OVERVIEW

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

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

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

SPEAKERS

Georganne Goldblum, Jess Coburn

Jess Coburn  00:00

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

Georganne Goldblum  01:03

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

Jess Coburn  02:17

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

Georganne Goldblum  02:26

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

Jess Coburn  07:01

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

Georganne Goldblum  08:20

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

Jess Coburn  10:19

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

Georganne Goldblum  11:05

And I hear I hear from because we have a weekly meeting with all of the chairs in Florida and sharing what's happening in all their groups. And everybody is said having the community and having that infant curated information during this time has been priceless.

Jess Coburn  11:26

Yeah. And that's where I was going is that you're bringing that only what you're hearing from the two different groups but from all Florida through Vistage, and you're bringing it back and then Vistage was really fast to use their their community and their message boards and they stood up the Coronavirus network like that. I mean, it was so quick in the amount of information health that I've gotten from there, and then I've shared has been fantastic. So that's been really useful. The one thing I did want to talk about, it's something new. I don't think I even mentioned that to you is that, you know, we've been real busy. I've been real busy doing stuff like this right now. Most of my clients are in Cloud already things are good for them. It's gonna change eventually. And, you know, we're trying to keep them aware of that. But in the meantime, I want to share the knowledge. And so that's why I'm doing the cyber side chats and bringing you in, and a bunch of the trusted leaders and advisors that I use. But I realized that a lot of CEOs and business owners, they don't have that network. So that's I created a Facebook group called Florida or South Florida businesses helping each other. And it just thank you, in just a week, it's grown to over 100 plus members, and the amount of information it's going to share. There's been fantastic and I've been trying to filter some of that Vistage information off to these guys, too. Because it's important. We all need to help out right now, especially as business owners and business leaders, because we're what we have to lean on.

Georganne Goldblum  12:51

Right? It helps because we've been able to have a place not just for information, but what does somebody need what Somebody have where Can someone, some people were looking for manufacturing. And we were able to refer manufacturers who still have capacity to take on whatever work that that people are looking for, or where employees are laid off from hospitality where they can be used in a whole nother area that they're trying to hire. So yeah, they we've made all that available so people can connect and do that. So you're doing a great thing, Jess,

Jess Coburn  13:29

I appreciate it. Thank you. Where do you think CEOs and business owners in general are really struggling today or maybe not struggling? Because they've solved it? Where's the pain point that you're hearing right now?

Georganne Goldblum 13:40

Well, the greatest pain point is letting people go. I mean, no matter how you do it on paper, it's painful. What most of the companies have done first, I mean, other than if they know that they're going to be down they have to they've made that decision. But what they've done is they take salary cuts, and they took them big on the top and then progressively down. And, and there people have been thanking them. They're thanking them because they still have a job, but they thanking them because they, they're doing what's right for the business. As a CEO, your job is to increase and improve the value of the business no matter what you're faced with. And these CEOs are doing that. And it's tough. Those are tough choices are tough decisions. And the toughest that we all face is we don't know how long this is going to go on. If we knew how long it was going to go on, you'd make one set of decisions. You know, is this a sprint? Is this a marathon? Is it a month? Is it three months? Is it the rest of the year? Nobody knows. So that's what's challenging. And that's what's new. Nice to have other people who are in the same boat to talk to, to, to commiserate with and to pick their brains. And we're all smarter together.

Jess Coburn  15:13

Absolutely, absolutely. That collective brain is much smarter especially when it feeds off of each other. You know, I remember one of my very first party one of my very first speakers that we had what he said and it has resonated with me every single time and it's cut once cut deep because if you have to cut employees, you want to do it one time. If you sit through and you're chopping away at it constantly, you're going to lose your best employees because they're going to go Oh my God, my next my next and that's a really tough thing for any business owner is to cut an employee much less look at and go Okay, well I need to cut this percentage of my employees is the minimum I should cut but really to be healthy and keep the the tree alive and grown. I should trim back even further. And, you know, it's difficult But to do that, right and then to message to the rest of the team about that,

Georganne Goldblum  16:08

I found is really key. And that is key is to message humane lay humanly, with whatever you're you're talking about. You we need positivity, we need leadership. And these are some of the webinars. We're running right now for the CEOs, because messaging is everything. And we all you know, we've had some speakers on in telling stories and all time to be using all that because we have to connect, we're using video instead of real live face to face. So we have to you have better skills than we've ever had.

Jess Coburn  16:50

Yeah, that's important. You know that the CEO really sets the pulse of the company right and how he feels and shows up and comes into the office. The rest of the team season if you had a rough day and you come in open, sad or angry, the rest of the team sees that. And right now, if you're frantic and scared and worried, they're frantic conspirator ordered,

Georganne Goldblum  17:11

right? You owe your people to be calm in this in and also that you care from a genuine and authentic place.

Jess Coburn  17:24

So that's really important. So I think it's key you know, one of the things that I just greenlight it for my team and I hope that it's a good example for other CEOs is the hand sanitizer little bottles of hand sanitizer, some promotional product companies are still able to take orders, they're gonna be delayed by weeks, but I just had Natalie order a bunch of those just for our employees to give her employees so they can give them to whoever because we don't know how long it's going to be. I think the order is probably going to take a month to get here. I suspect it's still gonna be needed. And it's not so much about promoting the company. It's about helping the employees.

Georganne Goldblum  18:07

Right, and it'll probably never go away that we won't need peace coming forward. So that's a timeless?

Jess Coburn  18:15

I think so. Um, so, I know a lot of CEOs would see something like, I mean, a lot of America saw this talk going on and said, Oh, it's gonna pass, right? It's not really a big deal. This thing is, it's a hoax. It's not going to be here. It's just a fluke. That's not really the case. For those of us that are not taking action, you know, what should they be doing? I know we talked about we talked about what they're doing with their planning board about their business, they still need to grow their business.

Georganne Goldblum  18:49

Okay, I would say three things and and then I'll summit with one, which is conserve cash, no matter what they need to conserve. Serve cash to they need to look at the programs, the government programs and if they have not filed file for the PPP and the IP out or idea. And so they need to be aware of the programs and take advantage of them again, because they're going to need cash to continue through this. Now, there are some businesses that are flourishing, okay. So they should keep growing and take advantage of the opportunity to grow. I mean, it and telecom and attorneys, they're all doing well right now. I just heard of a yacht maintenance business, because these yacht owners are going on their boats, but they they want maintenance, so it's odd, but there's all there's different. There are businesses that are going to flourish in this. The other ones You're shut down, and you're not an essential business. You've got to be, you know, ready for the long haul and really know your numbers and be prepared for it. The other thing I would say is, you know, in terms of helping them, if you want to send anybody to meet Yes, I'd be glad to talk with them and ask the questions to understand where they are and see if I can't be of some help to them. During this, you know, I am, I've made myself available to my members, but to anybody, I'm available to talk and work through this.

Jess Coburn  20:42

Georgia for the last 10 years I've known you, you've always been that person you've always been willing to give to somebody like that and help anybody. So for all the people who help thank you for that, for anyone that needs help, or would want to get in touch with you, how would you contact you?

Georganne Goldblum  20:55

So my cell is 56135 07440 my email, I say I'll say but just unless you can put this up on it, they'll spell it wrong and it never works. I'll put partners LLC calm, but just just put the contact information on the on this and they get in touch with me,

Jess Coburn  21:22

Georgia this has been fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to contribute to the cyber side chats and for being a part of software businesses helping each other as well. Thank you so much. Thank you for everything you do for your Vistage members and for businesses in general.

Georganne Goldblum  21:35

Thank you. Appreciate it.