o to over we've actually just acquired two locations up in the mountains so we're over I believe like 150 employees now so we have quite a success story but you really have to look at the overall culture very family oriented very work hard play hard culture and I really like that because I feel like it's a good balance we don't have that corporate culture but it's still a very well driven well developed team and so forth in company culture so you really have to think about that overall how that individual is going to fit within that culture and sometimes and you know I've and I've learned over the over experience here over the years that sometimes a person is not going to fit in the culture and that's okay they'll fit maybe someplace else so kind of I gotta know your company culture and know that individual to see if they'll they'll fit in with your company so as far as the team goes you know we're talking about the individuals that you're looking at as far as to hire and kind of some key attributes and so forth but what I also like to think about as I mentioned before is to talk about how they're going to balance out or work well with the team like I said my Lewisville team is a little different my Fort Collins team and yeah could they work at both locations and do they absolutely but I definitely can see day and in doubt that those two teams are different and that's okay that's kind of what keeps each each location kind of moving forward and yeah do we have perfect days right now in this industry it's crazy you know with with COVID and everything our business is going to gangbusters but definitely it's a balance as far as far as to find that personality and to get that team all balanced together so again you know it's important to have being introvert and as far as the sales role but you don't want I'm sorry it's important to be an extrovert in the sales role but you don't want all extroverts it's a good balance to have some people that are a little more subdued you have to have that good personality mix as I mentioned here and you want to be able to you know when one person's having a bad day the other person can pick them up and so forth and so on so you got to have that that mix that really keeps the team motivated and keep each other going because as kind of a sales manager a market manager per se I can't be at both locations at all times they need to be self motivated and managed themselves and like a lot of times we have customers or clients they may call in and I want to speak to a manager well I've empowered my sales people to be able to answer the question and take it upon themselves if I'm not available to to address that customer with a concern and so forth so it is definitely finding that mix that that person that can take charge but also the person that can call me or the person down and so forth so a big thing is I also as far as a team member when I am bringing in new sales people I can make sure to get the team's input I make sure I introduce that candidate bringing in someone to the whole entire team to kind of get their their field as far as their personality and make them involved in the process because again I'm not there all the time and in one particular location that individual is going to be have to be working with the whole team day in and day out so you want to make sure you get the buy-in and the support from your team members because they're going to be working with them every day so it's important to have like a team effort even in the admin side I just recently brought in a new admin gallon or Lewisville location and I made sure that we had some sales team members that were part of that interview it's important because they're supporting that individual is supporting the team day in and day out and they have to be able to work well together so that's a really important to have input and make sure that you have buy-in from all team members and again I wanted to reiterate the culture sometimes you just know you know when you meet an individual as far as the team they're just not going to be part of the culture and you have to have that location or that team in mind as far as how they're going to work well together as well as the overall company culture and you'll pretty I mean if you ask the right questions as far as an interview you can you can know that pretty quickly so make sure that you're you are aware of the kind of the culture you're you know talk with your team beforehand and kind of know what individual you're looking for and how they can best move forward with that so as far as team development again this is something that's I take a lot of pride in but again it's a work in progress no one's perfect I like I said I took on this role and this new role in the company last fall kind of in the in the middle of COVID per se so we were we were mostly in our showrooms but we all work so also we're working remote so it's important as far as to have that communication but I think a big thing as far as team development once you get the right candidates you want to make sure you know your people both in and out of the office I'm not saying you have to be best friends with somebody because there can be conflicts of interest there as far as you know knowing all personal aspects of the individual but I really believe in having fun at work and also like taking the team out outside of the work the stress environment and getting that everyone together to kind of create that team morale and see everyone outside the environment that we're in all day so I really strive to kind of know some of my sales sales teams they're they're families they're kids you know many of the sales teams that have had growing families had new new babies and you just want to make sure that you're supporting that of course you know if they have a healthy home life and personally they're happy then they're gonna they're gonna come to work and be really happy about that too so you want to make sure to know them on a personal basis and be able to encourage them because that's that's one really important thing as far as I think that COVID has taught us is really the relationships as far as in business and in the team aspect is getting to know your your team so they're there to support the company and support you as a manager as well so and that gives you a lot of I believe that once you have a good team they know that you have their back and you know that they have your back and vice versa so again I think it's important to give them some earned autonomy I don't believe in micromanaging I know that's hard sometimes because I like to kind of get things done and take charge but we really and that's a big thing within our company we really instill as far as our sales people to manage their business they work a lot with builders large production builders kitchen designers that have all sorts of projects and so forth so we really instill them to manage the sales process from the start to the end you know when they first come in our showroom or they first start their project with building their house all the way to the delivery installation and even follow-up service so really I empower them to manage their sales people or their customers and involve me as needed as far as support them but it's really important that they feel like they have gotten they get the empowerment and be able to manage them things themselves without me you know controlling everything they do so I feel that they have my support and I I believe if listen everyone makes mistakes but I know that if they need support I'm always there to help them so I always try to also encourage collaboration not competition but I think in sales it's kind of it's normal and it's kind of a part of the sales process as far as competition we do have our top sales people but also again to kind of create and encourage collaboration within the team that's why I think that kind of going back it's good to have both you know in and out of the office activities and kind of team building events to actually encourage that because competition is good but we want to make sure that we're including everybody in that and everyone's part of I'm part of that and rally around performance you know we've had a lot of success you know have we been perfect over the years absolutely not do we stumble from time to time absolutely but we do strive day in and day out for great customer service for a great customer experience and I think that's important as far as to to really encourage the good performance and you know congratulate salespeople as they perform well or have a good we have good you know a good reporter a good review we regularly do have reviews that we do look at on Yelp or on Google and we make sure if we do have a positive review we make sure to reward our salespeople with a small gift card and just say hey thanks for the good review because as you guys know reviews go a long way and so it's all about encouraging that and then you know one salesperson sees that oh they're getting a great review and they've got a little you know gift card oh I want to do a good review so it encourages that collaboration that you know positive performance and again and you know as far as sales it does all come down to clear communication and metrics we do have sales goals you want to make sure you're regularly meeting with your sales team and talking about those goals and so forth you want to make sure that they know what's well know what's expected of them and be able to um kind of follow up with them and on a regular basis that's really important and again a communication that goes back to expectations and following up with them you know I believe and kind of on a side note if there is you know something as far as a negative experience that comes out I believe in you know positively approaching them and then talking about the negative aspect or negative review and then ending it in a positive so it's that positive negative positive feedback that I believe that people really do react with kind of again going on as far as some extra things find coachable people I think it's important to find people that are want to be a part of your team that want to grow that want to have that income potential but also that want to learn I mean no one's perfect everyone is you know makes mistakes day in and day out I know I do and I want someone to be able to tell me hey Laurie maybe think about doing it this way next time and I want sales people on my team to think about that as well it's not always their way so again a big thing too kind of moving forward here lead by example I believe I don't have a per se desk or an office at my showrooms I do sit with my team in our Lewisville show and we've got a sales bullpen and then our showroom is where we meet with clients and so forth it is more of a destination showroom but I actually sit in the back with my sales team I really feel like that's the way I can kind of get to you know kind of hear what's going on day to day and be a part of it and kind of give my guidance and also they can hear kind of what I you know what I go through in a day to day and in day out basis but I think that it's if you lead by example they're going to say oh Lori you know she is not going to sit back in her her office as a manager she's going to be with the team here in the bullpen so I definitely feel like leading by example is a huge thing and it's been successful with us sales partnering I highly recommend like talking about the introvert and extrovert having sales partners and maybe team up you know I've got about 10 people or so in one showroom and seven or eight people kind of pair them up knowing that they have different personalities they can learn from each other I think it's a great way to develop a team and again kind of going back higher for culture cultural first that's a big thing you got to know your culture both in within your team and maybe different from showroom to showroom by location to location but overall the company culture and again relationships sales and building the sales team is really about relationships you know you want to get to know the individual personally but you want to be able to relate to your team members and develop them so you make sure you have a great culture a great team overall so and that goes for both internally within your company as far as a team but also your customers that you deal with day in and day out you want to make sure you're building those relationships and getting to know that person because that's a big thing with me I want to you know you never know who you're going to meet in this world or in this industry that may know someone and know someone and so forth and may need appliances those remodeling their kitchen or building the house and it's really all about relationships that's really important as far as developing your team and kind of moving that forward so again kind of just to summarize here I really believe that kind of teamwork makes the dream work strong teams are built on encouraging autonomy and I've always said throughout the presentation here our culture is a big thing both within your team and also in your organization so know that culture be able to hire an individual based upon that culture get to know that individual before bringing them on a little plug here for specialty appliance as I mentioned before we are here in business for 20 years it's really exciting we have three kind of destination showrooms around the the Colorado front-range area we do actually have a warehouse down in Colorado Springs as well and warehouses in Denver we've actually moved up to like I said the mountains we do have a location moving over to the specialty appliance family in Avon and Basalt but as well as I cover the Lewisville and Fort Collins so if you have any questions my information is on here a little fun little another plug is we do have a mobile showroom this is actually kind of like a big thing these days here in Colorado the food trucks we don't consider this a food truck but it's actually a mobile showroom we have a live appliances on it for example if you're around in Lewisville this summer on Friday nights we're at the Lewisville street fair we've got this trailer there we've got our barbecue going we've got all of our appliances so come and see us at the Lewisville street fair but it's a lot of fun and again it's just it's showing that appliances are more than just appliances it's an experience and hope you'll feel that when working with us and so forth so I hope that was informative today talking about finding the right salesperson and developing the team but I also wanted to end here if you all listened yesterday to my girlfriend Maggie who I mentioned before with Arc thrift stores I want to see I don't know if you have any out there if that you guys can mention she had put it out to this presentation today if anyone is responded to the hey girl hey challenge a Maggie oh there's Maggie yeah and we also have Lloyd oh okay awesome hey girl hey sweet well so with that we're going to continue this on this week here at Lionmont startup week so if you join us tomorrow afternoon when Laurie Jones moderates the afternoon sessions from noon to three if you type in hey girl hey in your responses you will get not only a $20 arc gift car but also a $50 gift card from specialty appliance so please join us we're kind of talking about how word of mouth is very impactful in business and so definitely join us tomorrow for the presentations and say hey girl hey in your chat and you'll be able to win those gift cards so I just wanted to throw that out there but thanks so much awesome thank you Laurie that was wonderful and okay we have a couple questions from the audience here or Eric and Laurie the first question is would you please describe your best suggestions for motivating someone who may be less than enthusiastic and a sales position well that's a thing I actually have a personal experience with right now because motivation I mean I'm always kind of a positive and on the go person but I would kind of say maybe sit them down and kind of talk about as far as being motivated maybe you know sit down with them and talk about what does motivate them there are always maybe different things and maybe there's something going on in the individual's life that you're not aware of and maybe this position for example as far as the sales role isn't the right fit you know talking about culture and really trying to understand what their background is versus you know the direction of your team and where you want this individual to go but I would really recommend sitting down with individual and kind of seeing what what motivates them and what gets them going and see if that aligns with your goals and if not then maybe we need to you know readjust and examine their position within the company all right and Eric do you want do you have anything to add to that or oh I'm sure I'll add to it you know I say somewhat tongue-in-cheek that I'm not a people person and what that means is that you know my where where I focus is a lot on what I call the structural elements of an organization and sometimes from my own experience when I'm when my goals aren't clear for me or when what's being said and what's being done or in conflict those things tend to make me sort of retract and move away from tapping into my own intrinsic motivations so think about think about what's going on in the other parts of the organization that might be contributing to someone's sort of poor attitude yep that's a great point would you say that you are an inbound marketing in your analogy then I do both you do both yeah you do both this is this is outbound this is outbound exactly okay and so we have a question here in terms of the funnel top of the funnel where do you do the handoff from marketing from a marketing team to a sales team start with the buyer's journey for your particular market first figure out what as I mentioned there's a there's a natural progression that your customers are going to want to go through from awareness through decision and depending on the organization or the type of product that you're in that transition point is going to be different as a general rule marketing owns the top of the funnel and as a general rule the sales team owns the bottom of the funnel but there are significant overlaps depending on industry okay great and Laurie do you do you agree do you feel how does that absolutely I mean I I work really closely with our marketing we've got a marketing team as well it's smaller team you know we don't have like you know just a local a local company here in Colorado but we do a lot of marketing events as far as business development but I feel like it's kind of in our world we market and so forth and then that brings our client tell into our showrooms that's when the sales process starts so absolutely I believe that marketing is huge you know we do a lot of advertising and TV and so forth but also like you know the mobile showroom is a marketing opportunity and a lot of times we'll have it actually at our showroom so they can come in and and visit our showroom and so forth so I definitely believe that you know marketing kind of starts the sales process and then it's you know my sales team I want to make sure to develop to you know get that sale and keep things moving forward great wonderful okay and what advice do you have on client retention last question sorry yeah I'll you know so again when we start with personas we recognize what's important to a particular particular customer and when we have a retention team whether that be customer success or customer support whatever words fit for your industry recognizing what those metrics are for your customers and having those tied into the variable comp on what your customer success and customer success customer support and success teams have that will help tie that together pretty nicely okay great all right Laurie anything else no I don't don't think so okay wonderful well thank you guys so much that was a a great team presentation there and I really appreciate your your time so with that we are going to close the morning session up next we I'm excited we have a couple wonderful more sessions this afternoon including one on how far will DIY get you in a hardware development another panel on authentic operational plans for DEI and then we will close up the day with an introduction to employee ownership and then don't forget this afternoon and every every afternoon this week we have our in-person events tonight's events will be from 4 to 7 p.m there's one at the Gross and Bart Brewery and one at the Roost and there's special discounts and yeah different different offerings for for startup weeks so I hope to see you there and lastly a big shout out to our wonderful sponsors Arc Thrift Stores Avisa Communications or Elect Electric Company Longmont Economic Development Partnership Biz West Left Hand Brewery Docket Lee Downtown Longmont High Plains Bank and Handprint Inc Circle Graphics Sticker Giant and Chop 5 Thank you guys so much again for being here today and we will see you next time I started Left Hand Brewing Company at 1265 Boston Avenue in Longmont, Colorado in 1993 I handed it to our team to create this incredible beer we named it 1265 Pilsner after our home We hand crafted this recipe for a light lager elevated by a balance of fresh baked bread and zesty citrus aromas creates the perfect easy drinking Pilsner We designed the 1265 can artwork by hand months ago and are so excited to have it on shelves around the country While this beer is packaging I hand pull a can off the line every 10 minutes test it for quality that way every six pack is perfect I pull our left hand tap handles to perfectly pour you a beer each time you come visit me here at 1265 or you could be like my friend Bubba who likes to chug a beer from his local liquor store Our employee owners lent their collective hands to make this incredible new beer though we all play different roles when we work together we are one hand left hand from our hand cheers cheers When I died it hanged my soul from the star in that old Nebraska sky buried my heart in the soil that kept me alive When I died it hanged my soul from the star in that old Nebraska star I'd open road and won't stop river like a marching band soft face to land Plains like an open hand they can give and they can take bury my heart in the soil that kept me alive Take my soul from the star in that old Nebraska sky I can hear a train cross mark in the time I look about in that old Nebraska sky Take my soul from the star in that old Nebraska sky buried my heart in the soil that kept me alive When I died it hanged my soul from the star in that old Nebraska star I'd open road and won't stop river like a marching band soft face to land Plains like an open hand they can take with the sky bury my heart in the soil that kept me alive My soul from the star in that old Nebraska sky The thunder is rolling in on a summer night the train cry the things built up I started left hand brewing company at 1265 Boston Avenue in Longmont, Colorado in 1993 I handed it to our team to create this incredible beer We named it 1265 Pilsner after our home We hand crafted this recipe for a light lager elevated by a balance of fresh baked bread and zesty citrus aromas creates the perfect easy drinking Pilsner We designed the 1265 can artwork by hand months ago and are so excited to have it on shelves around the country While this beer is packaging I hand pull a can off the line every 10 minutes and test it for quality That way every six pack is perfect Pull our left hand tap handles to perfectly pour you a beer each time you come visit me here at 1265 Or you could be like my friend Bubba who likes to chug a beer from his local liquor store Our employee owners lent their collective hands to make this incredible new beer Though we all play different roles when we work together we are one hand left hand from our hand Cheers Cheers Welcome to our session on how far will DIY get you in hardware development My name is Jenny Loper and I'm the Director of Operations at Zebulon Solutions We primarily work with startup companies and young companies that are looking to develop their product or their concepts and take them into production My particular background is in operations and I have worked in supply chain management and new product introduction manufacturing transition resolving quality issues and manufacturing process development I'm joined with two panelists today One of them is Allison Hughes and we also have Lauren Halford off camera Lauren go ahead and turn your camera on Welcome Hey can you see me Yes we can Good to see you So Lauren as a mechanical engineer she uses data-driven science to drive decision making and systems understanding She's an alumna of the E21 hotels and Fulbright Fellowship Programs She holds a bachelor's degree in material science and engineering from the Oland College of Engineering Her experience ranges from structural sheet metal design on a large-scale solar day lighting product to human-centered design on water quality program in rural India And then Allison for the last two decades has specialized in designing technology that empowers creativity and self-expression Her software has supported audio hardware and many Apple products including Macs, iPhones, iPad and the Apple Cinema Display Currently she's the founder of NCEO Beatrice Forms where they reimagine the apparel design process to fit real bodies I'm so glad you ladies are able to join us today Thanks for having us Yeah thank you So as we get into our discussion we have four topics and I would like to take a break after each section to take questions So the first thing we're going to do is just to find some terms around product development I find that many people don't use the same words in the same way so I'd like to try and just level set that for our discussion today Then we'll talk about why would you do why would DIY your hardware development How far can DIY get you and when do you need to hire an expert So as I said I will take a break after each section just to take questions and get some engagement So we're looking forward to if you have questions go ahead and answer them All right Our background I guess I want to say this from a level set everyone Our backgrounds are all in developing technology based products and we'll be primarily speaking to the inventor types who have a hardware product and want to understand how to get it into the marketplace But that said many of our concepts are applicable to nearly any kind of business So to start off with let's talk about some of the assumptions and myths about product development With that if you want to go ahead and put our slide up in the questions So would you go ahead in the chat answer the questions about have you developed a product before either your own or for someone else When do you think what do you think about I'm sorry one more time When you think about developing a hardware product what do you think you can do for your on your own and where do you think you will need help to develop that product So while the audience answers those questions I'm going to share a little slide that might be helpful to many starting for people who are starting to develop a hardware product I can make this available to anyone who wants it if you want to email me at the end All right do you want to go ahead and put that up So many entrepreneurs I speak with have a very simplistic view about how hardware product is developed they have an idea and they get it patented and get a concept built and then want to go straight to production They overlook the many intentional erasions that are needed to refine the product and ready it for production Regardless if these steps if you do these steps yourself or employ an expert there is a need to think carefully and specifically about how a product is developed and the testing completed to ensure it is a robust reliable and ready for general consumer use So with that let's see what kind of engagement we got and I'm trying I'm looking at I don't see if I see any questions in here but that's okay We will just keep going All right So let's talk about why why would we try and develop a hardware product on our own and I mean this probably needs the least amount of discussion because of the most obvious answer lack of funding you can't pay someone else to do it but what are some reasons why people would choose to do things for themselves instead of hiring an expert Would you like me to answer? I'm sorry it's either to you either to you or Lauren to get along I'm gonna start here sorry it's a little bit of a delay so I'm gonna go ahead and talk without the headset There's a lot of reasons why you might be interested in building your own prototype and I'm you know I'm using the word prototype I'm not talking about later iterations but getting started it might make sense if not just to save money but to explore the component features one at a time and that's really easy in the many cases to do yourself when you are trying to figure out the kind of business that you want to start what is the product and who are your customers because in the end you're trying to build a business that will be sustainable and viable and a lot of times you have to do some exploration to even know whether it's worth it to start at all so I wouldn't jump straight into hiring expensive experts just to explore some of these basic questions like is this really a problem that my customer segment has and I think that it's a lot easier to explore these things with physical objects and watching people's behavior than it is to just ask questions because a lot of times when you're just speaking with people you can only get limited information it might be kind of biased so I find it easier to watch people interact maybe with just a small piece of your product idea or it might you know just to kind of break it down into pieces you can only get so far with that but I think that that is a worthwhile pursuit I agree with that and I would add you can also be learning about the landscape that your product is in or maybe the tech that might be that your product might be fitting in amongst and then one bad reason to DIYs that you don't know how to find an expert which is a you know a real thing but it's not a reason to keep going DIY if it's the only reason it's because you can't find somebody or don't know how to find somebody and that's a really great point about how do you connect into the ecosystem and find people that can help you in your area you know one I think Alison touched on this about some of the long-term objectives to the business and so like if your long-term objective is to run a business or sell a business or even just sell the idea how does those business objectives influence the DIY Alison, do you want to take this one? Well I think that when you are I think that the first thing unfortunately I wish it wasn't the case but the first thing that you have to think about are finances and to do that you know that will take some internal exploration but like Jenny said your objectives with the business can be very different like for instance the business that I'm running which is custom dress forms from iPhone scans we knew that we wanted we were able to bootstrap and we were not interested in securing VC or any external investment and in terms of selling the business that was pretty far off so we actually had a longer time horizon we knew that we were going to go slowly but moving forward so for us we had time to prototype ourselves and DIY it we also happened to have the technical background so it made that decision really easy but you know if you have an idea that has to scale very quickly to even test whether it's viable or not so you're going to be taking external investment or raising capital some way you may need to move a lot more quickly so the DIY question kind of you know you don't have endless time to teach yourself some kind of programming language or how to set up some kind of embedded system if you're doing IoT or something like that so I think that plays a huge role so Allison when you set your business up were you giving thought to what your exit strategy would be or were you focused on just getting to being revenue positive we were definitely more focused on just being revenue positive so we wanted to get a product into the marketplace fairly quickly but again I hesitate to use our example for everyone out there because we you know I had you know nine years at Apple and hardware engineering and my partner had seven at Apple in software and is a mechanical engineer by trade so for our product which was half software half physical product it was a no brainer we could get that up and running pretty quickly to get an MVP out there that's a minimal viable product to start selling because to me that's the ultimate validation of your idea and if you are doing a self-funded bootstrapped business you have to get to making money real quick so for us it made a lot of sense to do it that way yeah thanks for going into that when you when I'm thinking about like how has DIY been beneficial to your business you've touched on a little bit about the skill set you brought into the business but could you span a little bit more about how you've been able to do it yourself and your benefit your business has benefited from it um let's see how has our business benefited by doing it ourselves well we have a lot of control and we're able to to pivot very quickly as we learn things and honestly if you come from a technical background of any type or you're a maker like this is like your dream come true right you're like this is my opportunity to build and as a curious maker engineering type we you know this is like the whole reason we started the business I mean honestly the problem needs to come first so I actually have a background in home sewing and sewing clothing for myself so I had a personal passion for the industry and the customers and so that you know all that together with my background it made a lot of sense for us to to DIY it what are other advantages that's a great question and I think that we're able to feedback information really quickly into our iterative process in development so one of the things that if you are to outsource these things the schedule of like turning around changes that you're learning from your audience from your customers or whoever you're testing with takes longer to feedback into it so we had a very very tight feedback loop so if you're a if you're a follower of like the lean startup I feel like we were able to follow that model very well and have very tight iteration cycles so it helped us to develop a lot faster and be in tune with our users again like I'm you know I'm an engineer but something that's missing a lot in engineering is contact with customers and a real empathy for customer experience because you can try to imagine all day long what your users need or want or how they work but you're going to get it wrong because your imagination is never as good as watching people and learning from people actually using the product now Lauren she's an expert over here at testing and this is the a lot of the mindset that in expertise that she's bringing to the table but um you know you as a if you're a a solo founder or just you know someone getting started you may not have that expertise so you you got to really lean on your audience and your clients to to really learn that so I think that that is one of the advantages and just having a deep understanding of how the product works but that only gets you so far as Jenny knows and Lauren knows um when you get to manufacturing then it's a whole different ball game I want to add to that really quick because I I completely support everything you said about listening to your customers and get the product into their hands and I want to emphasize part of that so you build your prototype you get it out in the real world you get it out with a customer and then they test it and the critical part is you got to listen to them like you got to hear what they're saying and take it in and if you feel that defensive monster if somebody reveals something that's not great about your product you feel that defensive monster inside you take a breath that's the critical feedback you got to take in so true yeah it's a great point to bring up thank you Lauren you know I I like Allison that you said that you almost perfectly positioned because you had a passion for the this new industry you were going into because it came out of kind of a hobby in an interest that you had but then you also had the technical and the engineering a skill set to really do it that I think that a lot of entrepreneurs are not as necessarily perfectly positioned as you've been and you've mentioned that so yeah so all right is there any questions from the audience relative to why would we do something ourselves instead of hiring an expert I'm going to give that a couple seconds here and see if anything comes up if not our next topic is to how far do we take DIY and I'll give you a second to think about the next question is that what needs to be done to refine an idea and and related to that or what kind of professionals are you going to need so I think if you want to go ahead and start one of those questions that would be great you want to go first Allison uh sure let's see to refine an idea well I'm going to go to you know like engineers or software people we like to start with zero so that would to me the refine the idea is one zero is should I be doing this at all and so I I think that the were you talking about the first first time you spend money or we're still in not yet this is still what needs to be done to really refine that idea and the general process as a whole okay so I still would start with step zero and talk I want to just just really drive home that that user validation piece and just under make sure you understand the problem that you're solving very intimately and then and then the the the refinement I think I touched on this a little bit before but it is about so we were talking about building your first is a proof of concept so you're going to be putting together a piece of hardware that just shows that you can actually make it right and do that feature like can can you build the feature that you're that you're exploring or thinking about because if you can't build it it's difficult to test or to put it in front of people although there are exceptions to this and I I want to take the opportunity to point this out right now there's a method called concierge and even with a hardware product you can test certain parts of the of the idea without actually building anything that's technical if you're a non-technical founder so an example of this is we did some consulting with a company called track pacer and what their idea was is it was a string of LED lights that go around a track like a 400 meter track and this would different color lights would go at a different pace so you could follow these lights and pace your running and one way you could prototype that and do one iteration without building anything is to have somebody wear a red t-shirt and another person wear a blue t-shirt and they run the paces on the inside of the track and people follow it and I know that sounds really sounds maybe amateurish but it actually is not you could learn a lot about like well what kind of how would people use it how do they respond to it is it like something that's even needed at all or are there going to be issues with having the different paces I don't know what the issues are but I'm just saying you can concierge so that may be the step zero that I was talking about but then so the next step is okay can I build this at all like a feature and then is MVP and MVP is a step farther in that it has to be a working piece of hardware that the flaws don't get in the way of testing the product right it has to be that's what they mean by minimum viable at least that's what I take it to be and you can actually you know use it as a full product maybe it doesn't have every single feature in it but it has enough to to get started and get some and when I say feedback I don't mean like sometimes clients give or customers give feedback like you need to fix X and it's valuable but most of the time it's not like that most of the time it's about like feelings and you observing people because you're not they don't have the fix they just know how they feel and how it's quote working for them and so you have to you need to listen deeply and not be defensive but you also have to listen for the high level take homes and then you're the innovator so you're the one that's going to figure out the fix because they're going to have a million features for you they're going to be like oh yeah you got to add this and you got to add that and you got to add this other thing and you know you can't do all that so you have to understand the essence of the product and sometimes that feedback might even be it should be less than it is so that's what the refinement process is about and you want that loop to be as tight as possible and I think yeah I think that's awesome and then after the MVP after you've been through all of that and then you've made got the essence you've figured out how to innovate to solve that essence and you've added that back into the product you might call that alpha or maybe not quite yet but once you get to that point then you're going to be testing it you're going to take it out in the real world you're going to drop it on the concrete or you're going to you know put it in a hot car or you're going to do all these other things that are going to stress test your product and then you'll have to fix all the problems that that reveals and then that might put you somewhere at like beta if you remember Jenny's original graphic so I think that's great that you guys have really touched on already some of the steps involved but then also everything you've talked about you can do yourself you don't have to hire an expert necessarily to do this but breaking it down into base elements and figuring out what needs to be understood and tested in part of the design I know that one thing that we've done has been to at the end of like kind of the MVP or in the middle of the MVP is have something that maybe functionally what you want but it doesn't look like the final product and then also have something that looks like the final product but it doesn't have any function to it and so that you're able to kind of break apart the electrical from the mechanical aspects of the design and then get some feedback on it and that is good that people have that electrical or and mechanical background right if you don't have that then you're going to have to find somebody with it okay all right this one other thing is that we ought to talk about what what kind of professionals are needed through the design process or even through building a business I'll jump in here unfortunately I know that I feel like I'm the deliverer of bad news today no don't get discouraged don't get discouraged it's just you know you got to bring out your grit and and get in there one of the first professionals I really think that I mean this is my personal opinion but I think you should hire a lawyer and the reason why is we're getting into the world of patents and just protecting your IP and depending on your strategy if you're looking to do an exit or get investment it's very important that you consider this very very early on because if you have a disclosure too early it could jeopardize the potential for those IP protectors the patents trademark how trade secrets whatever you're doing so you want to kind of iron that out very early on it's worth every penny do not skip that step and then when it comes to technical profession if it's an engineer or a product designer or even product testing mechanical electrical whatever that is I would actually recommend that you hire one expert that has a hardware background that can advise you on what to do next so instead of this person doing technical work for you at first they're more of like an advisor on how to approach this because some of this stuff you might be able to do yourself with some expert guidance and you are a lot cheaper than that expert that you're going to hire so to kind of maximize this now not all people experts technical experts are going to be wanting to work this way but they are out there that's when I was doing consulting with little barn industries our consulting company we actually did offer that service so that helped and then you can they can help you do your hiring right because how would you verify or validate that you're hiring the right professional and they have the expertise that you need right you don't even know you're totally brand new to this area how would you hire somebody so you can hire this initial person on a very short-term basis right because it doesn't take a lot of time in terms of hours to give you this advice right because you can pull on their network and they can make recommendations and then perhaps help you to interview so that would be my piece of advice especially if the budget is tight and if you have time because what we're talking about is the mentor or expert comes and has a big picture of you of the landscape of this technology and they can give you some really good advice and then you have to do the legwork to reach these milestones that they've sort of set out for you so but it's a it's a very cost-effective but time-consuming way to go Yeah I think that's a good point to bring up Lauren that it's that you do have to fully develop the idea or at least get it down the road more so I guess related to that how do you see inventors not developing an idea far enough before they either hire an expert or try to rush into production or taking it to market I guess one of the things Yeah I think the people that I've worked with who fall into that category it was a case of they don't know what they don't know so they weren't aware that how much work there is between the MVP and the production how much development has to happen how much how advanced the CAD needs to be or the electronics design needs to be meaning you've built you've tested you've iterated I think yeah I don't know what would you have to add to that Alison um um I think that that's you know I to be perfectly honest like I've kind of been on two ends of the spectrum in terms of the process so my specialty is more very very early stage prototyping to MVP and then working at Apple I was at the very end like having more mature manufacturing processes and hardware in place with a very structured way of doing things so I feel like I'm not as much of the expert here in between I think maybe Jenny might have something to add here yeah should answer my own question I'm sorry it's a good idea I would say in my experience that a lot of entrepreneurs come in or inventors come in with a pretty developed idea sometimes they have spent some extra time getting it through a pretty robust prototype but I think if you remember the slide that I put up at the beginning it's not been refined and narrowed down to being really something that you can take to a contract manufacturer to have quoted out I've seen that repeatedly where you might have the CAD done you may have even the electrical CAD done but there's no drawings that go with it there's no assembly instructions there's it's missing a lot of this documentation that is going to tell someone how to do this I actually have talked to one entrepreneur who said that their best approach was going to be just to take videos and send videos to the production line the reality is is that the operators on the production line are not going to sit in a conference room and watch a video about how to assemble something that video is going to have to get converted into work instructions whether they're electronic work instructions with images on a screen with a few words associated or if it's going to be a document but either way there's going to be some additional hardware that needs to be done the other thing and Lauren we've talked about this a lot is it has to be a lot of testing because if you don't test your product your customers are going to test your product and so you want to find out what's wrong with your product ahead of time you want to make sure that it lasts in the environment that you're planning it to be used in that it if someone drops it it doesn't break the first time that if you're going to be working in an outside very hot environment or a very wet environment that is not going to have issues related to environmental exposure I thought one thing that we've done quite a bit has been with ingress testing and making sure that the electronics are staying dry when an item is going to be used outside or even in a humid environment and so I think it's these types of things that well the concept may be ready to go it's really has to be hardening it before you take it into the field because you don't want your customers to doing this life testing for you or you're going to ruin your brand and you really only have about one shot at getting something into the market and getting a brand recognition out there because you don't want your brand to be killed because of quality issues Can I jump in on the testing piece everything in my career this this idea has been reinforced you do not want your customers testing your product and this is where you know we're by the time you're getting to manufacturing we're talking a very large investment we're not talking about those early stages like ten thousand dollars fifty thousand we're talking a million dollars you're trying to set up tooling this is huge investment and so when you get to this point you have budget you've already raised capital whatever you need to get this off the ground spend some of that capital on professional QA do not skimp on this this is not to me that is not a DIY activity when you are that close starting manufacturing you can't do not take that risk quality assurance is not like this little last minute thing that you do at the very end this is something that you're doing you start yourself but you need to bring on professionals because there are tried and true methodologies for doing this and just like Lauren said you don't know what you don't know and trust me there's so much that we don't know like as an engineer I cannot tell you how many times QA save my butts on something very high profile very expensive once you're in manufacturing oh my gosh line down I don't care if you're doing a very small operation it's expensive and you have to retool something change the layout on something holy moly you will totally regret not doing the QA properly so hire professionals for that absolutely you know I and Lauren I'm going to jump in really quick and then I'll let you answer but one thing that I see related to that is that there's a common statement about hardware is hard and I think that you've touched on the primary reason for that is that you're not testing product and you're having to go back and reiterate at very expensive rate Lauren I cut you off I'm sorry so I was just agreeing I mean we're talking about these molds that you know could be $5,000 could be $40,000 and you're talking about cutting into hardened tool steel that is not something you want to say oops we got to move this we got to change that that's not the time to do that absolutely we do have a question from Luke I'm going to go ahead and just read this and then you guys and engage with it so is it easier to research existing solutions and getting them to modify them versus building it from scratch and what do you see are the advantages I'm a shameless poacher of other people's ideas they're yeah there's so many people that are thinking really clever thoughts and putting things together and if you can just cherry pick out of that hodge fudging something new I think you save yourself a lot of time and you you're really standing on the shoulders of of giants the other thing is you should always be surveying the existing landscape in whatever technology or industry you're in by looking at comparable solutions and things that you can just purchase off the shelf you're basically doing a survey of what's out there pretty much I doubt that most of you out there are starting like trying to come up with a new algorithm or a new like something that no one's ever thought of before what you're probably doing is putting together a few existing pieces of technology to solve a really novel solution right a niche for a certain group of people and doing it in a unique way it's usually not the technology itself the pieces that you're inventing from scratch so it like I I almost think like always do that there's very few cases I mean I guess there's some geniuses out there they they're going to you know come up with a new algorithm new math for something but usually there's a piece of software that's out there the other thing is I always try to delay as an engineer you're always like I want to just make everything because that's like the thing that gets you excited but really you should make nothing you should make the least amount of stuff as possible and just start testing your idea like fast and cheap that's what you want to be in the beginning and then later put the money behind it when you're more sure of the business concept and you have some proof then you go full force then you that's when I'm talking about dropping the real money on like testing properly QA like hiring the professionals to do your life like get the professionals to lay things out like I know how to lay out a board but you know even my I had like a personal project I paid and a hard a you know a silicon person to lay my stuff out like I can I can hack it but I'm going to make mistakes so anyway sorry to to beat that horse to death but I think it's good because like if you can get like let's take a physical thing an off-the-shelf widget that does half of your product that widget is already cut in hardened tool feeling it's already at you know scale what's it called when it's cheap because there's a lot of it I forget the word economies of scale yeah it's already at a con it's already had a ton of QA like it's a solid little piece and if you can just do your piece on the side of it then you a lot of money thank you for answering that I think you look for the question let's go ahead and go into our next section around when do you need to hire an expert so we've touched on this before we don't know what we don't know but when you know that you don't know what you don't know what do you do at that point I think that you can I would recommend and it's just personal my personal way because I'm pretty cheap as a rule so I would do it myself as far as I could hit a wall think oh I can't get any farther myself and then the next thing I would look for as a mentor so that's sort of like the next level up and maybe it's free maybe it's through like a startup community maybe it's someone you pay for on a limited engagement like Allison was talking about with her company and then you see if you can get farther with that so that person is telling you all right go that direction then you run that direction you do the legwork you get as far as you can if you run out of time if you if it's way beyond your skill set then go out in the marketplace and engage a consulting firm in whatever discipline you're stuck in and I think that that's you know the sort of stepped approach totally agree with that all right good well covered Lauren all right then we've already talked about like the first professional we would hire is a lawyer what is one professional beyond the lawyer that you would always hire well I think it depends on what you're building when I guess is this conversation just limited to hardware because if you're a lot of times hardware involves other things so if you did a hardware product these days there's probably software involved somewhere maybe and then maybe product design so you may have industrial design you have your enclosure you may have mechanical that kind of goes with the with the industrial so you it it it can be it really depends on the product like Lauren was saying it's kind of like when you hit that wall and you know the you've already done a lot of legwork already so you have an idea of where you're headed to and you know that like so one of the things I learned at Apple and mostly you know this but it's good to just be reminded focus on one thing and do it really really well don't make it so complicated where you need every single one of these professionals what's your number one you know feature the number one first of all what's the problem you're solving and what's the number one thing that you are solving focus on that thing because then if it's just if it's if it's just one aspect like maybe you don't need you know that fancy ID whatever like or you don't need that extra button or those extra two sensors or whatever like the the more you can get rid of and get it down to its essential parts it's just going to be easier then maybe you can get away with hiring one person maybe you only need electrical you know like maybe if it's an electronic device you could just hire an electrical engineer like just to lay out your board and make sure you're you know using these these components properly and pick out the best components to get started like I don't know I just think reduce the complexity get to the essence of your product and that will tell you which expert you need to hire first agreed and in that example if if it's if you can boil it down to you just need an electronic engineer to lay out the board then and let's say you don't have any other skills which obviously you do but let's pretend you don't you can get an off-the-shelf enclosure they have like waterproof not waterproof they have vented whatever you need and just like kind of Lego it into place with all the off-the-shelf parts you can and you could get to a minimum viable product or maybe even alpha yeah we've talked a little bit about testing already but let's talk a little bit more about how do you identify all the corner cases that we need to be tested so that your customers aren't going to be doing the testing for you yes I think that's I think the way you phrase it is perfect because the hard part here is not doing the test the hard part here is identifying what tests you should be doing and for that the question you're answering is like how do we expect this product to fail in the real world and the answer to that is you really need that expertise so hopefully this is core to your product which means it's core to your expertise which means you will have some of that expertise you'll know that it's going to be splashed by water you'll know it's going to be stomped on by a horse whatever it is but if you don't have that expertise you better go find it either a mentor or pay somebody or whatever but knowing what to expect out in the real world and how you need to be testing that is a matter of just yeah having sort of seen things fail yeah and if you've got a firmware component then it's like a whole another set of things that you that you may not be aware of and that is an experience-based exercise I learned so much by being like I didn't learn this from school I learned from being working in a company and seeing things fall over in the way people organize their tests so those edges are not going to be clear to you as a lay person or if you're not familiar I really think this is where you want to get a mentor if you happen to have someone in your network I know I was kind of pushing to pay someone but like let's say there's no budget for that I love the idea of starting to go to meetups and build up your network because that's kind of what I did to start my first project my first project didn't turn into a company because I figured out it wasn't a good business idea but even with my background in industry I benefited greatly from just networking in the local area one of the best resources that we found is go to your local maker space so we use tinker mill here in Longmont and I actually found our electrical engineer there amazing resource you have people doing fabrication there and all sorts of disciplines so you know really take advantage of those resources that you have I mean I don't know if our audience extends beyond Longmont but these these maker spaces are all over the country take advantage wow you can find a lot there absolutely and as soon as you get that mentor to say okay you got to test this at five degrees C and 55 degrees C you've got to test it at 55 degrees C with humidity you know you can mock up all those tests you can you know like I've done we were talking about the rice cooker you just I just put a little Tupperware in the rice cooker turned it on key form and that got to about you know 55 degrees C 95 percent humidity it was a cheap way to do that test that initial test but knowing what to test is the hard part and then you can figure out how to like mock it up ratchet strap yeah big crushing thing we had to we had to get 200 pounds on a product so I stood on it and then my partner went piggyback on me and we like added all that weight and we stood on the thing and that we got 200 pounds on or you know it's more than 200 pounds but you know what I mean you can mock it up it's fun Yeah we do have a lot of fun in the testing area don't we yes it is fun we've got a few minutes left so I'm going to ask our audience if there's any questions that you'd like us to answer in the last part of the session while the questions come in I'll have you guys think about when did you try to do something on your own but either found you needed an expert or really wish you'd hired one I have a quick answer I'll never touch anything legal me too that's something it's there's consequences for screwing that up absolutely yeah I am so with you Lauren that's why I keep talking about lawyers because you really I've seen some bad things happen and even myself I had we had some slip ups and you can't take it back there's no going back like once you do something in the world you know but that question I've messed up lots of times and needed help in fact I used to mess up in my job where I was being paid I worked at Apple and there are plenty of things I didn't know how to do and I needed help and I needed to reach out and that just so you know when you have an idea and you're an inventor or you're a maker you get really emotionally and personally tied to those ideas like this is your identity and so you have to learn like this the quote smart person is actually the one that knows that they don't know and that's a great quality to have and so think of it more as like you're you're just being curious and asking questions like you want to be a pro question asker to for your client your customers these people that these experts you're going to work with so you got that's your job be curious ask great questions can I add one more group to that because that's awesome so your customers what was the other one you said the experts you're gonna the experts hire yes and suppliers all of your suppliers anyone who's machining something for you any boardhouse that's doing board for you whatever feedback they give you listen to it all right one last question on our last 30 seconds here what are the what are new skills you've picked up either to run your business or develop a product should I jump in oh my gosh where do you start oh my god you've only got 30 seconds I'll go 30 seconds oh the pressure's on marketing I know the best one is customer research so had to learn that quickly like how do you do an interview without leading people and biasing them how do you set up experiments to watch people's behavior fascinating stuff loved that learning about that nice awesome I yeah I we don't have time let's go so much so many new skills all right well ladies thank you so much for joining us in this discussion today I appreciated looking at what things we can do ourselves when we really need to hire experts and and how we learn a lot in this in process we're developing a product so I think with that we'll go ahead and talk about what the next session that's coming up it's building an authentic and operational plan for DEI so DEI for those who don't know is diversity equity and inclusion it's a it's a subject whose time has come our panel of distinguished thought leaders and innovators include Betty Artees of Casa Alvarez Ricardo Cabrera of the Latino Chamber Professor Sonia Stovall and Fred Davis the director of culture and diversity for a Washington financial service company they will discuss the dangers of implicit bias the importance of alignment within your company culture best practices for hiring and the roadblocks that may stand in your way if you don't know about the happy hours this afternoon there's two of them between four and seven pm one at the roost and the other at the gross and bart brewery so one of the best things that I enjoy about Longmont Startup Week is getting out and meeting the people and we're glad that we can be back and able to do that again this year since last year was completely virtual so I will be at one of them I'm not sure which one I'm probably the roost but if you have some questions I'd love to connect with you and I can certainly put you in touch with both Allison and Lauren as well if you've got questions for them so I think with that we should thank our sponsors so the platinum sponsors we have this year are the Arc Thrift Stores Avicet Communications Ward Electric Company the Longmont Economic Development Partnership so if you have time and aren't familiar with those companies take a minute and just google them and see how your business may benefit from them with that thank you so much again thanks Jenny thanks going back to where I came from until the harvest comes till of my furrosaurus spread my brothers round I'll be a happy bean in the cool ground going back to where I came from going away this season's long going back to where I came from until the harvest comes the storms and swellings toward the sun and miles to you and we'll be humming with the birds this time next year but if I'm lost and can't be found so my memories in the ground going back to where I came from going away the corn grows tall going back to where I came from as I can never left at all to where I came from going back where I belong going back to where I came from until the harvest went to found her end I'm just a springtime seed tumbling in the wind tumbling in the wind the sun rising through the trees went to found her end I'm just a springtime seed tumbling in the wind going back to where I came from going back where I belong going back to where I came from until the harvest comes till of my fertilizer spread my brothers round I'll be a happy bean in the cool ground going back to where I came from going away this season's long going back to where I came from until the harvest comes I'm just a springtime seed spread the sun next to you and we'll be humming with the birds this time next year but if I'm lost and can't be found so my memories in the ground going back to where I came from going away the corn grows tall going back to where I came from I can never left at all Welcome to our next session of Building an Authentic Operational Plan for DEI and Supporting Diversity in the Entrepreneurial Workforce I'm joined with four panelists today Betty Artez, Sonia Stovall, Ricardo Cabrera and Fred Davis I'm Jenny Loper I'll be your moderator today I'm the Director of Operations at Zebulon Solutions My background is in operational consulting and helping companies take their products really from that final stage of development into manufacturing Zebulon is an end-to-end product development firm and we help with a lot of companies small startups, large corporations take their ideas from concept all the way through into manufacturing I would like to introduce our panelists today I'll start with Betty, Betty Artez She's an immigrant who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and raised and educated in New York City She has been a bilingual educator, government worker, mother, real estate agent, restaurateur and food entrepreneur The longest and most fulfilling role aside from motherhood was the ownership and management of Casa Alvarez Restaurant in Boulder One of the largest and longest running Mexican restaurants but after 20 years the restaurant closed and a new company emerged Casa Alvarez Foods that produces and sells the restaurant's award-winning chili sauces and to retail and wholesale outlets This last venture is a work in progress with some of the same ruling principles as all the other ventures Know your why, have fun and give back We also have Sonia Stovall She's a professor that loves educating people on how embracing diversity creates space for authenticity and innovation for everyone From parents to educators, entrepreneurs to businesses looking to interconnect DEI principles in their mission Sonia earned her diversity, equity and inclusion in their workspace certificate from the University of South Florida's Mooma College of Business She earned her law degree from Creighton University and took her constitutional law seminar with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with whom she respectfully disagreed with about her homework Having taught diversity for nearly 10 years Sonia encourages others to embrace the cultural adventures found in everyday life One of her own diversity adventures involved taking line dancing class in Korean Ricardo Cabrera is a business professional and real estate agent He focuses on helping with wealth building matters from assisting people in buying or disposing of their home their most important asset to assisting on business matters to the Latino Chamber of Commerce and coaching on NAPRO 10 disciplines on wealth creation Ricardo believes in working hard living on less than what you make and investing the difference with the goal of attaining wealth Frederick Davis is an accomplished diversity equity and inclusion professor with experience as a senior leader He acquired his bachelor's degree at Colorado State University where he was a three-year letter-minute football and received his master's degree from San Francisco State University Before starting his current role as the director of cultural and diversity for a Washington financial services company he worked as a senior leader for a tech startup for three Fortune 500 companies as part of their talent acquisition and global diversity and inclusion human resources areas Fred's strong reputation has been built on his educational background work experience drive passion and leadership skills I'm really looking forward to this panel today with this diversity topic and look forward to where we're going to go with us today So we will have four topics in our conversation one briefly looking at the definition of DEI some roadblocks to having a culture of DEI in your organization educating your organization and then how do you hire a DEI community I will take a break for a couple minutes between each of the topics to give you a chance to ask questions So let's go ahead and get into our first topic the definition of DEI For those of you who are watching we'd love to have some engagement from you today So why don't you go ahead and in either in the chat window or in the questions how would you define DEI have you even ever heard of the acronym and then how does this focus on DEI affect you personally if you would mind sharing with us that would be great while you're answering that I'm going to go ahead and ask the panelist who can give us a working definition of DEI today I'm going to go ahead and ask the panelist I'll start off in your chat title by no means do I claim to be the sole personal best for this panel but to me what I truly enjoy about the work around the diversity work is that it's inclusive in this definition I've often said I actually had to just share this with some leaders where I'm at now is that if I do my job right no one's excluded from the work so it's more than just gender and race we're talking about bed status, ability, economic level all these aspects of it and that's the diversity part of it to me and that's to me I have found that to be useful even with those that aren't you can confirm the Kool-Aid if that makes sense Hi I'm Sonia Stovall for me I think in the workspace area the E is almost the most important in this particular acronym I'm it looks like my panelists co-panelists agree with me when it comes to the E in the EDI the workspace equity so that everyone gets those opportunities everyone has that chance to be seen I think is the most important in this acronym on this particular panel they're all very important but when it comes to work equity so that everyone gets that same opportunity is very important I think may I please go ahead and to that point there's an image that I've seen over and over of three young children trying to watch a game on the other side of the fence and one is tall one is medium-sized and one is short and they both they all have access but not equal access so the next image is a box where the shortest one can have the same view and then another box where the medium-sized one can have the same view so as an employer to to provide those boxes so that all of your employees your community have equal access to the same thing you can say yeah everybody's got it but they don't have equal access that's great imagery well I I'll chime in and I'll have to say I cheated because I went on the internet and look up the definition of DEI which by the way is diversity equity and inclusion and what the internet says is that DEI is it's defined as a set of programs that encourage representation participation of diverse groups and diverse groups are include genders, races, ethnicities abilities disabilities religious differences cultures, ages, sexual orientations, diverse background skills and expertise and I think overall access is the most important word to use here so thank you for that Betty because access is you know is limited by many things and including technology financial access technology access physical access maybe I just can't get to a building and all of those things are are our our community's task to elevate the DEI environment thank you for going on the internet and looking at the definition I think that that helped to put the words to the image that Betty gave us so thank you for that what are some of the goals of DEI well as an employer I think the the most important thing is to create a space in your work area or in your company that will attract and retain people of diverse backgrounds in a way that they want to be there that they are enjoying the environment and they can be the best that they can be as productive and that is community building that is incumbent on the employer to build within the organization and in the surrounding community by encouraging volunteer not you know paying your employees to go out and volunteer if that's what you have to do but really encouraging that engagement within the organization and the community and then diverse workers and professionals they'll want to work for that organization and want to elevate it to the best that that could be as well so I think that's a big goal for businesses they're not just not just to be a silo within their own organization but to make an impact on the community that's what they're serving yes I would in addition to that to what was shared I have found especially with the places that I've worked it's kind of a healthy balance between ROI and social justice all right especially now over the last year you know if if as an employer especially for the entrepreneurs that are listening in you know if if if if it would be inauthentic if you just said I want to do this because it's the right thing to do it's our mission but without realizing that there's an ROI to it for example if you're I guess I know the questions are one of the sections about recruiting for recruiting we want to do it we want to cast a wider net to get the best talent you know that's why that's why you want to make sure that we're doing DEI work right for example in regards to products and services and designing innovation that's we can all kind of speak to that a spectrum there but I think once again for the for the audience here be honest you're doing it because you want to have an excellent business you want to be seen as one of the four at the forefront what you're doing you got to have a an authentic holistic comprehensive DEI program you can't do you can't do DEI inauthentically and have ROI on it and have it pay back for you so the question was what are some of the goals for DEI I think working with the Latino chamber and seeing the community development for me is an important goal for DEI whether it's personal economic development that's either an individual or a business I think the ultimate goal for this DEI programs is to elevate community development to be inclusive as the word says inclusive equitable and diverse and you have to be genuine I give you that to be able to do this you can't fake it well I think everyone here has talked about authenticity in some fashion but I think that has to start with you the entrepreneur and the people who are making that mission statement and a lot of that comes from who are you and where are you at in your DEI journey have you faced your own implicit bias do you understand what that is do you have those tools are you discussing that with your co-workers your partners whoever you're either starting up with or in business with where is that coming from it can't just be oh this looks good and this is trendy right now it needs to be this is how we're going to get the best people and then we're going to come up with a plan on how we're going to keep them and we're going to make that part of our operations it's not just going to be on paper and it's just not going to be culture talk it's going to be something that we can follow through with I think you've already started talking a little bit about a potential roadblock that is very hard to be authentic if you haven't done that work yourself and so we have a question coming in actually for you Sonia and I'll go ahead and just read this to you you bring up a great point about working and keeping people realistically we are all dealing with COVID the COVID overhaul is there anything that is free out there that we can do now with employees or people to start a conversation and see if we are all on the same page oh well thank you for the question I certainly appreciate that one of the things I've done for a long time now is teach diversity and criminal justice and that's not just about black and brown people being in in jail which a lot of classes are so to that question one of the first things I do with my class is we do the implicit association test from Harvard that's free you can go online right now and look that up it's called projectimplicit.com I believe or you can just google Harvard implicit bias and that's something that you can do today you can start a conversation with whomever you're with today and I had a police officer in class and he actually talked about how he did this because I made them but you know but it's it's great the students actually really really enjoy it I hope they all do it and those who feel comfortable share and he discovered that he had an implicit association of bias against people who were overweight he was very surprised by that so you'll learn something about yourself and so that's there's a freebie from me to you thanks for that freebie all right let's go ahead and start I'm ready to add that can I just add that there are a lot of free things that you could do by taking the initiative yourself in connecting with people who don't look like you and starting groups like we started a group sharing stories that matter and basically spread the word and scheduled some Zoom calls and people shared stories people of all racism colors and nationalities and it was fascinating to get to know people that didn't look like us and it just opened up so many doors to additional learning and I think that's the piece that we need to understand is that we're always learning that we don't we're evolving and now the doors are so open the floodgates are open and DEI is a buzzword and acronym and all this but it's always been there but now it's at the forefront take advantage and create your own groups that will help you identify how you see people and how you maybe you should be seeing people thank you thank you well let's talk a little bit about roadblocks and get into our next topic so what are the some of the roadblocks that you've encountered or have observed that have hindered DEI I'll start again take it Frank you know it's just been you know it's been a hell of a political four years right four or five plus years and I think the inability for people of different size different perspectives to communicate effectively and to come to a solution has been key right and as I alluded to before now everyone's drinking from the Kool-Aid which is fine but especially if they as they perceive DEI work but I think some of the roadblocks have been some of the things that we've all probably historically but there are some people who just they're cautious about doing it and they want to take it slow they want to pick and choose which aspect of diversity they want to do let's just deal with this for now right because that whole prayer during the day thing that whole LGBTQ that's too much right let's just deal with race and gender and that's it's all or enough to me it's all or nothing right and there's an effective way to do it you can build pillars and then try to build other pillars and each year each fiscal quarter whatever you want to do but to just say I'm never you know we're not going to get to that issue it's just I think it's an effective way to do it and it's going to come back to bite you at some point so those are my roadblocks it's be focused on one area and not constrain the whole yeah and that's me from a kind of infrastructure kind of corporate kind of thing that it's it's embedded and it's tough to break that wall because there's so many people who are holding up that wall you know what I mean yeah I mean from my perspective there is you know fear fear of trying something new maybe one one of the assumptions or that's not an assumption but the point that I want to make is that assumptions are always create roadblocks and the assumption are those things that we don't know we don't know so somebody may have all the intentions to create a inclusive a diverse environment in their business but because of their assumptions they're going to create a gap unintentionally maybe by trying to do good so you know I'm not trying to give you an answer to how to solve it there's always different ways to try to solve that but he always starts with the person right you have to be open to to understand that you don't know everything and sometimes you may learn more than when you think just by trying something get over a fear and just start a conversation start an action and and be prepared for for the reaction because this you know talking about DEI and I can't remember how I was telling earlier is let's see what comes out of this because it's like talking about religion or politics it's very personal it's very subjective and but it's a beautiful thing in the thing in the end I think the fact that we're talking about it here is it's already a step in the right direction briefly just building on what you said about fear and what you were saying earlier well all of you actually so one of the things I have my students do is to overcome their fear and also to have some fun is food food is a great way for you to step out of your comfort zone and meet people who don't look like you who don't come from the same part of the world as you and so I would have kind of a quiz and you'd have to go to a place where you've never been before and I would know because at the beginning of class I would say what are you comfortable with and then I would make you do the exact opposite the whole time but I'm doing that because I'm going to do that myself you know when I took that line dance class and everyone was speaking Korean I did not expect them to suddenly speak English just because I was there or because I was invited they invited me there into their space and so it was for me to be there for me to learn and so you've got to do you've got to do both so if you're looking for an easy way to step out of your comfort zone I say go to your local market food place you've never been you're a little curious about talk to those people they would love to share their story with you roadblock I think it's seceding power I think many people in power are afraid and so that fear like Ricardo said shows up and they will allow up to a certain point but then no more because that will encroach on their power so as a CEO of a company or a startup or you have to look at your own sense of am I willing to share my power and then of course as a as a citizen of the of the world you also have to consider you know am I the majority and if I am I've got so many privileges and then I don't want to give them up so what do I do to hold on to my privileges so I think that like like we've all been saying it starts with the person you need to do that work and see how much you're willing to give up to you have a more inclusive and and diverse company so so Betty I have a surprise question for you it's not on the list okay this so you would you would you consider that this is a two-way street because if you're the majority or the minority DEI works both ways and works in both directions so just like the majority feels some an impart but they have certain things privileges privileges you know the minority you know being you know cultural differences or you know religion whatever the difference is we do live in the majority world and you know even though I'm not discounting fairness and propriety we should somehow learn to ourselves to fit into the the majority world well then you're talking about fitting into the the majority world as you're saying is the the white privileged world is the where most companies operate from you know the boards of directors that the rules and everything else is based on that majority but is that does that work for everybody it works for the people in power how decisions are made you know it's majority rules well does that work for everybody so that's the that's those are the the kind of ethical questions really that we are looking at something you bring up an interesting point is that within business that it is you know there are people who set the rules but then people who are wanting to have changed wanting to have actual effective change within the organization what are a couple ways businesses can address the the roadblocks that have been identified by people who are interested in making actual changes in the organization well one of the ways and correct me if I'm can you just repeat that sure what are a couple ways businesses can address the source of the roadblocks or the roadblocks themselves either way either questions so I think for business as I said early on I think that operationalizing equity is a is a big one and I mean I'm happy to talk more about that later but also one of the things I wanted to bring up and that we spoke about before when we were meeting one another is there's legislation out there that businesses need to be aware of and a simple question could be if I were to come and apply with you right now with my hair the way that it is in a protective style is that seen as professional in the majority heteronormative type world and a lot of people would say no that they wouldn't consider it they would you know they want it to be straight they want it to look as a similar you know they want it to assimilate with the white standard of beauty that the United States has been I don't want to say shoving down our throats for years but it's tough it's tough when that's not when you know everybody doesn't look like Jennifer Aniston and that's okay I think that's great so that's something I think businesses need to ask themselves the first roadblock is obviously you as we've discussed so if I come in and I look like this are you looking at this or do you want to look at my resume that says that I have a law degree do you want to look at my resume that says that I've I've had classes with these you know Supreme Court justices that sort of thing or are you concerned that I'm going to be in front of place and what are your customers going to think so to me that's that's a major roadblock and there is legislation the Crown Act is that anything to that I would I mean to to add to that I would just say collaboration I think sometimes one of the things that that hinders roadblocks is not having that that voice at the table as so as you plan things as you plan to advance to seek to talk to a funding source right for example right for entrepreneur as you seek to bring on new talent someone needs to be at that table say hey did you ever think of this do you ever think of doing it this way did you ever think about reaching out to that source so I think just having that that eclectic set of voices at the table is also beneficial now but you got to listen to it too right there's difference and I always say listen I always say the difference having worked with gang members in Richmond, California I say there's difference between listening and hearing right you hear a gunshot you that but you listen to some you listen to a person and you agree or disagree respectfully right from there and it's a great point that you bring up because we've heard a lot about that you've got to have a seat at the table you've got to have a voice at the table that simply being seated at the table does not mean that you're being heard and so I mean I think that there has to be a willingness not only to have that have you sitting there but also to have you have your voice be heard and contributing in a way that it is making sure so you don't want to have a token person at the table basically is is you want to like you said earlier you know spread a wide net and invite I always I like to use this this kind of image also is not just send invitations to the party once you've already planned the party send invitations out to help plan the party and then you will have engaged planners who will want to stay for the party and invite their friends so it's a very intentional act I think we all have to be very intentional about this authentic and intentional 23.9 and I would say because nothing nothing sucks more than being a DEI person and not having your voice heard right do you really want me here you know you have sometimes you got to say you know for those that are looking to hire somebody or a diversity recruiter or whatever these things that and entrepreneurs do just like are you are you sure right because it's going to entail all these things we talked over before it's not just race and gender it's all these things it's going to take effort and resources and a commitment to do it absolutely hard work is involved in making a change absolutely we do have a question I'll go ahead and read this to you what are practical ways to diversify my personal network everyone I know is like me so I don't know how to attract diversity hires well I think there's friends probably you are doing a lot of hiring I would say starting with some of that language in your you know in the in the ads you know what's that language look like and who was it targeted for if you're getting the same people over and over it's because whether you realize it or not you're angling for a certain kind of person and so there's there's an easy place to start plan the party and invite people to help you plan that don't look like you and you can join groups there are so many ways of you know line dance with Koreans and all you know but there there's so many ways you just have to open up your your doors associations join groups start your own group and really be intentional about it that's really the most important thing well and if I might say the question is asking for some practical correct like things they can maybe do right now some tangible takeaways so perhaps reach out to the black chamber of converse the latin is it like let's you know you know look for groups of asian south asian and ask them you know what does this look like to you give it to them you know can you help me so that way you have other people at the table that you're listening to that are contributing who are helping you create that outline this is my passion for here on the on the getting talent because I think it's I think it's I think it's I think I don't know if we can cut here or not but I think it's crap once people say they can't they can't find diverse talent I think you're not trying hard enough you know we've talked about that before so you know that and linked in there's groups there's 30 something diverse groups and linked in for example right this is what's going to be an expert on stuff we're all trying to do stuff there's also specific platforms based on I use the term community group that you want to reach to so you can actually start posting position descriptions that's what I'm saying because it's been targeted areas once again you're kind of cast a wider net to get the best talent and that's what you know that's the sourcing part of talent right sometimes you're looking on linked in you got to pick up that call you got to find that company you got to say hey you're you're you're you're an ex-person because it's tough to find some of these tech positions right so to post and pray and think that just by putting on your website linked in maybe built in Denver and think it's going to happen it's not going to you're going to have to you're going to have to either be very assertive very aggressive and cold call as well as look at some of these specific platforms and get out there and do so but it's very possible to say it isn't is is you're not trying hard enough would you mind listing a couple platforms because maybe there are people who are watching don't already originally with the platforms yeah I if you give me I'll I'll jot some down and then okay add them to the to the chat but there's I think the things that we just talked about there's the chambers there's other things and then if you want to cast that international national net they're there as well that'd be great yeah yeah so business networks you know you have all sorts of chambers you know I have Latino black LGBTQ this is all Boulder County you have Asian you have you know they're various there's social groups I mean Facebook has a a million groups that's to drop names but you can find somebody there there's another place called meet up and then those are the ones that I know I'm dating myself because there's probably a hundred more that are designed for for younger you know individuals so you know go play soccer if you want to meet brown people or you know whatnot and uh you know so so I love the keyword that you use there that is that you have to be intentional it's just like anything else if you if you want to do it you can make it happen the you know the internet is ubiquitous is ginormous and all you have to do is pick up your phone and speak what you want and you're gonna have a hundred options come up to you on your screen okay great thank you for that I think we're gonna move on to our next topic I think we've covered your blocks the next one is and we started this a bit about how to increase awareness within your organization so before we get into that let's start out with kind of the legal requirements and Sony already talked about this about the legislation that we should be aware is there any other legislation that we should be aware about there that either helps or directly hinders DEI well uh focus on the crown act and so for people who aren't familiar the crown act is creating a respectful an open world for natural hair and the reason this is necessary because maybe people will say oh my god now they're legislating their hair the reason this is necessary is because I myself as a professional woman have had my hair grabbed at work children as young as seven years old are being suspended from school because they have locks or they have twists or their mothers braided their hair or they have some sort of protective style that's been associated with gangs or you know I mean I don't think most seven year old children in school uniforms as this little girl was are probably in gangs so this is something that is important for you as a business owner or an entrepreneur because if I come in and I'm I'm great for front of house you like my style you like the way I'm talking you like my skill set you're not quite sure about my hair and it's not going to look like this next week or the week after that or the week after that then you have to ask yourself like I said previously about professionalism and also know that this legislation is in place so it's not enough just to teach about the microaggressions you know just coming up behind me and grabbing a swath of hair and walking away that's not okay I don't know if anyone told you but you should not touch other people's children my grandmother always said um so the crown act is one of those pieces I think that is it's an easy one and it was passed here in Colorado Governor Polis wore a crown on his head while he signed it and partially for the children that were there because this is this is who we're also doing this for these upcoming generations who hopefully won't live in a world where they're on the playground being licked to find out if they taste like chocolate I'm not saying that happened to me personally oh my goodness does that answer that answers yes question okay and then and with the crown act that's something that you can put together when you're talking about operations does that make sense so if you create operations and let's say that one of your workforce imperatives is let people be themselves then you've got the crown act backing you up and uh you can marry those two things together and create a policy so that it's not just talk it's not just part of your mission statement it's actually part of your operations policy so that there are consequences let's talk about some really practical things I think that he just probably applies to you but what are some actions that you've taken to change the culture within your organization to be more diverse equitable and inclusive wow put you on the spot there's other people yeah no no no yeah that's that's a good one um well I've had several different kinds of businesses I want to say the the restaurant which was the one that tested us the most and um what was what was the question again what's the what are some what what have you done what what have we done what have you done to create this culture within your organization well I think really because I mean I'm an immigrant so um and I grew up in New York city which is like the place where there's people of every every language and color and race and ethnicity so it was not hard for me because as a as kind of like seeing feeling comfortable around different people so really in the hiring practices and that business was in Boulder Boulder is not the most diverse city so I know it's a surprise but we really encouraged the use of different languages we created really an environment where people felt welcome from every walk of life also one I was I was actually thinking about this today and one big mistake I made one time hiring mistake was I mean we had a a Mexican restaurant and this woman applied and she was a little older they had a lot of experience and I was like well you know again you can't you know age is another you know implicit bias but it was you know but she had a lot of experience in and presented herself well and spoke well and all of that so I said okay you know let's you know we always had a little trial period and she was good so about a couple of months into her employment I had a customer complain to me because they told me that she said that she didn't know what a jalapeno was and that just like it was like this bell of wow we are I made an assumption that because this was a Mexican restaurant she would know what this was and you know the training was pretty simple so but it was like a kind of a reverse discrimination kind of thing you know because I didn't I didn't push the envelope further as far as her cultural capability so at that point I realized we need to have all of our staff be totally culturally competent so and so we we sponsored softball team and we also sponsored a soccer team we really created that synergy within the organization so that people felt comfortable and I think that's really that's what you have to do it has come from you you have to work on yourself and then you create that space where people from all walks of life can contribute to your business and contribute positively because they love being there our customers used to say I love walking in here because everybody's smiling and they love they love what they're doing it was like yeah we do so creating that space the space yeah thank you for sharing that any other thoughts on that around how to either what you've done to build awareness or create that culture or change the culture in your place of employment well I'm not an expert in all of that I mean I'm more of an experiential guy right I live in and and that's that's a keyword for me that's one of those KPIs and DEI cultural awareness is an experiential learned thing I can't go tell you to be equitable and understand my culture unless you believe it so you know and I like to think of okay so the assumption here is that we're in the United States talking about you know the majority being the Anglo population then we're the minority here but what if a white guy goes to Brazil you know it's all the same thing but in reverse he's going to learn a lot and come back and be a different individual when he's back and then he'll really understand all of this that we're talking about so you know being intentional in education you know there are professionals out there this question came up a couple of times there are people that do this for a living that can teach us all in different ways how to be understand cultural differences cultural communications you know the word the word the spoken word is also an assumption you know loophole if you want to call it that and you know and and if you're afraid of it go hire somebody they'll be happy to help you out in education and you can you're a minor you know you may be a small business you know I mean it's nice if we have a a large company that can afford this but where are you for a company at five small restaurant of seven employees you know come to one of the chambers and we'll be happy to do something like this for you and and and help you get started at least so you know be intentional and go ask for help you don't have you know we don't know everything and we don't have to know everything thank you for sharing that we do have a question coming in related to this would anyone be able to provide a good example of a workplace imperative using equity I am in the construction business that brings in many cultures I'm not the our Howard Smith our asker so it's what's the first one can anyone provide a good example of a workplace imperative using equity okay well I I will try Howard to jump in here I think so if you look at places that have great cultures for example it's controversial sometimes but Google supposedly has great workplace culture and one of their workplace imperatives is let people be themselves magnify people's strengths so that's something that you can use perhaps as one of your workplace imperatives and then as far as being equitable are you giving everyone the same opportunity to magnify their strengths if someone's got a strength that you read that resonates with you just on an individual level I think sometimes we tend to magnify that person maybe promote them maybe look at them more when you might have someone else who has a strength in an area where you're weak and you need to magnify their strength as well and maybe that's something that doesn't resonate with you because culturally it's different from you but that's just something for you to take a look at so that could be a workplace imperative magnify your people's strengths and recognizing that things that are culturally different from you may be a huge asset to your business I have to say something now um I think you know what I what I I I really like what you're saying because it's it's about maintaining this culture right that's part of the the work I get to do now and one of the things I'm a big fan of from a practical sense is there's a company out there called Corn Fairy and they have these competencies right and there's 36, 38 or something like that and so as you hire people you can bring those competent you can pick which competencies you want to keep because that's the culture you want to have in your company you also talk about performance you know annual conversations or quarterly conversations with your staff on those same competencies right especially depending on the function area you want them to do and then you want them to develop right so some that I'm going to be a hot and a one out of 10 with all these competencies but you may want to be able to coach them up appropriately because then now you're having quality conversations and and that and I think that's something looking for in construction if someone's hourly and they've got to get in and out that's going to be tough to do but if you can find a way to to spend that time with them especially if you if there's some of that you want to develop into a manager or some more supervisor people that's it's it's well worth it because finding a good manager because more times than not we all probably seen it people get bumped up into managers because the heart is working per person and more knowledgeable in that area that doesn't necessarily mean they should be managing people right that's true good performances not necessarily mean they should be promoted sometimes they're best suited just for the job that they have but all right well in our last section we've got just a few minutes here to talk about how to build a DEI community within the organization let me look over the questions here for a quick second I think probably the best way to do this is from a again asking what we've done from our experience what are some of the actions that you've taken to build bridges across different groups within an organization yes Betty well one of the organizations that is is pretty prominent in Boulder is intercambio and they've created talk about building bridges they've built bridges and really getting involved with them in their fundraising they are a non-profit and in their events helping sponsor events that was a huge thing for us they it not only it brought us together with this other community through that bridge building and I think that's what would be worthwhile for any organization to find a group non-profit that they could help sponsor events or really get integrated in that community I think it really would be helpful so building bridges that's one of our vision statements of the Latino Chamber but I'm going to look at my notes here because I wrote some answer a part of an answer for that so I would say that you know again you have to be intentional you have to want it hard enough that you're going to make take actions on it I would say that you know the importance of community engagement you already said that and and ask yourself your business reflect your local community proportionally because older count is going to be different than somewhere in California or somewhere in Minnesota right so you know if if you can just look around and say okay my business looks like my community that's a good starting point because it'll it'll start all the conversations and all the issues that we've mentioned here today is you know being diverse you have to start right being diverse and if you don't know you know if your assumptions are are there so you don't know what you don't know then at least if you have the diverse group then you can start inviting people to plan the party and I you know one of the things I I was jotting as I was getting to hear the team members here we could talk about is you know I talked like bias training ERGs I also had you know thinking about when with with startup folks there's the incubator and the accelerator which allows you to network right if you would hopefully if for those you'd get accepted into one of those is really top tier ones is accelerator or incubators you know should you may want to check their diversity right you want to what their what their missions they're going to help you get started there might be some funding involved but if if you really want to make sure your work as it represents the diverse client base that you want as well as maybe a staff you may want to check that out but I think you know sometimes we'll hang in through we see a lot of job descriptions now that talk about bias training and ERGs without really taking the time to the other things that folks have talked about here so there's no easy way to do this stuff you you commit and you got to make it part of your business but your your overall business plan absolutely we've got about 30 seconds left from our 15 seconds left and I'm going to ask a question that is there any final thought that any of you just that we didn't cover all of the questions we laid out there so is there any topic you're passionate about that you want to try and share and about 30 seconds I want to say be okay with being uncomfortable I think that's the most important thing if you are in your comfort zone all the time then you're not doing the work that needs to be done to get where you want to go especially when it comes to EDI I'd like to just offer a question for you guys and uh and it's is this what does DEI Utopia look like to you and once we don't have time to talk about this but once you can answer that questions for yourself it'll give you a good path forward on and what to do next I think that's a great way to wrap it up and I think we've talked a lot about if we want to have DEI we have to start internally first and we need to be genuine and then I think great way to think about is that okay what does it look like when we when we get there what does the end result look like so thank you all for being on the panel because I think it's been a good discussion thank you thank you thank you can I get those resources I'll get them to the organizers yes and then wherever you guys should share it look uh just yeah we'll get we'll put up in chat the question about some resources and so we'll we'll get those up in chat looking at the next session that we have coming up here is an introduction to employee ownership we're going to be looking at what is what is it and why would you why would you choose to do it for your business Ashley Ortiz of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center will teach us a little bit about how to learn about the different types of EO models as well as the benefits they have for owners and employees and then how you can start down the path of ownership towards that shared ownership you're in your own business I will mention that there are a couple happy hours this afternoon and so one of the great things about Longmont Startup Week is being able to connect with other people and so the happy hours are from four to seven p.m. at the Roost and Gross and Bart Brewery so hopefully we'll be able to see you all there and I don't know if any of the panelists are able to join us but you might be able to connect with them as well with that thank you all for for for us today Thank you Chopped Salads taste better? Chopped Five uses fresh from the farm ingredients and chops them into our salads to enhance their natural flavor add our delicious roast to chicken press and house-made dressings bursting with flavor makes everything together and taste why Chopped Salads are simply better come into Chopped Five and enjoy our watermelon chopper only $8.99 order online at chopped5.com and find out how Chopped Five is chopping up fresh flavor and eat with no regrets What if the end is the beginning What if flowers never bloomed What if the cure to all this heartache is inside of you We are all so full of questions Where are we going to go in this life then What if every moment matters If this is all pretend What if we're not supposed to know What the future holds Sunshine above and roots below What if we're just here to grow It's just one thing we're looking for In a world so big with hearts so small What if we loved like we were children Not afraid to fall We don't know where we're going We just don't want to go alone What if the road is all that matters And we never find a home What if we're not supposed to know What the future holds Sunshine above and roots below What if we're just here to grow What if the end is the beginning What if flowers never bloomed What if the cure to all this heartache is inside of you We are all so full of questions Where are we going to go in this life then What if every moment matters If this is all pretend What if the end is the beginning What if flowers never bloomed What if the cure to all this heartache is inside of you We are all so full of questions Where are we going to go in this life then What if every moment matters If this is all pretend What if we're not supposed to know What the future holds Sunshine above and roots below What if we're just here to grow Just one thing we're looking for In a world so big with hearts so small Of like we were children Not afraid to fall We just don't want to go All that matters And we never find a home What if we're not supposed to know What the future holds Sunshine above and roots below What if we're just here to post a note What the future holds Sunshine above and roots below I was wading through the snow What if we're just here to grow What if the end is the beginning What if flowers never bloom What if the cure to all this heartache is inside of you We are all so full of questions Where are we going to go in this life then What if every moment matters If this is all pretend What if we're not supposed to know What the future holds Sunshine above and roots below What if we're just here to grow Just one thing we're looking for In a world so big with hearts so small So, and welcome to this session on Introduction to Employee Ownership My name is Jenny Loper and I'll be your moderator today I am the Director of Operations at Zebulon Solutions We are an end-to-end product development firm that work with small and medium-sized companies and helping them take their ideas from concept all the way through manufacturing. My specific experience is related to operational consulting and supplier quality as well as helping customers find that contract manufacturer for their product. I'm joined with Ashley Ortiz She is an entrepreneurial business specialist with more than 15 years of experience. She has a passion for equitable economy and is the Technical Assistant Specialist at the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center Previously worked for the Bay areas at the Mendee Association. So Ashley, welcome and thank you for joining us today. As we get into this, I think I'll hand this over to you and let you talk through the first couple slides and then I'll interrupt you again. So yes, great to be here. Thanks everyone for joining us today. Before I do dive in, I just wanted to ask a question to anyone out there who's listening to see if you might be willing to put into the chat box any information about whether you're here today because you're thinking about starting up an employee owned business as a startup it'd be really helpful to know if anyone here today is here looking for that information. So I will dive into a little bit of information and Jenny will compile that information and we'll report a little bit. So a little bit about the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center where I work our main mission is to build a more just and sustainable economy through employee ownership and we do that by supporting businesses through technical assistance helping businesses convert to employee ownership or support them through startup of these types of models. We also provide education on employee ownership on different models of benefits of those businesses and best practices and then we also work to create connections between employee owned businesses to help strengthen the whole sector. And a little bit about me, Jenny gave a great background just a little bit more I started focusing on worker owned cooperatives a specific kind of employee owned business in grad school and ended up focusing my thesis on supporting worker owned businesses in Los Angeles and then ended up working for the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives in the Bay Area which is a network of nine worker owned businesses and I did support work behind the scenes so to speak for all of those businesses was also a working owner of one of the bakeries of that network and then moved to work with the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center last year. So really quick I'll just pause for a second and see if we got any feedback. I don't think we have any feedback but if you are online and able to engage with this go ahead and click on that Q&A button. I think you have to ask the question but you can just put in your answers in there not as real questions and that's fine. The question that I guess I will ask if you want to go ahead and try and answer this in the Q&A is what interest brought you here to listen to an intro about employee ownership. So I think with that let's see if anyone answers on that. Great and I'll keep going. So I just wanted to start with a really quick overview. What is employee ownership? At its simplest level it's a proven business concept which has really been around back to the mid-1800s and it just means that a broad base of the staff members who work in a specific business own a financial share in the company where they work. And I wanted to place today's talk a little bit in the current crisis that I know all of us in the business world are going through. Not only with the pandemic but also you might have heard of a movement within the business community now that a lot of people are calling the Silver Tsunami which is that many many baby boomers are retiring and lots of those businesses are at risk of closure because they're not finding buyers and there's no one to transfer those businesses to and as we know when that happens local jobs are lost overall right now in our economy many working people are not economically secure. As I mentioned the pandemic made that worse. There's long-term unemployment happening at really high levels. Many companies are switching roles to contract positions because of crunches and finances and BIPOC businesses workers and communities have been disproportionately affected by these challenges. So within this we feel like there's a great potential of employee ownership and we've seen this historically happen in several iterations most recently after the 2008 crash the number of worker co-ops which is one type of employee ownership actually doubled in the U.S. and that's because oftentimes you know in times of crises and in challenges people look to come together often to find something new and to explore all the options they need before they shut down a business or decide whether or not to start one. And one of the great potentials to employee ownership is that you do get to share the benefits and good times but also the burdens and hard times but at least you're doing that collectively with more people. So I'll stop for one more second and check in. Sure we did get one question from Dan or comment from Dan about he's interested in EO business in the tech space and is curious about anyone doing this because he hasn't come across anybody in the tech space doing an EO so there's that. One thing that I will say to our audience that like I said we will pause kind of at the end of each section so if you do have questions go ahead and type them in and I will interrupt Ashley and ask her. I want to talk about the tech space or your next comments. Great thanks. Yeah there is a lot happening and I'm looking is called platform cooperatives for tech startups. It's a way that the cooperative model and the employee ownership concept is being manifested in a digital way and across large platforms. One resource you could also look to is called start.coop start.coop is actually an incubator for cooperative businesses that is being modeled very closely after a lot of the venture startups around tech so just a little note about that we can definitely talk more about that at the end. So one great thing in the context of the challenging climate that we're in for business is that you can make a difference simply by becoming employee owned. It allows you to become more resilient in times of economic downturn. There's solutions within these models that have been time tested over multiple generations of businesses and the different waves that have gone through the economies and it's a really great way to help revitalize not only the local economy where the business is but also the larger economy that the workers and the owners are contributing to. So some benefits of EO for your company. These six I'm going to dive into in more detail here as we go along. So creating a stronger, more resilient company. As you can imagine if the workers who are there within a company actually own the firm the company tends to perform substantially better and here are some statistics about that did they EO companies tend to have higher profit margins faster growth per year 25% more likely to stay in business than traditional companies and worker co-ops one of the types that I mentioned earlier are way more likely to still be in business after five years compared to about 20% of 90% are still in business after about 20% of traditional companies and this is often in cases where you see that businesses are not only sharing the financial piece of the company but also engaging employees in participation in how to run that business. Also having employees as a built-in buyer if you are already in business and thinking about selling that business around 80% of business owners actually don't find a buyer when they're hoping to do that and right now we're seeing only about 15% transition within families. So selling to employees creates this natural buyer it also creates consistency between jobs, local business stability it can allow you to preserve your legacy again if you're already in business and something that helps you tap into tax benefits for not only the company and the owners but also the employees once they become owners as well. So taking care of your employees this you can do from the start as a startup you can do this by converting ownership and obviously this has implications that are positive throughout many iterations of being in business. EO companies tend to be able to pay higher wages, have better benefits and employee owners in lots of cases have opportunities to participate in decision making which can really sort of ripple out into all types of community spaces people learning about democracy within their workplace can have a big impact on the community as a whole. I wanted to point out to just a quick note about micro-businesses some of the things we'll talk about today are about larger businesses or about converting them but these models can work really well for small or micro businesses of just a couple people or even one because businesses can come together in this way to either form new businesses to work together to support compatible products or services or there's larger cooperative networks that can be formed where people can share benefits like marketing and supplies working space all sorts of things so it's really something that's applicable to all sizes of business and then just a quick note about the tax incentives I won't go into too much detail today but no matter what path you go down there are great benefits and ESOP one kind of employee ownership that I'll talk about allows owners to avoid double taxation on corporate earnings and their percentage of ownership that's held by the ESOP and then there's a Code 1042 which applies to the worker co-ops another type of EO that has resulting favorable tax treatment so there's lots of stuff to research on this front so I'll just pause for a minute before we switch gears into the types of employee ownership and see if there's any questions yeah so please do put some questions if you have questions put them up and we'll cover them here while I'm waiting for questions to be typed in I guess one question for you is that when we're starting a business what is something that I should one more time I can't talk today goodness alright when starting a business should I start as an EO company or change that into the structure after the business has grown that's a great question really you can go down either path and we're lucky in Colorado there are tremendous resources here all the way from the state government down to nonprofit sector resources etc so really I would say look at this path no matter what direction you're going there's great startup resources whether it's in tech or you know any industry and pathways to go down towards employee ownership but also again if you have a business already this is a great model for whatever type of transition you'd like to make whether you want to leave the business whether you just want to make that change and stay a part of it and even if you don't start up as employee owned learning a little bit about it if it's something that intrigues you at the beginning could help you make some decisions on the structure the way that you set up that business that would allow you to transition into that kind of structure later down the road so you really have a lot of options how long does it take to transition into an EO business typically I realize there's probably a lot of assumptions that it's going to go into answering that question but what that timeline look like yeah it is of course super super variable but I'd say maybe on average about a year would be the first time from the first time we either talk to an owner or an employee about the idea