because it took over some of that revenue being a city, franchise taxes, business licenses, but you also grew into a budget. And then as the city grew financially, I know it’s not a business, but you all treated it to some degree as a business, right? You didn’t spend money you didn’t have, or if you did there was a reason you knew where the revenue might come in from whether it was a grant or a loan or whatever it was. I’ve got to say that the city has overall done it responsibly. So has any of that informed the way you know or have you used your experience there you know working with that type of finance too?

00:35:08 – Alex Wright

So, you know the analogy I use sometimes with people is like the city council relationship, say, to the city manager is similar to in a company, a board of directors to a CEO. So that, you know, being a role, you know, because I was never on a board of directors at a company, you’ve got to be way up or probably older than me normally, you know, to be in that role of coming up with policies and then entrusting someone to execute those, you know, definitely gives you a different perspective. You know, running an organization because my career had been on the implementing people’s policy, you know, taking that directive from on high and implementing it and, you know, bringing it to some results. So to have that perspective from the other side has been, I think, good because, you know, I sit there and think about not too many people get that opportunity to be on the other side of the, you know, the table, if you will, to come up with policies. And trust other people, find the right people to enact those and make them successful.

00:36:20 – Rico Figliolini

Going from other experiences, your military service as a naval officer, has that also provided any experience that you’ve drawn on? Excuse my black cat.

00:36:34 – Alex Wright

No, you’re okay. That was a little more tricky. I think the thing that, where that part comes in, and this was really more about, you know, the why of, you know, I wanted to get into this type of work. Because when I was making the decision to leave corporate America, you know, I was in a position from a career standpoint, financial standpoint, a personal standpoint, you know, kids rolling off the payroll. There’s an opportunity here to do something different. And I did a, I don’t know if you know what a SWOT analysis is, but strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, did like a SWOT analysis of myself and thought, what is it that, you know, now in this situation where I don’t have as much responsibility as far as taking care of other people, like what really brings me, you know, satisfaction, fulfillment, besides just, you know, helping a company get that EPS each quarter. And, you know, the common theme as I looked at all these different things I’ve been involved in. I looked at my military experience, looked at serving on the city council. I looked at the 20 years I coached kids sports. All three of those things are thinking, how the heck are those three related to each other? But the common theme, because each one of those brought me satisfaction in different ways, was that you’re helping other people in each of those instances. You’re serving other people. You’re making other people either successful or in the case of, you know, the military is really about, you know, serving the nation, but it was doing stuff for other people. Again, differently. And I thought, how do I take these skills that I’ve built up over 25 years and do that in a way where I can help other people be successful? Because one of the things I would constantly hear from small business owners is, we were kind of talking about it before where they’re really good at you know that making the pencils or whatever it is but they struggle with finance because that’s not what their you know expertise is. And in a lot of instances can’t afford you know to bring somebody in or they don’t they don’t need someone full-time. And as I learned more about that industry I thought this could really fill that that impulse, if you will, you know, I’ve got about how can I help other people be successful? And in a way where you go in, you take this person’s got their whole life’s work tied up in this business. Their heart and soul in it. And to be able to go in and help them eliminate or alleviate some of their pain points that are preventing them from being successful. That really appealed to me much more than, well, I’m just going to go back into I’m going to call it the matrix of corporate america life we’re just going to you know get that EPS up three cents. You get to a certain point in life where like I’d really like to a bit of focus more on giving back. Just like with the you know city council it pays eight thousand dollars a year an occasional free t-shirt but you just have a great sense of satisfaction when you go out to the Town Center and you see like the the playgrounds and stuff we’ve built out there and you see all those people enjoying themselves you think you know I had a some small part of you know bringing that you know joy to these other people so it’s that same you know you want to do the same thing but in this different you know industry.

00:40:16 – Rico Figliolini

Now and I can see that. I mean you brought a lot, you’re passionate about the things you do. We were talking about a little bit about the industries that you’re passionate in, the areas of like CrossFit and stuff. So, you know, a person that’s driven that way and that’s sharing. I mean, you’re doing the Memorial Day Challenge for kids on Fort Payne, which is our obstacle course. That’s probably one of the best in the city, if not the best. So I can see that. I mean, giving back to the community and all that. And working with entrepreneurs, startup businesses, or even just businesses that have been around for a while, providing them with information. And you’re right. Some people, number one, either they think they can’t afford it, but they really can’t ignore it, right? Because if they’re going to grow their business, they really need to know what those numbers mean. And, you know, I mean, you’re right. Bank statement or even a QuickBook report. I mean, fine, so you can see your business is growing, you can see its profitability, but you may not see the things that are coming, which those numbers can tell you. It’s almost like being a futurist with it, right? Or being able to tell the future with numbers, if you will. And those numbers don’t lie to a degree. So giving back to the community as a business leader, as a political leader, I mean, I know that’s part of what you do. The relationships you’re building with Burn the Ships Financial, I mean, you just started out. This is your first few months in business. And you want to be able to give the feedback that you can to them. So tell me what, you know, what do you look ahead? What’s your company’s long-term goals? We’re towards the end of our interview here. So I just want to know where you think you’re going, where you want to be in a couple of years. What type of clients, what industry maybe. What do you want to be? Tell me.

00:42:24 – Alex Wright

So one of the things that I’ve done you know as I was learning about other companies that play in this space you know some of their you know limitations whether it be bandwidth or skill set. One of the things I did is I reached out to a lot of former colleagues and said hey would you be interested in going on this journey with me? Like hey, don’t quit your job but you know would you like to you know partner with me on this? And literally every person I reached out to was like, yes, I would love to do this with you. They were very excited about it. The reason that’s relevant is, it gives us a scope of skills and bandwidth that I would argue most of these other companies just don’t have because they don’t have access to these people that have worked in companies. The reason I mentioned that to your question is, some of these folks that are really you know fired up about you know doing the business initially, I was just, I’m just going to do it myself and take on four or five six customers you know that have compelling stories but as these other folks really wanted to get involved you know I’ve been rethinking that just see how things go but you know it could be that things take off and we’re able to some of these folks come on board we might you know make it a bigger plan. I just wasn’t expecting the level of response I got about how excited people wanted to do this as well. So that’s TBD, obviously. We’ll just see how that goes. But money is a very personal thing, whether it be our personal money or a business’s money. It’s really about trust. And obviously, you’ve got to build that over time. I’m anticipating, you know, it’s going to take several months where, hey, you got to inform people they have moved into this space and you’re spending a whole lot of time meeting with people and just telling them what I’m doing and, you know, getting the word out that I’m here to, you know, get involved to help people be successful. So we’re just, we’re going to have to wait and see how that goes. See what kind of growth opportunities there are. But, you know, Peachtree Corners, that’s over, I want to say about 2,500 businesses. They’re not all in the space that I’m looking to get involved in, but it’s a great location to be in, in terms of this industry.

00:44:51 – Rico Figliolini

For sure. We’re a growing city, so it’s never-ending. We’ve been speaking to Alex Wright with Burn the Ships Financial. Just started a startup of his own. A city councilman with City of Peachtree Corners here as well. Alex, I appreciate you being with us. Can you tell people where they can find more information about you, your website, your contact info?

00:45:15 – Alex Wright

Yes. So website is just like the company name, Burn the Ships Financial. We got that up a few weeks ago. And that’s probably the best place to go. It’s got my contact info and some of my partner’s contact info on there. Yeah, that’s going to have all my info. I was going to say you could go to the city website, but at this point, everything you would need would be on the company website.

00:45:46 – Rico Figliolini

In fact, on the homepage, there’s a phone number, email address, and a schedule a consultation button. So it is burntheshipsfinancial.com that you should all visit. And check out Alex Wright and his team and the services they provide. Hang with me for a second, Alex, but everyone else, thank you for joining us. Appreciate your support. Appreciate the support of evremodelinginc.com and Vox Pop Uli as well for supporting our podcast as well as the magazines and the digital work that we do, newsletters and all that, and the journalism that we produce. So thanks again to everyone. Alex, appreciate you being here. And if you all have any comments, leave it in the comment box, depending where you are. YouTube, Facebook, or just email Alex and he’ll be able to answer your questions.

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