- [Announcer] Live from your Public Media Studios, WVIA presents Keystone Edition Business, a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is Keystone Edition Business, and now, moderator Kris Jones.

- Hello, I'm Kris Jones.

How do you define a successful business?

For some, it's all about the profits, for others, it's growth.

A business's stage can also help define its success.

We have three representatives from three businesses in various stages to talk about how they got there and what they've learned along the way.

Do you have questions on their secrets to success?

Call in at 1-833-408-9842.

Email us at keystone@wvia.org or tag us on social with the #Keystonebusiness.

But first let's go to WVIA's Paul Lazar.

(whooshing music) - [Paul] What does it mean to have a successful business?

For some entrepreneurs, it means being able to scale your company up, for others, it could mean being able to build your business into a legacy that you can pass on one day.

Different types of businesses define success differently, but there are some things that are considered key to building that success, no matter how you define it.

According to the US Chamber of Commerce, offering something unique is one way to stand out from competitors.

Another key to success is keeping the customers and their needs and wants at the forefront.

Companies must also be willing and able to adapt as those customers needs change.

A business needs to maintain its vision or company mission through short, medium and long term objectives that are instilled from the top through every level of employee.

For Keystone Edition Business, I'm Paul Lazar.

(gentle music) - If you have questions about what makes a successful business, give us a call at 1-833-408-9842.

We have experts ready to share what they know.

First, Jimmy Martin is a 44 native and the Co-Founder of Brrrn, a fitness and lifestyle brand with Olympic connections and Drew Kearney joins us from SignalLamp Health, a virtual healthcare company based in Scranton.

Finally, Chuck Cohen joins us from Benco Dental a full service dental distributor that started in Roseland County in the 1930s.

Chuck's brother, Rick Cohen is on the board here at WVIA.

Gentlemen, welcome.

Really excited to have you guys here, I can't tell you how excited and honored I am to have each of you.

We're gonna start by telling your founder story and then I'm gonna ask you a little bit more about your business and Jimmy you're up first.

- I'm on the first one, yes, so super excited.

- Tell us your founder story at Brrrn.

- Yeah, so Kris, I think that ideas, at least great idea are born in uncomfortable places.

So, you know, I'm from 44, I'm the son of a hairdresser and coach and community leader and was very fortunate to get a student athletic scholarship to go to school.

And graduating I knew that I wanted to be able to like innovate and to help people through inimitable experiences.

Brrrn was an amalgamation of all the things that I'm passionate about, fitness, community, innovation.

it was a dream that I shared with my late wife who had passed May 12th, 2014.

- Very sorry.

- Thank you.

And it was a dream that I wanted to make a reality at any cost.

So I'm very happy that in 2018, I was able to make a reality by launching what was the world's first and only cool temperature, fitness experience, and now has pivoted to a whole nother business model with Brrrn.

- So you have some professional athletic and some celebrity involvement.

Let's start with Apolo Ohno.

And for folks that don't know who he is, one of the most accomplished speed skaters of all time, tell us how you got connected to him and what his involvement is.

- What's so interesting about like how Apolo came into the picture is like every time we were teaching classes at our New York-based studio, we would say, "Bring out your inner Apolo Ohno."

We almost like brought it out into existence, every single time we taught our slide board class.

And during the pandemic, it's all about networking, Like your net worth is your network.

And one of our patrons was friends with Apolo and he said, "You got to find these Brrrn guys, like they had this cool temperature fitness studio, they pivoted to this D to C slide board concept.

You've been using slide boards for decades and you got to meet these guys.

And so we spoke with him, he believed in the vision of my co-founder and I, and became an investor and brand partner.

So that was the networking of a person that was happy with what we were doing at the studio level and saw value that Apolo could bring by helping us with our business.

- That's awesome, and our viewers were getting to watch some of the clips that you provided us with.

- That's great.

- So they get to see what this board does and how they could use it to kind of adopt what speed skaters use to get in shape.

And by the way, some of the most built and defined legs I've ever seen are from speed skaters, so there's got to be something to it.

One other quick thing, I think the viewers are gonna see the different stages that each of you guys are at, and you're really at what I would consider to be the early stage.

And it's when you have to hustle and you've got to get people's eyeballs on your product.

Well, you were just on the Today Show, how did you go about going on the Today Show?

It was an extraordinary feat for a 44 native.

- Oh, I mean, it came out of nowhere.

I mean, like it was in January where the Olympics were underway and they were looking for a winter themed workout that felt emblematic of the Winter Olympics.

And the producers reached out to us and said, "Hey, we see that Apolo is one of your investors, "we wanted to do a focus piece on the Brrrn board "and like how people can look forward "to lateral moves at home."

And so I got the call, the middle of everything happening with COVID and was able to go on and show Hoda and Jenna, why Brrrn is something to consider.

But it was again, just being able to like having had a brand at the studio level and people knowing what we did there and how we pivoted, I think like that story really set us up for success and led to them inviting us on the show to share it with the world.

- It's awesome, Drew, you're up.

Tell us more about SignalLamp Health, your founder story.

- Sure, thanks for having me, Kris, it's really a pleasure to be here.

Well, I had the good fortune of starting my career in healthcare consulting and really at a pivotal time.

And there's just all these sweeping changes at the federal level.

So I was just immersed in all of these new care models, new delivery models, really geared towards how do we meet the growing demands in healthcare with finite resources?

And from that, developed a really a thesis of virtual care is very important and supplementing that the point of care, where traditionally you're visiting your provider face to face, and that infrastructure just wasn't there.

And this is eight years ago, well, in advance of the pandemic and had a loose thesis of what virtual care could be really centered around nursing and personalized care.

And it really came to life when my co-founder and I partnered and he was just really good at all the things I was not and real operational and financial acumen.

He's the backbone, and here we are eight years later and have nearly a 100% growth every year since we started.

- So eight years later, so I kind of put you at sort of the medium or the growth stage of the three guests here.

What is the exact service that you provide to your end users?

- Sure, so we have a distributed workforce of nurses that are our employees, and we work as an extension of primary care docs.

So they get dedicated nurses that work within their workflows, which is very important to providers, communicate with them digitally and also with patients either digitally or telephonically, but it's very personalized and it's always based on the record of truth, which is that patient and doctor record.

So you're always with, you have access to where you should be, what medication you should be taking with what regularity, it just provides that more clinical time, particularly for those patients that have a lot of chronic diseases and may manage multiple medications, it's really very crucial to their life and their quality of life.

- And my understanding is you employ somewhere around 200 people at this point.

What problem is it that these nurses are solving that the patients struggle to get elsewhere?

- Well, healthcare, it's nearly 18% of our GDP in the country, it's very complex.

It's not really consumer driven, so there's all these gatekeepers.

So it leads it to be very fragmented.

Information is not shared freely.

Patients get confused and these are medications or things that are important to their ongoing life and certainly the quality of life.

So just being that ground zero, that central resource that can help coordinate the right care at the right place, the right time, the right record is being managed and really expands access and personalization.

Two things that our health system just is not very good at.

- That's awesome, that's awesome, and I think your success is a testament to your solution.

- Oh, thank you.

- That's great.

So Chuck, Benco Dental, most everyone watching tonight has probably heard of you guys, but if I'm not mistaken, you were founded in 1930.

Can you share your founder story as a starting point?

- Sure, first of all, thank you for having me here.

Our founder story goes back 100 years, but I don't think it's much different than the two guys sitting next to me.

My grandfather, who had a sixth grade education decided that he didn't wanna work in a sweat shop.

He was an immigrant from Europe and he had a cousin who manufactured dental instruments, and it turned into a tremendous success over a long period of time because he happened to find his way into a really great industry.

Our customers are dentists and dentistry is a really great place to be.

At the time he started, dentistry was very different from today.

There was no hygiene, there was no gloves, dentists didn't, it wasn't preventive care, it was mostly about pulling teeth and making dentures.

And in the late 1920s, he went and was a traveling salesperson, selling instruments door to door, and then in 1930, he opened a downtown Wilkes-Barre, a very, very small dental depot.

And from there we've grown over the last 92 years to where we are today.

- It's just amazing.

And I wanna commend you, I've been an entrepreneur in this community for over two decades.

And when I aspire, when I look to an organization that has really set the bar as high as could possibly be set for individuals like the three of us here, it's just amazing what your family has done and the bar that you've set.

Tell us more about the actual products and services that you provide.

- Sure, so, first of all, very flattered to hear that, thank you.

We sell everything you'd see in a dentist's office, everything from the chairs, to the equipment, we design dental offices.

We also sell the gloves and all the hand instruments, all the composites, all the products that are used in the mouth and we also have service to go along with it.

So if a dentist has a dental chair that doesn't go up and down, we send a technician out to their office to fix it.

And today we have about 1,500 employees across the United States.

- That's incredible, and they're showing some pictures from the archive, and I can't tell you how pleased I am that our viewers get to see that, it's just really such an amazing story.

And we're gonna come back and we're gonna double and triple click on what it is you guys are doing, not only for your customers, but for our community.

Jimmy, we're gonna come back to you.

All success stories, sometimes when you hear them, you only hear the success, but there are obstacles and challenges.

I wanted to ask you point blank, what are some of your biggest obstacles today with Brrrn?

- Well, initially it was re-imagining the narrative for the brand.

We were this cool temperature fitness concept and when we were forced closed by the pandemic, the whole experience was in-person, but that's where the customers weren't there, the customers were at home.

So we had to meet them where they were at and sort of remix how we thought about the brand.

So I sort of liken it to like, if Cheers was the studio, Frasier is our spinoff.

So we took something that was revered by our customers and decided to meet them where they were at.

Being a startup with five employees and having to seek growth capital and feeling like, you're doing a great job, but you're also two months out of being out of business, the triumphs and tribulations can be challenging.

And I think the biggest thing is attention economy.

There's so many options out there.

Like why should you matter?

And I think the best brands earn their customers' trust and attention, and we try to do that by educating them about the necessity of lateral movement training, no matter where you are in your fitness journey and entertain them through content that really speaks to them.

- That's awesome.

Drew, same question for you.

What do you see as like your biggest obstacles right now to scaling and getting to that next milestone?

- Sure, I think, well, we've been doing remote healthcare, like I mentioned for almost eight years now and it's a trend now, it's top of mind.

So the pace of growth depends on how many people we can hire and deploy and dedicate to patients and doctors.

And it's increasingly difficult to weed through who the right candidates are.

So we have at any given day, 500 applicants, and we need to fill 10 to 15 spots at a time and trying to find the people who not just would be really good, finding nurses that have the right empathy and compassion for people, that's easy, they basically all do, finding people who have the skillset to work at home, to focus, to use some new technology that requires some more screening.

So that's probably our biggest challenge is finding people who not just want to work from home, really understand what that means and can manage the obligations and the distractions quite frankly.

- Yeah, Chuck, what about you?

What are some of the biggest obstacles right now that Benco Dental is facing?

- So, it's amazing, it's very similar to what these guys say.

So number one is our biggest challenges are people.

So if you have the right people, every business is easy.

As we all know out there, there's not a lot of great people, so taking the time to find them, making sure the great people we have stay and stay for a long time, but it's all around people.

And then the other thing I'd mention, and it really riffs on what these guys are.

I want like a spoonful of the energy and hustle that these guys have.

Wen you have a 92 year old business, where basically everybody's eating fine, and we're not worrying about our next paycheck, how do you create that entrepreneurial spirit in the business and keep innovating all the time?

'Cause that's really the secret to long term businesses.

You've got to keep reinventing yourself all the time.

We don't have the same sense of urgency sometimes that these guys have, 'cause they've got necessity, people breathing down their necks.

How do we create that sort of artificial sense of necessity to keep innovating?

- Yeah, I would think one of the things I was really most impressed with in preparing to learn more about Benco Dental is when you guys are making decisions, you get to look out 10 years.

Jimmy, you're probably not thinking about 10 years right now, 10 minutes-- - 10 minutes, yeah.

- Which is just an interesting, can you reflect on that real quick?

What a luxury that is, right?

- So one thing we say all the time, especially because two of our major competitors are publicly held companies and we're the largest, that's a non-public is we have the luxury of thinking in decades, not quarters.

And so one of the things that allows us to really do well over the long term is really think long term.

And every business gets asked to do things for the short term that may not be the right decision for the long term.

So we really believe it's a luxury to be able to think, what does our business look like?

What are our customers gonna be doing in 10 years and not three months?

- Great, ironically, interestingly enough, I'm the guy who usually says financing and having requisite capital is such a huge part of an obstacle to scaling.

And neither of you mentioned it, so I'm gonna ask you point blank, how important is financing to Brrrn?

Are you currently raising money?

Have you raised venture?

Where are you at as it relates to being adequately capitalized to get to that next step?

- Absolutely, I mean, luckily we have date, all of our investors have been friends and family.

They've been angels and we're now in a seed round where we are entertaining venture money.

But you're always looking for the next dollar and how you get that and how you validate your product market fit and showing your revenue, every single quarter is super important to sort of perking the ears of potential investors that you wanna be on your cap table and understanding that while you're a small company, that many people are gonna wear many different hats.

I mean the commercial that's on right now, that's my mom sliding, that's my brother-in-law right there.

Everybody's doing everything.

So it's super important to get creative, to be resourceful and to know that the first step is the longest stride and to surround yourself with people who can help you think outside the box.

- But so you are raising money, so if anybody's watching for the viewers out there, they'll all have an opportunity to connect with each of your businesses through the WVIA Keystone Edition Business website and we'll make sure if they reach out that we connect them with you.

- [Jimmy] Thank you.

- Drew in your case, you're much more experienced here.

My understanding is you've raised a considerable venture.

Tell us a little bit more about that and are you currently raising?

- Sure, yeah, so first we're not currently raising, but we have all the trials and tribulations that led to necessitating a raise to begin with, it was crucial to scaling and just the hardship that brings on it was mission critical.

And you're going to people you respect, who've invested in successful companies and they tell you no, and you to get back in the chair the next day with the same enthusiasm we had the day before, that was incredibly difficult, to get the nose and particularly from people you respect, but eventually we got there and it's an interesting dynamic when you bring people into the cap table, but it's mission critical for many of these businesses.

And if you're true on your numbers and you keep a pragmatic mindset of just never let the day to day get too far from you, that's been our model.

Raise no more than we needed never let the spend get too far ahead of you and it's worked nice.

- You said you're an eight years in now?

- Yeah.

- And you're profitable?

- We're profitable, yes.

- And you're not-- - I can take deep breaths now, I couldn't for quite a while.

- And you're not currently raising.

- We are not, that's right.

- Okay, cool.

Chuck, for you, I think it's probably a bit different.

So I'm gonna ask you to kind of comment on how you think about making sure Benco Dental is adequately capitalized, but then also if you want to share, 'cause I know you've been an advisor in helping your son who's raising venture.

So I thought that might be an opportunity for you to share, going back to the early stage and what it's like.

- Sure, so I'll answer the second one first, which is, I really didn't have a lot of experience at all with what these guys have gone through until my son went into a venture situation and just raised his series A and is doing very well.

He's got an artificial intelligence business that serves distribution businesses like ours, but across the country.

And it's really part of our innovation arm, which is how do we keep innovating?

And one of the ways we innovate is the family gets involved in other innovative projects.

And that one has turned out to be a success so far.

But at the same time, we went through a little bit of a scare through COVID because the US government shut down all of our customers at one time in March of 2020, it was unbelievably stressful.

And I had no business plan for it, I don't think anyone did, our business went down about 80% in the matter of two or three days.

And it really seized up the cash issue because customers weren't open so they couldn't pay us and then we couldn't pay our vendors.

So I've been a little bit through this idea, which I never thought I would, where, what happens if you run out of money?

And we were looking at that at the time.

We worked our way through it, 'cause we had good partners and we managed through it well, but the whole key is really something that drew just said, which is spend less than you make.

And whether you're a person sitting at home or an individual or a company, whatever, when I see businesses get in trouble or individuals get in trouble, it's because they're spending more than they have access to.

So we've been very conservative operators for years and we've got good relationships with the bank and it has served us well.

- Incredible, what do you love most about being an entrepreneur?

- That's so many things.

There's a thrill in constantly trying to solve problems that serve other people.

I think it's your responsibility as an innovator to improve the systems of your predecessors and maybe being an athlete, the challenge is the catalyst for me to wanna lean in a little bit more every single day, it's knowing that something that was thought about with someone that's no longer here and carrying on that message to bring life and to inspire betterment through an incredible experience that can help so many people, that's why I wake up the next day, put the hat on and move forward.

- What about you Drew, what do you love about entrepreneurship?

- Yeah, I think fundamentally I don't have another gear, I have to, I have to keep creating and figuring out things, but I think the best part is when you're putting the puzzle pieces together and trying to figure out if it can work and those hits, the highs are very short and very temporary, but when it clicks and you may have worked on something for a number of years and you see it resonating and scaling, it's really gratifying.

But again, back to day to day, the goal post move and you set new targets for yourself and I think it's truly just that opportunity to be creative, problem solve, put the puzzle pieces together and keep going.

- Perfect, Chuck, same question to you.

And I know that you're both entrepreneur trying to innovate for a company that's existed, but you're also a very experienced executive.

So what do you love most about what you do?

- I think it's the opportunity to make a difference for other people, and we really are very customer focused.

So we get to serve great people who serve their patients.

And when I took a class a bunch of years ago, about a decade ago at Harvard Business School, one of the things that our entrepreneur professor talked about was think about the world without your business in it and what would be lacking.

And it's a really an interesting way to think about what is the difference you're making?

What are the problems you're solving?

How are you really serving your customers and your people?

And when you stop and think about it, I think that's something we all can identify with, is the world would have a hole in it if our organization didn't exist, just as it would for the two of you guys as well.

- Chuck, what makes a great company?

- Great people.

And a mission and a goal where we're all focused on the same thing, but great people, it's all about the people.

If you have great people, the rest of it's very easy.

- Drew, what advice would you give a younger entrepreneur like Jimmy to get through the obstacles that he's facing?

(all laughing) - I don't know if I have any secret wisdom, but I think what we've done really well is really understand our market, really understand our clients.

There's just no substitute for knowledge, because you encounter challenges, and at the end of the day, you're alone with your judgment.

And if you're really confident in your understanding of the market and what the fit is, then you'll get through that less scathed than otherwise.

It's that reeling with the self-doubt is the long lonely journey that entrepreneurs or entrepreneurship could provide.

But confidence in your knowledge will get you a long, long way.

- I'm gonna stay on this theme, Jimmy.

So, you're in the corner, Chuck, we're coming back to you.

What advice would you give your younger self to try to help out someone like Jimmy?

- Have a little more confidence than you think you do because your inner voice is usually mostly right, and the second one is always communicate the why?

I think that's one thing that all of us as leaders sometimes forget.

And the why is, the thing that we know the why, and we don't communicate it, we just communicate the what.

And I think that one of the big lessons that I've learned over the past few years is always start with the why and keep coming back to it.

People will do almost anything if they understand the why, people will do almost nothing if all you talk about is the what.

- Wow, it's great advice.

So we only have about 45 seconds or so left and I'm not gonna give it to Jimmy, I'm gonna give it to you.

You've accomplished something that is gonna be in the next year or so and that's raise capital.

What advice would you give to Jimmy about having success raising institutional money?

- Yeah, well, I think you have to find the right fit and you might have to knock on more doors than you're comfortable doing and you have to deal with the same level of enthusiasm and they get it wrong a lot.

The best VCs in the world might be right two or three out of 10.

So, luckily in our case, the biggest investments that came in that would create all kinds of angst, they didn't work, we did.

So, if you're, again, if you're true to yourself, you're true to your vision, you build with some empathy and really respect for the human experience on the employees and the client side, it'll work.

- How many nos did you have to get before you got your first guess?

- I try not to think about it, but a lot.

- I mean, what was your close percentage as it relates to how many you asked versus?

- Oh, I'd say one out of 30, and even more nos that meetings I didn't get.

- Thanks guys, really appreciate it.

I would like to thank all of our guests for participating and thank you for joining.

For more information on this topic, please visit wvia.org/keystone business.

And remember, you can rewatch this episode on demand anytime online or on the WVIA app.

For Keystone Edition, I'm Kris Jones.

Thank you for watching.

(upbeat music)