BIZ/DEV
David Baxter has over fifteen years of experience in designing, building, and advising startups and businesses, drawing crucial insights from interactions with leaders across the greater Raleigh area. His deep passion, knowledge, and uncompromising honesty have been instrumental in launching numerous companies. In the podcast BIZ/DEV, David, along with Gary Voigt, an award-winning Creative Director, explore current tech trends and their influence on startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture, integrating perspectives gained from local business leaders to enrich their discussions.
BIZ/DEV
The Heart of Startup Success w/ Jason Bates | Ep. 101
In this episode David and Gary have a heartfelt conversation with CGO of Corporate Chaplains of America as they discuss growing your leadership pool, caring for your team and inching your way toward success with faith.
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrbates/
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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel
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The Podcast
David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.
In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.
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Hi, everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I am joined as always by Gary Voight, who has taken up a new hobby of lion taming. How's that going, man?
Gary:It's a little scary, but I can get through it. The only thing that really scares me is I think I'm supposed to have some sort of whip or some sort of safety device so
David:they don't allow whips anymore only for a circus
Gary:that I'm training with. They're just like, go for it. And so
David:go for it. Have you stuck your head in the mouth yet?
Gary:No, no, my hand got in there. And that's about it.
David:When there's still you lost. You lost that hand.
Gary:He's got no teeth. I mean, their dentures there.
David:For the really old ones. Yeah, I get Yeah, that makes sense. Perfect. More importantly, we are joined by Jason Bates, who is the Chief growth officer officer. I'm gonna say that right, Chief growth officer at corporate chaplains of America, which I should say we are a client of that is completely coincidental. By the way, we did not grab Jason because we are a client that just happened to happen. Christy sent out the lasso and we got you and she was like, Hey, this is cool. Okay, we use them anyway. So we know a little bit about corporate javelins. So we've mentioned you guys on the podcast before. But how are you Jason? Let me start that. Hello.
Jason:I'm doing great. David. Gary, how are both you doing?
David:I cannot complain.
Jason:I see. You're not missing any fingers or anything, Gary. Right. So I guess. Yeah, you're good. You're not important.
David:You don't need that one. If you lose too many more, though, you have to be fired. So you know,
Gary:the I'll just duct tape the way come to my hand. Just use it. Perfect.
David:Perfect. All right. So corporate chaplains of America, I am a fan clearly. But for those who don't know, can you tell us a little bit about what you guys do?
Jason:Yeah, good. Good question. Because probably most people listening to this. Don't have a clue what chaplaincy is all about. You know, we're a nonprofit based in Wake Forest, North Carolina, started back in 1996. Sweet, a sweet guy and his wife, Dr. Mark cref. And his wife Linda. And really they had a heart to care for their employees you know, he was a call him a serial entrepreneur. And really got in a position where he had some employees that were battling some struggles in their life at home with their kids with their family with fill in the blank illness, sickness death of things that we all deal with in our lives, personal or other and really had a heart for care for the employee so ventured out and actually went to school there and wake Wake Forest and, and started corporate chaplains of America. And so what this looks like in corporate America, we support about 1000 companies nationwide, our largest being a publicly traded company with 17,000 employees and our smallest being a, you know, a dozen employee car dealership, or maybe a smaller law office and everything in between we call development company. There you go. There you go. Those are our favorite though. Gary, David, the development companies, we you know what this looks like, to an employee of a company that we support our chaplains or care coaches, depending on what you want to call them come through and visit weekly with the employees. Everything's permission based, confidential, it's voluntary. It's not weird. These aren't like, you know, pastors coming in or anything like that. They're really just trained individuals, certified chaplains that come in and just provide care for your employee. So again, everything's permission based and voluntary. It's a benefit. It's paid for by the companies. And so it's a pre benefit for the employees. Our chaplains are available 24/7 365. And we did 4.1 to 4 million contacts last year, as looked it up the other day. So you think of over 4 million contacts with all these employees and these about 1000 companies I just mentioned that 10% Of those, David will turn into what we call a care session. It's somebody trying to navigate through a bad diagnosis in the hospital. You know, her the other day about, you know, a child in a car wreck. I mean, these are just some of the stories that just, you know, unfortunately is if you're a leader in a company, you're trying to support your employees as they navigate this through trials. And we try to come alongside those employers in those employees and be another person to provide care
David:So we got you guys. So I'm a member of see 12, which I've mentioned several times. And they are huge fans of y'all clearly. And they always mention you. And the way reason I was attracted to using chaplains is I want to, I wanted a mental health aspect to our culture and our care for them. And because our job is stressful is mentally very taxing. And a lot of guys get overwhelmed. And I wanted them to know that we cared. And that goes for everybody at the company, of course, not just the devs. But it is it was important to us. And I also wanted to make sure, like, so big pixel is a Christian based company, but our people aren't not necessarily. And so we wanted to make sure that whatever we brought in wasn't too overwhelming in that direction. And so it was a good mix. It's worked out really well. We've had two different chaplains. And our current chaplain has gotten another job. So we're actually in the middle of transition. But they've been well, no. And I will tell you, this has nothing to do with anything. Except for I am, it sounds like an ad. And it's not meant to sound like an ad. But the thing that most impressed me, So Derek was our last chaplain. And when he decided to go get another job that was closer to his house, he knew that there was a transition from one chaplain to another, which takes several weeks because they get to higher up and all that. And he has voluntarily stayed as our chaplain. Totally, he's totally not associated with anything. He just wanted to make sure that we were cared for while we were doing transition. And so he's still in our Slack, and he still chats with us from time to time. And I think that's amazing. I think that tells you the quality of the people that you guys have working for you.
Jason:Yeah, you know, well, you bring up a good point, David. So when you talk about even your employees and provide, you know, because you're a leader, you're good leader, I'm sure your team, you've got great people on your team. But you have employees that have like real world problems. So what happens is they come in, they want to shut the door and like, talk to you about the domestic abuse it's going on, or I mean, there's some things like you're kind of like, do I need to report this or do anything like, I'm not qualified to give marriage advice, or how to, you know, for somebody that may have never had children's in a leadership role. And then somebody's coming in saying, I got this great bat crazy kid like Atewa. Like, I don't mean, there's this overwhelming sense of, of some of your employees probably don't feel qualified to give coaching, but because they're good people, they're going to shut the door and listen, and maybe kind of fumble through that. And that's where we get to come along, where I would say we are qualified for those kinds of things. So when there's somebody wants to shut the door and maybe burst into tears about something's going on, their locks are getting changed at their house, because they made a foolish decision on the Friday night before, we're able to come in and help navigate that on both ends of the family spectrum. It's just a drastic example. But unfortunately, it happens every single week. And what we do.
David:Yeah, to me, it was that I didn't. I knew people didn't want to confide in me what's happening as the boss or whatever, that's not yet a comfortable situation. And so I wanted them to have a place to go. And I can't tell you because it is anonymous. I can't tell you how many people use it because I have no idea. But I know that there's an effort and I know some of them have made pretty close bonds. Like I know, Derek went and visited. Ryan, one of our guys, at one in Florida. He went down he was gonna vacation and visited Ryan, I mean, they had created a bond to that, because we're all remote. So they were all over the place. And yeah, so I thought that was really cool. Gary, did you have any questions? For change subjects? Good.
Gary:I was gonna mention too. Sometimes saying corporate corporate chaplain, again, gives the idea like you were saying big pixel is a Christian based company, but not every employee is Christian. So sure. There's a little bit of what's the word I'm looking for here. People will assume that it's going to be like, absolutely just based advice or help, which it is not. It is just human based, you know, care, I guess you can say that way.
Jason:Yeah. And we Yeah, very good point. We have some companies that call our chaplains care coaches, right, just for whatever reason, even though there's chaplains in the sports team, down the road, there's chaplains in the hospital. There's chaplains in the military, there's chaplains at the police department. I mean, you know, we don't want the word chaplain to be a stumbling block for anybody to want to partner with this and provide care so we like I said we have some companies that even just use the word Care Coach, what they think this is fitting for their organization. We're we're fine with it, too. Yeah, we're, we're not trying to push anything, anywhere. got anybody through it all we really tried to do is come in, like one of our customers said the other day, he said, chaplaincy allows me to care for my employee, like my heart wants to, but my time and my title doesn't allow me to do that. And I think that probably summed it up when he said that, you know, it's like, I want to, like you said, David, it's like, when you're writing the checks, and you're the boss, it's like, some things one you may not want to hear about. And two, there's some, you know, you wanna you want somebody to hear about them, if your employees are going through some kind of stressful situation, their lives are chaplains are trained. I mean, they're there, they've got seven, eight years of real work experience in business world outside of any kind of, you know, ministerial work or anything like that. So these are, these are folks that have been in a bit of a job or cube or an office, also. So we're thankful that you allow us to serve your, your company, and we do provide metrics using our CRM tool of how many visits we make monthly. So you get, we can produce all that stuff, David seeing see that monthly of the engagement, what people are engaged in about, again, since it's confidential, you're not gonna see who we talked to, or necessarily what state they're in. So you can can dial in and figure out what's going on. But you'll get a high level overview if your employees are struggling with, for example, domestic issues in their home or something like that. Or maybe you may have an employee that has a child has some kind of addiction issue. And we're navigating through that. We can give good reporting, if you need it.
David:So you are a leadership development expert. That's what your LinkedIn says. So now we're getting more personal to you. What does that mean? That sounds awesome.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I don't even recall. That's what it says. But I'll tell you what it here's what it means to me. And I have been fortunate. I have had some really good mentors in my life, business people that have brought me up underneath and I have, I felt like I have not been worthy to follow in their shadows. And Larry Griffith, our CEO, is one of those. He he and I became friends in probably 2003 ish timeframe. He and I were both working in the telecom sector at the time and had been for a number of years, he and I both kind of moved all over the country with this particular company, that did ultimately love getting acquired by Verizon. But when I think of leadership, I would say development, I think of probably circa 2004, or five, David, we sat down at the time I was living in New Orleans, I was VP, gm of sales are kind of for that. Mississippi and South Louisiana market. And we were trying to we were doing some reorg throughout the organization. And we really sat down and said, you know, we just need, we need to do a better job of developing our leaders, and what should that look like, and we all sit down. And we're obviously a faith based organization. And you've already admitted that about your own organization, David, but we sat down and, and thought, you know, how do people want to be treated? And so we went through this whole series of how do we really serve our teams, to help them be excellent at what they do, how they then lead their teams. And we went through a whole several month process of going through a book, you've probably never heard of it called the servant, James See, Hunter, I think we just named that road. And we bought the whatever the $900 DVD series and went through the whole deal, and, and really trained our frontline leaders. And here's what we found, we had some leaders that were just in the wrong spot. So we, we've moved some people to other organizations, we eliminated some positions, we brought some other people in. And what we found in that whole process is that if we flip that paradigm in this kind of niche, you hear servant leadership all the time, but almost 20 years ago, it wasn't that big of a buzzword. We were in the retail sales business of wireless sales, right? So think of the Verizon is the 18 T the T Mobile kind of your big three, you see the day, we were one of there used to be 1520 of those carriers. And we were one of those kind of TRB carriers at the time. And what we found was is everything's transactional, it's retail, it's fast pace. It's, your your employees are kind of on this commission piece to they've got a base, you know, they're like trying to like take care of the customer, but they're also trying to have a quote and like, and what we found was really if we just flipped the whole paradigm kind of upside down from those CEO VP, you know, manager down to the customer and really made our customer the number one priority in the organization and made our store managers and then dip and down to have in our managers and the VP of that market and the regional VP V and kind of the least important people in that whole totem pole that we would grow. And we would grow amazingly, in we did in those regions and markets that we did that. So I don't want to throw the whole servant leadership sound like, you know, 20 years ago, it just wasn't that popular of a thing. And we really chopped that up and did a number of series of trainings where we even as leaders, our sales trained, Brian sent everybody down there, Gary, where you're out of out of Florida, I think we did it out of Tampa for a week long deal and, you know, presented how we wanted to serve our customers. So I don't know if that answers your question. But that's about as good as engaging David.
David:Oh, it's all fascinating. I love the I love the journey. The reminds me, there's a there's a friend of mine who runs a company. And it's his company, he's owned it for he inherited it from his father. And I shouldn't say that he bought it from his father. And he's been running it for 20 plus years. And he is invested heavily in the next generation of leaders. And I've always been super impressed. I've joked that he's who I want to be when I grow up. Because he is just an amazing human. But his philosophy is so different than most people, especially me, his company is very successful. And he's been very successful. But he's getting to the point where he's not old. But he's getting closer to retirement, I don't think he's in anywhere. He's 510 years from it. But he's thinking about it. He's been thinking about it for 1015 years. And so he has his whole leadership curriculum that he makes all of his people go through. And from that, he picks the next generation. And then a couple of years ago, he actually made the decision to get out of the organization in terms of leadership structure, he's still the chairman of the board, because he owns the place. But he doesn't run the company anymore. He's got a CEO. And he's got he their attraction company, we've talked about that before, traction is a way of organizing your business. So he has a CEO and the visionary and integrator. And those are not him. And he's on, he's there as advising, but he just now he just trained leaders full time, which is so amazing. Now he's got an organization large enough to be able to do that. But there's part of me that's like, Man, I mean, leadership training, the next generation is so key. And yet, so few companies take the time to actually do it, including mine, I'll flat out tell you, I ain't trained in anybody. Probably a big part of that is probably because I feel inadequate to do so. But it's a what an amazing thing you can create if you invest in that next generation.
Jason:Yeah, I think probably my. Well, we had, I'd say this, we had fun doing it. And we learned a lot. And we grew a lot just even as leaders, you know, 1520 years ago, we're going through this process, we grew a lot too. And, you know, even just we did a lot of searching to I mean, like really figuring out, you know, what were the headwinds that our employees were seeing on the front line? And how could we as leaders, how can we enable our leadership teams to like knock down barriers for literally the person that was standing in front of the customer that was getting screamed at because their cigarette lighter plug didn't work, of course, this is before ear pods and headphones and all that. But I mean, you know, the circuit got started in this world and 95 back when the phones are, you know, made out of the same material, a football helmet was made out of a brick phone. So and we exited about the time the just as the iPhone was coming out, but it was it was it was fun to watch them be able to take care of customers, give them the tools that they needed. And then also, I think, probably the the key piece. So when you think about leadership, it's not just all fun, rosy and, you know, cashing in and giving money to their emotional bank account, like you got to take some back, like you're still floated, you still gotta so there's all this show me teach me coach me and hold me accountable as kind of a monitor that we used as a as a organization and as a sales organization, on making sure that we showed our team how to do what it was we were expecting him. Coach them to that. I mean, if you're going teaching somebody to throw a curveball, I mean, it's like, let me show you how to do it. And stand back if you want to video you can, but let's do it a couple of times, and they'd coat let them do it. Right. So teach them how to do it, bring them in, put their fingers on the laces, whatever. I'm not a curveball expert by any means, right? But it's like how do we how would we bring these employees in, show them, teach them how to do it and then coach them on what successful look like and what not being successful look like? And then ultimately holding them accountable to that. And so they was a clear there was never this him running around going, Oh, I wonder what it was supposed to do in my job? Or how do I know if I had a successful day, we could manage that. And we had metrics and scorecards set up so we could actually look at that daily. That's not to micromanage or people, David, don't get me wrong, and Gary, but as long as we were showing them, teaching them, coaching them, and ultimately hold them accountable to what we needed them to do, there wasn't any confusion, if somebody for some reason got, you know, moved out of the organization, for whatever reason, it was crystal clear as to why, especially when they were compared amongst their peers, which didn't happen that often. But I'm just saying, if you had to, you know, we had dashboards to show it.
David:Very cool. So how have you, so you went from technology, to jumping into a, you know, culture, kind of organization, right, building culture and helping culture and, and helping people. That's a big shift. How did that? How did that come about?
Jason:Yeah, well, that's another super question. So late 2017, Larry, our CEO had called and said, Hey, I've become CEO of their search firm, it found him and he had met with the board, and they hired him. And he said, I've just started as the CEO of this organization you've never heard of called Corporate champions in America. And I said, Man, that's great. He said, I'm coming to town. And he said, I'm meeting with, you know, when some of our chaplain teams and the chaplain in Little Rock where I was from, which is actually good friend of mine from our church, he actually, long, long story, I won't go into it here, but he baptize me and the whole deal, and I baptize my daughter, and anyhow, just become a great friend. And so I knew this guy that worked there. And I'm like, you know, I heard he was doing some great stuff really caring for employees. It's and I'd love to hear more. So Larry comes to town. We're talking. And, and I'm thinking, man, is what y'all doing? Even legal? Like, is this even like, is this how do what do you like? What are y'all doing? Again? Like, I mean, because at the time, I was working for another telecom company, and, and so we're in the parking lot, he leaves, he calls me a couple of weeks later, he said, Okay, I'm building you a position. I said, What do you mean? He said, we want to we want to grow. We had this lady had a very elaborate 85 Page strategic plan, a David. And he sat down and walked me through it. He said, I want to build a position. And he said, I don't know what I'm going to call it now. You can't he came up with Chief growth officer, I did not. But he said, Well, we want to grow the organization and for all the right reasons, because we really are passionate about taking care of people in the workplace. And we know that people are times having some really tough times. And we think we can scale this thing for all the right reasons. And he said, I'll build you a job. And I looked at him and I thought, man, you're crazy. I said, I'm not even remotely, I think, interested in this. And at the time, I was VP of sales for the SMB market, at another telecom company. And I just said, I don't, I just don't know I'm not. So I'm just my mind's like, I'm loving, which I'm hearing. But I'm just not I'm not sure how this would work. And so long story short, met the chairman of the board, who flew up there to Wake Forest, your backyard, just a sweet, sweet guy met the leadership team sweet people, and saw their heart for really trying to care for people and I had been God been in telecom for 23 years, I kind of had a season where I was kind of maybe looking to do something a little more meaningful than just broadband circuits and high capacity circuits to banks and hospitals. And so he said, you could bring some of your, your, your leaders over, if they just build a team, you know how to build a team, you've done, you've been with me for years, you know how to do it, just bring some of your folks over. And that's what we did. Two of my former direct reports came over about 3130 days later, 160 days later, and we started building a team. And that was, I don't know, almost six years ago, five and a half years ago. So yeah, kind of a weird transition, you know, and I got a lot of those questions to David of just even friends going. Now. What are you doing? Like what, like, why are you why are you leaving, like, like the, you know, telecom sector but you know, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's been. It's been fortunate to have an opportunity on the team or it's been a great place to work.
David:Your story reminds me of almost how me and Gary started working together. So I know I give him grief, but I've known him a very long it's
Gary:crossed my mind that it has crossed my mind when he would say it. So I want to hear your story.
David:So So I'm trying to think the first time Gary and I work together. So in 2003, I got laid off of the company I was working for I was a consultant. And it did it was not going great. And the.com bust happened. And so I get laid off. And I decided in this.com bust, no one wants to build websites, right? This is pets.com. And everything exploded. And I decided, What am I going to do? I'm going to start a web company, because that's people need websites. That's what I decided. And I've never been accused of being smart. But I, my company was called visionary online, which, okay, sure. And that came from a game company that I did called visionary games. But anyway, so I think the first thing you ever did for me, correct me if I'm wrong, Gary was the visionary online logo. This is 2005. I'd had it for a while. And I built my own logo, which is a common thread. And then he finally rebuilt it for me. And it looked like an email, envelope. And I'm like, this is stupid
Gary:graphical with gradients. And illustrative, this is so tiny.
David:It was it was so ugly. But it wasn't I'm saying that I thought it was ugly. But the more I looked at it, the more I loved it. And that was when I realized that Gary had a modicum of talent. And we were, we were friends. You can he was in Florida. I was in I was, I'm friends with his brother. And we work together. And over the years, he started building logos and stuff for me. And then in 2013, I started big pixel. So we now fast forward several years, I've known Gary, you know, tangentially through his brother. And he is working, doing, you know, stupid little piddly stuff for some little media company. I don't know what it was. You're welcome. You know, barely making ends meet. And he was like winning Emmys or something? I
Jason:don't know. Yeah.
David:So I am starting big pixel. And pretty early on. I mean, it was pretty quick when I started getting clients. So we're now in 2014 2015. And I'm like, Gary, I want you to work for me. This is he was just gone off into freelancing. He's like, I'm gonna do my freelance thing. I was like, Cool. I can't afford you right now anyway, but we're gonna work together. And he's like, okay, whatever, man. And years passed. And then I started hiring him as a contractor, like a lot more and more and more. And I think
Gary:as a client,
David:primary, I became his biggest client, and eventually fine, I was like, Gary, you're coming to work for me this name, your price will figure it out from there. And I told him, I said, I'll pay you whatever you want to be paid, the more you want to be paid, the longer you're gonna have to wait. We're gonna do it. Because I knew this was gonna work. This is how this was gonna be. And so finally, was it two years ago? Three years? I don't remember, two years ago, hey, we finally got it all worked out. And he and we basically invented a job for him. I didn't have any clue what I mean. I knew he was talented. Right? But I didn't know what he could do. I still don't.
Gary:I remember hearing the phrase multiple times, like, I just, I just don't know. Like, if I'll have enough work for you, but I'll figure it out. Figure it out. Yeah, we'll
David:figure it out. And so it reminded me a lot of your story. So finally, we came together. And what's funny is about Gary, and again, I love to give him grief. But I keep learning he could do other things. And that's what's wild to me. And I'm sure your guys over at chaplains are learning more and more, because they just know they want to work with you. We'll figure it out. And that's a cool,
Jason:yeah. Well, so you know, David, I don't know if you know, Larry, our CEO, but you know, Larry's, and he's in FY 12, too, by the way, will Dixon's group he you know, he's run a, you know, billion dollar region for he was my region president for a number of years, actually based Gary probably down the road from you there and Tampa, but you know, so he's, he's been in marketing, he'd been in finance. He was a naval officer. I mean, I just don't I mean, I'm not trying to brag on him, but it's like, so how do you even as a nonprofit, or come in and bring a fortune 500 or even a fortune 250 on set on how to scale because we're a little bit different business in the sense we're not displacing nonprofit and hope donors, funders to make this work. We do have a fee for service models. So there's kind of this recurring revenue, so allows us to scale and grow and so we've taken his one finance background marketing, our fact our CFO used to work for him. When he got out of telecom, we went to Geneva college and became the CEO there, did that for you know, probably about eight or nine years and took one of their leaders and that's who's our CFO today here. In Wake Forest, so, you know, he's taken just some people that have supported him in the past, I mean, his looky loo tenants and brought them all up underneath him under this organization we're at now. And I can tell you we run our leadership team meetings are as fast as any big business that you could imagine, you know, I would say it's not run like probably the average typical nonprofit organization. And we're running it for the right reasons to grow it to really, at the end of the day, take care of employees and their family and their friends.
Gary:It seems like corporate chaplains might have started small, but then got really big, but I know that in order for like a small company like ours to utilize your services, and then I'm sure there's other large corporations, I know that for sure, because we talked to some of the chaplains, but that also use your services. I'm just curious, what would you say? Give me like three examples. One would be like, the biggest company you didn't think would use you that? Does your average company, and then just like the weirdest or the strangest fit, that seems to work, but at first, you're like, I don't I don't know if that's gonna work.
Jason:Yeah, Gary, happy to answer that. So, you know, our largest being a large publicly traded company, they have honus, say maybe we probably have 90 Different people in our organization that supports that one company. So those chaplains don't care for just I mean, they, chap cheffins will typically care for, you know, a handful of companies in their geographic areas. Yeah, now we do have some that support just at their corporate campus, for example, we have a handful of chapters just support just their corporate campus facilities, I mean, it's a full time job. And those are very, you know, you know, very hands on relational, you're seeing the same Chaplain come in every week. Some of them you're seeing daily, because they just live in a building and are just around and accessible. Then you have companies kind of what I'd say mid tier, they may be smaller, let's say, fit 50, to a couple of 100 employees, which is probably more like the, you know, mid to large sized company in the United States, when you look at, you know, just had a meeting at lunch. And, you know, you're looking at about 91% of all the companies in the United States are like less than 50 employees. Right. So I mean, like most companies, United States, or to small business, right, I mean, the vast majority of those being sub, you know, eight, nine employees even and so, our model, because we're a recurring revenue model, we can't just go send a chaplain to a company with four employees, four times a month and even pay for gas. Right. So there's, there's kind of a model that we that we do that so to answer your question, the mid tier is maybe do an in person rounds at a corporate office. But those remote employees, we reach out what we call distributed workforce model where we reach out proactively and you know, be a text to be a, maybe a phone call via email. However, these employees want us to reach out because they're remote. And then the third one is really a crisis care only. And we have just launched. We just launched a new, a QR code based web based at end of last year. Basically, if you think of just QR code, you scan a QR code for your organization, you could then be prompted into five different modes of reaching out to our chaplain, you could you could send a, you can call them, you can send a text, you could chat them just like live chat, you could schedule a video conference call, or you could send an email, there's no school email. So we have kind of five modes of ways that employees of those companies could reach out. And what we do is basically place that QR code that's specific to your organization. And so that's kind of the third way that we come in to Skype crisis care only, which is not necessarily our preferred way. We love being able to visit and see people and shake hands and talk about the soccer tournament that Joe went to last week down in Orlando, how'd that go. But if a company has truly all remote employees, then maybe that's an option. And we do serve some companies in that capacity. So really three ways one, in person, very relational weekly rounds. The other one kind of a hybrid combination of that and proactive reaching out weekly via voice or text or however, and then that third would just be kind of like the EAP and employee assistance program or something. They really just call us if you need us and, and then we'll show up.
Gary:Yeah, that makes sense. Those three different like tiers of service seem to fit, like the three different business models that you guys serve. And while we're on threes, something I want to ask you ask every guest what are your top three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur or small business when they're getting started? This you're probably going to have to do Make from your experience in leadership, I want to hear what these top three pieces of advice would be.
Jason:You know, I'm gonna give a plug to David, you mentioned that not me see 12 Honestly, I didn't know your 12 bar to call. But I would say a peer group of some sort, where you have common like minded folks around you, not necessarily in the same SIG code, or necessarily same vertical that you're in, but leaders that you trust in. And if it's, you just find some sage leaders, that you can get together with once a month, once a quarter, once a week and have coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever, go play golf, whatever that looks like, I think finding people that have been successful in business, and allowing them to allow you be part of that conversation. So you know, C 12 is just happens to be one of our strategic, we are a strategic alliance partner with them. And we serve, probably a third of the companies we serve David are somehow related to C 12 in some form or fashion. So a lot of those companies are very intentional, obviously, in caring for their employees. But I would say one, Gary, find some like minded people and but find some kind of peer group. Even if it's just in your specific wheelhouse of the business you're in or other. The other thing you said three, is that right? So I may give you a four here. I'll give you a bonus. The other thing I see because I travel weekly all over the United States from West Coast, East Coast. And I see businesses even we support and I'm asking them questions similar to this not necessarily what would you start a business like what are the headwinds in your organization? What are things that we can help our champions or career coaches as we're, as we're stepping back and trying to meld with your culture? And what are things you see going on. And I would say one thing, and this is easy for me to say, because I'm not carrying the checkbook for this, but I think paying a fair and or above wage for some of your talent. Makes sense. We have some companies that are paying to the lower hourly wages. And I say, our customers, companies in general, and this, I say this is stuck in the airport, Minneapolis of the day, and I go by the restaurant, and they're saying well, we're we're not serving burgers right now. So we don't have a cook. And it just kind of hurts my heart a little bit like I'm in the airport. So I know you're gonna charge me like $22 for the burger, and probably under $7 for the fries, and probably $4 for the bottle hog. I mean, right. And so I would say maybe just consider paying up market a little bit depending on the job. I'm not saying that the your minimum wage jobs need to go up market. But I can tell listening to some of the companies that we speak that have gone and paying a little bit more I've seen just being able to keep employees around because on some of these very transactional organizations where people are just churning and burning for the next nickel or whatever, we know some of those companies are really hurt and have a have a lot of pressure. So I think that there's may be any way to pay up market, certainly in some key positions, it may be worth it just to get talent. So you're not don't have another week or month or a quarter of downtime, not having somebody in that key spot on your team. I think the the other one is, and this is just from a I'm putting my entrepreneur hat because my wife has been a previous on entrepreneur me not so much, I think, you know, maybe hiring out services. So when I look at some companies, and they're your small to mid, you know, going higher and a full time finance person, or a full time marketing don't even look at how we kind of reorg organization. David, to your point earlier, we came in, we kind of went kind of with some boutique vendors, when I look at our marketing vendors and look at our, you know, SEO and I look at our web design. For me, it's like, instead of going and hiring those people that I think probably back in the day, it made sense, you know, you need a marketing person or two or three to help do this stuff. It's like we've hired some specific folks that are like experts in that, right like your organization where I'm not. So we went out and I think go in and find and maybe a fractional finance person or a fractional marketing person or a fractional HR person on the back end to help with some of your typical HR stuff for just the average small midsize company. I've just I've seen some companies kind of go that route here lately that we support, which I think make a lot of sense because they're able to, I think get top talent in that field, but are paying kind of a contractor type. I don't wanna say a 1099 Right.
Gary:We've actually had some of those people on the podcast as I guess people that services for like the fractional, you know, so many hours per month for the smaller businesses, whatever we get the expert service. Yeah, the expert experience, but you're not paying a full time rate for that. Yeah.
Jason:And I think yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't pretend to be an entrepreneurial expert. But that is a trend that I did see, you know, flying around weekly. That is a good, you know, people are getting really good talent. And because these are vendors, it's not working out, terminate the contract agreement, whatever that looks like and just find you another one that fits, you know,
Gary:you actually even mentioned to the popular ones, the finance and HR. Those are. Yeah, yeah, those are, I guess, from each of those sectors here.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you can imagine just all the legalese that goes on with an expert in HR, right. I mean,
Gary:just to make sure you're compliant, even with like your insurance and stuff like that. Just
Jason:absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Now, I will say we have full time HR people, we have full full time finance people and organization, but we do, I do manage some of those vendor relationships on just when you think of just the marketing and lead gen and kind of this sale, the salesy stuff, getting the word out of what we do. Makes a lot of sense.
Gary:Speaking of getting the word out, good segue. If anybody else wants to learn more about you and your business, how would they get ahold of you? What would be the easiest way to learn more about corporate champions?
Jason:Yeah, I think just go to chaplin.org ch@lain.org. There's, there's, there's videos out there, there's you could set up a press presentation, the field development, people that are on our team, they traveled weekly, just like I do, I've got some scattered literally in all four corners of United States, literally today, we're happy to show up and just talk to you about your organization and see if, if we could come alongside you and help care for your employees. Or you could just reach out to me directly my email is Jay bates@chaplain.org. This j is adjacent last name Bates, da, te F and chaplain.org. And reach out to me directly. And we'd love to have a conversation this is this is my role in the organization is to kind of help explain to people what we do and how we do it. And we're happy to present to the entire leadership team or just the sole entrepreneur, entrepreneur owner, if you want to, you know, we do deal too, with a lot of companies. As you get larger, there may be you know, family members involved or whatever, we're happy to come along and talk to everybody. Our second, third fourth generation will talk to all of them.
Gary:And we will put those links in the show notes too. And also your LinkedIn. We'll put that Yeah,
Jason:sure. Thanks. Appreciate it.
David:If you're if they wanted to get in touch with us, how would they do that?
Gary:If they want to reach out to us, they can email us at Hello at the big pixel.net. If you have any questions or comments, you could put those below this video in the comment section or reach out to us on social media.
David:Well, thank you so much, Jason, for joining us. Appreciate your time spent.
Jason:Yep. Gary. David, thank you for your time. I'll go have a great rest of your week.
Gary:Yeah, it was nice meeting you.
David:All right. Well, we will be back next week. Thank you guys so much.
