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YOU’RE HIRED
FETCH DISRUPTS THE STAFFING BUSINESS
BUILDING OUTSIDE THE BOX
BLOX DELIVERS ROOMS READY TO GO
CHECK YOURSELF
UAB RESEARCH TAKES CYBER THREATS PERSONALLY
VISIONARY SEEING IS BELIEVING FOR DR. JACK SCHAEFFER
Dr. Jack Schaeffer A/S 09
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Who will lead Birmingham into the next 20 years? In the October/ November issue of BHM BIZ, our cover story will be: 20 for the Next 20, 20 emerging business leaders who will move our region forward for the next 20 years. Some of these 20 emerging leaders have already made major contributions to Birmingham business and we expect them to have an even greater impact over the next two decades. Some of them will be surprising. We will honor these 20 People to Watch at an exclusive wine reception on October 20 at UAB’s Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts from 5:30-7:30pm and presented by Schaeffer Eye Center.
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AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016
DEPARTMENTS
14. VIEWPOINT By Bill Todd
16. ON BRAND By Dan Monroe
18. TECH
By Chelsea Berler
22. COFFEE WITH...
42. “If we don’t give back as a company, shame on us because then the community doesn’t grow.”
Fred Smith & Terry Chapman Photography by Beau Gustafson
24. FREQUENT FLYER
Kerri Vanderbom, Lakeshore Foundation Photography by Beau Gustafson
-Jack Schaeffer
26. ROCKET PITCH
Twist Technology Photography by Billy Brown
28. BY THE NUMBERS Outdoor Spaces
30. PRODUCT PLACEMENT McSweeney Designs Saban Tailgating Vehicle
34. COOL SPACES
Shannon Waltchack Photography by Edward Badham
64. AND THEN THIS HAPPENED Brooke Battle of Swell Fundraising
46.
54.
featured 42
50. PERSON-FIRST DEFENSE
46. VISIONARY
52. THE FAMILY BUSINESS
.
BLOX
Healthcare construction meets the assembly line in Bessemer.
Dr. Jack Schaeffer’s optometry kingdom is as much about science as it is style and service.
What UAB research has to say about avoiding cyber security threats. This Central State Bank approach has seen a century of progress.
54. YOU’RE HIRED
Fetch’s web-based platform upends the standard staffing industry model.
covered BHM BIZ is published monthly by Fergus Media LLC 1314 Cobb Lane South • Birmingham, AL 35205 (205) 202-4182 Printed by American Printing Co., Birmingham, AL
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Volume 1, Issue 3. June/July 2016. BHM BIZ is published six times a year by Fergus Media, LLC. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR We’d love your feedback. Send a letter to 1314 Cobb Lane South, Birmingham, AL, 35205, or an email to joe@bhmbiz.com. SUBSCRIPTIONS To subscribe online, visit bhmbiz.com. To subscribe via telephone or for subscription inquiries, call (205) 202-4182 or email joe@bhmbiz.com. SUBMISSIONS If you’re interested in contributing to BHM BIZ, email your ideas to robin@bhmbiz.com. ADVERTISING For more information on how you can see your brand on the pages of BHM BIZ, email cathy@bhmbiz.com.
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great meetings.
GOLF DIGEST EXECUTIVES KNOW GREAT GOLF and have named Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa one of their 2016 Editors’ Choice Winners along with Pebble Beach Resort, The Greenbrier, Pinehurst and 65 other North American locations. When it is time to step away from the office for a round of golf or an off-site meeting, you have two great choices just minutes from downtown Birmingham. RTJ Oxmoor Valley and Ross Bridge offer a variety of meeting facilities plus great dining. Only a mile apart and offering 72 holes of golf, your options range from team building and client outings at RTJ Oxmoor Valley to taking on Ross Bridge, the world’s 5th longest course. »»
»» Ross Bridge and Oxmoor Valley offer an ideal way to blend business with pleasure. To book your next golf outing on Alabama's Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, call Ross Bridge at 205.949.3085 or Oxmoor Valley at 205.942.1177 and visit rtjgolf.com to learn more.
Personality Jack Schaeffer can talk for a long time about his business. He lives it, he breathes it, and he wants you to understand it—understand the drive, the connection to family, and the company’s place in the community. Our cover story this issue, written by managing editor Madoline Markham, details the growth of Schaeffer Eye Center and the philosophy and family dynamics that have made it a de- Joe O’Donnell cades-long success story. The science behind quality eye care and medical care is one of the cornerstones—along with style and service to the community—that Schaeffer attributes to the company’s growth. The other thing that led to his company’s success, and something he taught me, is the value of personality and energy in promoting the growth of a business. Never be shy when it comes to your building the success of your business. We have put together several success stories for this issue of BHM BIZ. Writer Jen Barnett put together a piece on a company that is reimagining construction. BLOX is revolutionizing the process, building entire rooms for the healthcare industry on the shop floor of a massive facility in Bessemer. They believe that everything can be better and that people, communities, and the environment matter. This worldview led them to question how they could improve the building process for hospitals, where identical rooms were built across the country one at a time—much like the process for building a car in your driveway, Barnett writes. Elsewhere we chronicle a century of success at the Shelby County community bank, Central State Bank, and fresh out-of-the-box success at Fetch, which is looking to disrupt the employment agency model with an employee-first digital model—a match.com for the modern business. I hope you enjoy this issue.
Joe O’Donnell Editor/Publisher
money quotes
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“Their office can be an asset that works for themselves even when they are not selling. It opens their eyes to what’s possible and how it can work for them.” Page 33
“We kept iterating, simplifying, and adding talent until it worked.” Page 44
“Having the base here (in Birmingham) and growing to where we were profitable and (where) I could keep growing and bringing in other doctors made it so much easier for me to be able to do what I wanted to do.” Page 48
“It’s easy to do academic research, but applying it to business is new. And I would imagine it’s scary too.” Page 50
“We are able to maintain a high rating because our risk is spread across so many areas. Our real estate portfolio is very diverse. We are fortunate in that growth has come toward us as metro Birmingham has grown south.” Page 52
“We really believe that hiring should be transparent and unbiased. The best way is to match the employer and the talent together and then step out of it.” Page 55
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ALABAMA NEWSCENTER REPORTS...
ALABAMA POWER HAS A NEW LOOK Alabama Power unveiled a new look, along with its parent company, Southern Company. The new look follows Southern Company’s recent merger with Atlanta-based AGL Resources, which has been renamed Southern Company Gas. The merger expands the Southern Company system to more than 9 million customers and operations in 18 states. It’s the first design change in more than 20 years for both Alabama Power and Southern Company. It is the result of a research process that included employees, company leaders and other stakeholders. “After much consideration and study, we have decided to create a new brand mark that unifies the full portfolio of companies,” said Mark Crosswhite, Alabama Power chairman, president and CEO. Crosswhite also serves as a member of Southern Company’s management council. He emphasized that Alabama Power, which has served Ala-
bamians and the state for 110 years, is not changing its name. The company’s logo, however, has been modernized to better reflect the more diverse companies within the Southern Company family. In addition to the merger with the newly renamed Southern Company Gas, Southern Company recently acquired PowerSecure, a company that provides energy technologies and services to electric utilities and their large industrial, commercial, institutional and municipal customers. Southern Company also announced Sunday a strategic venture with Kinder Morgan, Inc. through which Southern Company will acquire a 50 percent equity interest in the Southern Natural Gas pipeline system. The new look for Alabama Power and for Southern Company will be rolled out over the next few months.
ALABAMA BUSINESS DOLLARS ROLLING IN FOR RETURN OF UAB FOOTBALL Trailblazers are helping the Blazers come back better, stronger than ever. By Wayne Hester In early December of 2014, UAB shut down its football program. It wasn’t a popular move, to say the least. Students protested, fans wailed, coaches and players grieved. And the Birmingham community, which had shown little interest in Blazer football before, realized it had lost something good. There was such an outcry that UAB President Ray Watts, who had announced the program’s demise, came back six months later and announced that it was coming back – if the community would get behind it and pledge donations to make it a first-class operation. AlabamaNewsCenter.com
Now, a little more than a year later, Athletics Director Mark Ingram told Alabama News Center, “We are making great progress in terms of fundraising.” Gifts and pledges are coming in for a 46,000-square-foot foot-
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ball operations center. The center will include offices for coaches, meeting rooms, locker rooms, weight rooms, film rooms, a training room and nutrition room. “We’re planning for success,” Ingram said. Legacy Federal Credit Union is donating $4.2 million – the largest sponsorship in UAB athletics history – for the operations center and an open-air pavilion. The donation will give Legacy naming rights for 20 years. Legacy was founded by a group of UAB employees to serve faculty, staff, students and the community. “Since UAB had the vision to charter us, and is the largest employer and most dynamic economic driver in the state, we believe an investment in UAB will yield returns for Legacy members and the entire community,” President and CEO Joe McGee said. Last month, retired businessman and Blazer fan Jimmy Filler made a $1 million donation for the operations building. “UAB football is good for the city of Birmingham and is good for UAB,” Filler said. “A strong UAB means a strong Birmingham, and football is an important component in declaring that message.” Hatton Smith, CEO emeritus of Royal Cup Inc., is chairman of
a fundraising task force for new facilities. “We will need $21 million for the football operations center,” Smith said. “There will be two fields initially and a covered pavilion” so the Blazers can practice in inclement weather. Construction should begin in late August and be finished June 2017, a couple of months before UAB begins playing football again. Smith said he took on the task of raising money because “I believe in our city, and abolition of football was not good for our city.” Several large donations have been made in support of football, including $500,000 each from Protective Life, Alabama Power, Medical Properties Trust, Mike Thompson of Thompson Tractor and Harold W. Ripps of Rime Capital Account Inc. The Birmingham City Council, which previously paid $250,000 for UAB football tickets, last year approved a resolution pledging to commit $500,000 a year for tickets, if UAB football returns. Smith sets high goals. He is hopeful and optimistic that a 45,000-seat stadium will be built in Uptown, across the street from the Westin Hotel, to host not only UAB but also the Magic City Classic, Birmingham Bowl and the 2021 World Games. He estimates a stadium would cost about $150 million.
BIRMINGHAM’S BATMAN STILL CHANGING LIVES 31 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH Willie J. Perry Foundation gives away two cars to recipients in need of Wheels of Change. By Solomon Crenshaw Jr. Bianca Donerson rode the No. 8 bus to Old Car Heaven Wednesday night, carrying a stroller, car seat, diaper bag and her 1-year-old son. When the Mobile native left for her Hoover home, she was driving a 2002 Nissan Xterra, courtesy of the Willie J. Perry Foundation’s Wheels of Change car giveaway. The foundation celebrated Willie Perry Day in conjunction with Secret Stages, the two-day walking music festival. But the theme of this night was secrets revealed as Donerson’s ride was one of three cars going to new homes. The other vehicles were a second car that went to a single father of two, and the Rescue Ship Batmobile, which is going back to the family of the man known as Birmingham’s Batman because of his selfless acts of assistance to stranded motorists and others. Donerson was at a loss for words when she stood beside her vehicle following the announcement. “I am so excited,” she said. “I just feel so blessed right now.” The 26-year-old said she and her son, Xavier, have been in the Birmingham area the past five months, living first in shelters before moving into an apartment. They moved to Birmingham so Xavier could get better treatment for biliary atresia, a rare disease of the liver and bile ducts that occurs in infants. “I’m overwhelmed,” Donerson continued. “God knows I needed this.” Barry Jefferson was the only man among the six finalists. He said he wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t win the Xterra. “I kind of felt that’s what Willie would have wanted,” he said. “I know I’m going through a lot but I figured there were some women
who needed it more than I did.” Jefferson had not had a very happy birthday on Wednesday. The 30-year-old suffered with a headache and chills that left him in bed much of the day as he saved his strength to come to the event. While outwardly subdued, he was excited when his name was Continued on next page
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ALABAMA NEWSCENTER REPORTS... called for the second car – a 2003 Dodge Durango. “I wasn’t expecting them to have a second car,” he said. “I want to show more excitement but I’ve got the worst headache in the world right now. But I’m so excited because I’ve got two kids that I’m raising by myself.” The Xterra was donated by Allen Mann, who received it from her father, Dr. Peter Bunting. She said she married into a family of two children and quickly had a third child so a larger vehicle was needed. Mann donated the car because her father instilled a sense of community as she was growing up. “Money is not something to hold onto,” she said. “It’s something to give away. It stuck with me.” The Durango was donated by the Halfway To Prosperity Center, another nonprofit. A member of the Wheels of Change selection
committee told a friend with Halfway that she wished two cars could be given away since the top two contenders were so deserving. The souped-up 1971 Ford Thunderbird that Perry drove until his death in January 1985 had wound up in the hands of the city of Birmingham. It had fallen into disrepair and eventually wound up at Old Car Heaven. An attorney in the city’s legal department alerted Marquetta Hill-King, the foundation’s executive director and daughter of “Birmingham’s Batman,” that the keys to the car would be turned over at Wednesday’s event. Some forms must yet be signed before possession returns to her family. The restoration and return of the car to Perry’s family are goals of the Rescue the Rescue Ship campaign that began in 2009. That effort stalled and resumed about three years ago. The campaign also is funding a documentary on Perry.
MAKE IT SEW
involved in a community art project. Then the story of the Alabama’s Gee’s Bend quilters went mainstream and Taylor’s love for quilting, sewing and textiles matured into what it is today. “The joy I feel coming to Bib & Tucker, it’s something that is deep inside each of us, this nostalgia,” she said. “It’s like sitting around with a bunch of grandmothers. We talk about politics and religion and all the things you’re not supposed to talk about in polite society. We do it anyway, while creating beautiful and functional art.” Members of the Bib & Tucker Sew Up attend on Tuesday mornings and stitch their dreams and vision into tangible art. It was easy to imagine the legacies these grandmothers are knitting lasting for generations upon generations. “When we started, we made 10 quilts and donated them to the Woodlawn YMCA shelter,” Taylor said. “We taught the women how to make quilts, and by the 10th quilt most of them were proficient. The thing that unifies us is that everyone has a passion for sewing and quilting.” Next time you seek warmth at night, remember the heart, soul and gentle touch that went into the making of your quilt. To feel warm inside, remember your grandmother or the authenticity of those gathered at the Bib & Tucker Sew Up. To learn more, donate or volunteer, visit http://www.bibandtuckersewop.org
Lillis Taylor is threading an Alabama Bright Light with Bib & Tucker By Karim Shamsi-Basha My grandmother sewed blankets, quilts, shirts, dresses and pants. (Well, let’s not talk about the pants – the source of my seventh-grade humiliation and a scar I carry in adulthood.) Then there were the quilts. My goodness! Her’s were a work of art! Quilting must be a requirement when you enter that golden age. When you love on your grandbabies and feed them chocolate for breakfast, but give them back to their parents when you’re tired. Lillis Taylor isn’t a grandmother or in her golden years, but she gets to feed on the sweetness of grandmothers and bask in their warmth as if it was a quilt. Taylor leads the mission of Bib & Tucker Sew Up in Woodlawn. Upon entering a cheery and light-filled room, I was greeted by a few grandmothers sitting around a table and making quilts. How did I know they were grandmothers? It says so, in the soft wrinkles on their fingers cutting small squares of material and sewing them together. In their smiles, in the way their eyes are gentle when they look up, and in the stories (because Southern ladies don’t gossip) that they share. “Bib & Tucker is British slang for a woman’s finest clothes,” Taylor explained. “Back in the day, a woman would wear the same blouse and the skirt, but would embroider bibs and tuckers on them to make them fancier.” Bib & Tucker Sew Up helps the community display its finest through sewing. “We have the mission of cultivating skills for those who sew or want to sew, ages 9 to 99,” Taylor said. “Everyone can be a teacher or a student. We also have a vision of creating a cottage industry of textile and manufacturing here in Birmingham.” Taylor grew up surrounded by her grandmother’s quilts. She worked hard to learn how to sew, and took it seriously in 2009 when
AlabamaNewsCenter.com
Alabama Bright Lights captures the stories, through words, pictures and video, of some of our state’s brightest lights who are working to make Alabama an even better place to live, work, and play. Award winning journalist Karim Shamsi-Basha tells their inspiring stories. Email him comments, as well as suggestions on people to profile, at karimshamsibasha@gmail.com
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ALABAMA MAKERS
Redmont Distilling Co., Birmingham The Makers: Jonathan Guidry, Jake Hendon and Stephen Watts
Redmont Distilling is an Alabama Maker bringing a new spirit (or two) to Birmingham Three college friends decide to take a different path from the craft beer craze to concoct something new. By Michael Tomberlin
Making hooch in the ‘Ham? It might have sounded like an impossible idea a decade ago. But the rebirth of the Magic City, one could argue, has been partially fueled by beer. Craft breweries such as Good People Brewing Co., Avondale Brewing Co. and Cahaba Brewing Co. are part of a youthful, fresh vibe that is sparking everything from food to entrepreneurship. So if you can make beer in Birmingham, why not booze? That was what Stephen Watts, Jake Hendon and Jonathan Guidry asked when the three college friends started exploring an idea of brewing beer themselves. “We started with brewing beer … about four or five years ago. We enjoyed drinking the beer … but at the end of the day we enjoyed a good cocktail,” Guidry said. “So we were like, ‘Well, you know, there are breweries coming up in Birmingham. Why don’t we try to do something a little bit different?’” Doing so meant the trio had to learn about distilling alcohol, which they did by visiting distilleries, reading books and becoming students of spirits. “There is so much to learn,” Watts said. “There is not an easy guide to learning how to become a distiller.” Hendon said the education including learning how to operate a still and then shifted to what mix of grains to use in the mash to produce the alcohol. Redmont Distilling ended up settling on 100 percent corn and decided to produce vodka and gin as its first products. Hendon said going with clear spirits is a logical first step for a
new distillery because they don’t require any special aging or processing. Vodka, he said, is the easiest to make and Redmont Vodka was the first product. Gin, which is made from vodka with the addition of botanicals in an additional distilling process, was the logical second choice. The Alabama Cotton Gin is not just a cute name: cotton is one of the botanicals used in the distilling of gin. Redmont does plan to add other liquors in the future. Hendon said they are exploring flavored vodkas, rum and whiskey. For now, Watts said the growth plan calls for a tasting room and opening the THE PRODUCT: distillery for tours. Redmont Vodka and Like the craft beer industry, the Alabama Cotton Gin. small-but-growing community of disTAKE HOME: tillers in Alabama is supportive of each A bottle (750 milliliters) of other and eager to help one another Redmont Vodka ($27.99) grow and avoid duplicating mistakes, and of Alabama Cotton Gin ($32.99) can be found in ABC Watts said. Stores and retailers Watts said they are even looking at throughout the state. forming an Alabama distillers’ guild to Redmont Distilling Co. formalize the cooperation and approach www.redmontdistilling.com to shared issues they face. Alabama Makers explores the artisans, crafts people, carpenters, cooks, bakers, blacksmiths, designers and others making original and extraordinary items in our state. If you know an Alabama Maker, let us know at alnewscenter@outlook.com.
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viewpoint
Move It
Brace yourself for the video revolution. By Bill Todd
Video is taking over the content world. It is moving every major marketing decision across the globe. The scramble is on to compete for the flittering attention of media-savvy consumers who expect to be engaged and entertained. And rightfully so. The nearly unlimited growth of smartphone usage and data means all of us are walking around with infinite TV channels in our pockets and purses. While “appointment television”—actually sitting in front of a television to watch a scheduled program —isn’t going away, the limits of time and space have disappeared with mobile devices. And consumers expect more sophisticated and interesting video all the time. The headlines come in around the clock every day. Major media companies are throwing all the money they can at video. Whether it’s Fox pouring millions
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into theSkimm as that publication begins short-form video production, or the NFL brokering a deal to stream its broadcasts on Twitter (Twitter!), or YouTube building its own streaming cable system, the tectonic plates of media consumption are morphing into a new world that we’ve never seen before. For the first time ever, digital video companies like Facebook, Netflix, and YouTube as an industry are able to claim more viewers of their content than the broadcast television industry. It’s a point the broadcast industry sternly disputes. But the fact is, the video landscape is changing, and the barrier to entry is lower than ever before. Brands that don’t jump into the growing video content pool are going to be left high and dry. Worse than that, they’ll be ignored. It doesn’t have to be that way. Video is the leveler of uneven playing fields.
Even the smallest brand can compete with bigger brands with cost-effective video that can be consumed over all kinds of media at the same time. N o t everybody can be on broadcast television, but anybody can be on Facebook, Yo u Tu b e , Instagram or Snapchat. It’s predicted that Facebook users alone will upload three times more video next year than they will this year. How can your business join this revolution? The first step is to decide you want in. Businesses of virtually any size can harness this wave of video consumption by partnering with smart creative companies that strategically map out and produce streams of video content to invite curiosity, build awareness, and strengthen loyalty. You just have Bill Todd, APR is to want to comthe president and pete, entertain and partner of o2 Ideas, a Birminghamen- gage through based marketing, video. communications and advertising A revolution, agency. indeed.
SMALL IS BIG AT HARBERT SMALL IS BIG AT HARBERT
NO PROBLEM TOO BIG. NO SOLUTION TOO NO PROBLEM SOLUTION TOO SMALL. Picture TOO a dotBIG. theNO size of a pinhead. SMALL. thefrequency size of a pinhead. That’s howPicture small aa dot radio That’s how small radiois. frequency identification (RFID)achip At the RFID identification (RFID) chipHarbert is. At theisRFID Lab at Auburn University, taking Lab at Auburn University, Harbert that is taking that chip and solving big problems thatthe chip and solving big problems that span business spectrum. In healthcare, span the business spectrum. healthcare, manufacturing and retail – theInentire manufacturing and retail – the entire supply chain – we’re increasing efficiency, supply chain – we’re increasing efficiency, reducing errors, deterring theft and tracking, reducing errors, deterring theft and tracking, locating, inventorying and identifying products locating, inventorying and identifying products and parts down to a unit level. We work closely and parts down to a unit level. We work closely with one of a handful of research centers with one of a handful of research centers globally to test, set and enforce RFID standards. globally to test, set and enforce RFID standards. Harbert is the nexus where industry meets Harbert is the nexus where industry meets technology solutions. technology solutions.
Bring us your challenges. Bring us your challenges. WeWe have small (RFID) solutions. have small (RFID) solutions.
HARBERT. HARBERT. WHERE BUSINESS BUSINESSHAPPENS. HAPPENS.
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on brand
The 10 Commandments of Protecting Your Brand Keep your branding to yourself. By Dan Monroe is a great example with its why: “be THE low-fare airline.” Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s founder, once explained his why by posing the following scenario: You work for Southwest, and Tracy from Marketing comes into your office and presents survey results indicating that passengers on long flights might enjoy something more to eat than nuts. She thinks a chicken Caesar salad would do the trick. What do you say? Answer: You ask Tracy from Marketing if serving the chicken salad will help make Southwest THE low-fare airline. If it won’t, then don’t. Herb was true to his why. They don’t serve salads. Whether your company is called Coca Cola or Jimmy-Bob Joe-Bob & Frank, you have a brand. You may not realize it since, after all, brand happens mostly on its own (more about that in the “On Brand” column in the BHM BIZ April/May edition). But whether you’ve spent a century and trillions of dollars developing an international company or you’re just getting out of the gate with a startup, you should know how to protect your brand. Let’s start with a little background. People talk about brand in a lot of highfalutin ways, but the notion of a brand started with the lowly beef steer. Brands were identifiable marks that allowed others to recognize the “product” by what was burned into its hide. When we first started to create identifiable marks for companies, it wasn’t much of a leap to call them “brands.” Now we recognize brands by identifiable marks (logos), colors, typefaces, graphic devices, the brand tone of voice, spokespeople, etc. There are so many aspects of brand that I could devote a whole piece just to them. Layer onto these brand trappings all of the experiences people have and the stories they tell about a company, and we begin 16 BHM BIZ
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to see the brand as the aggregation it truly is. So, now that we know what brand is, let’s say yours is trucking along nicely. How do you keep it on track? How do you protect it from hitting a pothole and taking a big left turn in the big marketplace highway? Let’s start with why. Commandment 1: Know Thy Why. The why of a brand goes by lots of names: value proposition, single most important message, single-minded proposition, mission, USP (unique selling proposition). But it’s all the same stuff. Ideally, it is that single thing for which your company is known—its raison d’etre. Examples: Volvo: safety; Subway: fast, healthy fare; IKEA: contemporary design for all; Nike: empowerment of the everyday athlete. Whatever your why is, you should know it—even if your why is as simple as putting a truly quality Billy-Bob JoeBob & Frank-brand widget in the hands of your enthusiastic customers.
Commandment 3: Know Thy Audience. I recommend profiling. (Yes, this is one instance where profiling is acceptable.) Personify your key audience. Think of it this way: If the bell curve that represents your audience is broad, try to select the type of person who would be part of the highest point of the curve. Is this person typically male or female? How much money do they make? Where do they live? What do they wear? What book is on their nightstand? What sites do they visit online? Are they on social media, and if so, which ones? What do they love? What do they hate? This is important. The better you know your audience, the better you’ll be able to communicate your brand to them.
Commandment 2: To Thine Own Why Be True. Let your why be the litmus test for everything you do. Southwest Airlines
Commandment 4: Know Thy Brand’s Written Voice. Here, it helps to profile your brand. Ask yourself: If your brand
were a person, how would he or she speak? Would the voice be humorous? Erudite? Does it have attitude? Is it matter-of-fact? Or does it like to use analogy and metaphor to explain things? Is it the voice of an engineer or a poet? Is it simple or sophisticated? Once you feel like you have a handle on brand voice, think about how that voice speaks to your audience. How will your audience react to your voice? It’s vital that your company voice match your target audience.
and clients. Are they all telling the same story? We created a brand story for our company. It’s not a script, mind you, but it does give our employees what they need to be able to understand how the owners see the brand and how we want to communicate the brand to the world. I recommend you use the same approach. Develop your elevator pitch. Develop the language you use to describe your company and your why. And then share that language with your brand ambassadors.
Commandment 5: Know Thy Brand’s Visual Voice. This one’s tougher. If you don’t have a graphic designer in-house, either hire one or sub out the work. You want the visual language of your brand to be consistent and on target. If you’re wondering what I mean by visual voice, it’s everything from the typefaces you use, to your primary and secondary color palettes, to graphic patterns and emblems, to the texture of paper you print on. A graphic designer spends years learning the discipline of the visual voice of brands.
Commandment 8: Map Thy Touchpoints (and Use Them). There’s no definitive answer as to when and by whom the word touchpoint first started to be used in connection with the human encounters customers have with a brand. I’ve heard that Disney perfected the notion of touchpoint mapping, but I can’t even be sure of that. What I do know is that the technique is useful. Here’s what you do: Gather in a room around a whiteboard, roll your sleeves up, and map out your customer’s experience with your brand from the time they first encounter it throughout the history of your experience with them. Do they encounter your brand in advertising or online before any sort of engagement begins? When they pull into your parking lot, what do they experience? What is the experience of calling you on the phone? What is it like in your building? Every one of these instances is an opportunity to communicate your brand. We recommend that you identify the touchpoints that give you the best opportunity to really engage your customer with your brand and then craft those experiences so that they best communicate the way you want people to perceive your company.
Commandment 6: Be True to Thy Voices. Once you know the written and visual voices of your brand, you must stick with them. Consistency in how you communicate verbally and visually with your customer creates comfort and confidence. To put a sharper point on it, if your communications are all over the place, your business will look like it’s all over the place. You definitely won’t look like you’ve got all your gear in one sock. You’ll look like a newbie.
Commandment 7: Train Thy Brand Ambassadors. Think about all the people who have the opportunity to share your brand with others: employees, subcontractors, customers,
Commandment 9: Have a Code That You Can Live By. (Apologies to Graham Nash.) What are your company’s values? What are your company’s passions? What are the lines you do not cross? For example, is your brand smart but not conceited? Is is humorous but not silly? We’ve talked about how your brand looks and speaks. What we’re trying to
get at here is how your brand behaves. At the very foundation of your brand are these behavioral cues. These are the principles that guide the way you treat your customers, partners, employees, and vendors. You could equate this to the character of the brand persona you developed in accordance with Commandment 4. Commandment 10: Be The Vigilant Protector. Someone in your company must own the job of being the brand police. The larger your company, the more locations you have, the more people you hire, the more opportunities there are for your brand to be misused. The brand police must be concerned with brand standards. Brand standards govern the strict use of your brand elements: How is your logo used? What are your colors? Are they defined in terms of a Pantone color or a CMYK build? What are the ways your logo and colors are not to be used? What are the typefaces that are acceptable and in what circumstances? These are a few of the questions a brand standards guide should answer. Adopt brand standards and use them. If you have questions about brand standards, consult a graphic designer or a branding company. They can help. Your brand police must also be dialed into content that is or is not onbrand. Prepare a social media policy, or at the very least, ensure that all of your people know what you expect of them in their online behavior as it relates to your company. Watch for instances where the visual or verbal voice by which your company is being represented are not on brand. Brands are hard to start and even harder to nurture and grow in the direction you want them to grow. Knowing how to manage them as your company grows is key. So, here you have it: 10 basic rules to live by when it comes to protecting Dan Monroe is principal and creative your hard-won director of copywriting at Cayenne Creative. brand. www.BHMBIZ.com
17
tech
Whey We Love Wordpress
And why we are still using it in 2016. By Chelsea Berler
It’s free. That’s right, free! Clients love free. WordPress always has been and most likely always will be available to anyone, anywhere for nothing. You don’t pay to download, install, use, or update it. It’s open-source, meaning the code base is there for anyone to pour through, correct, or adapt.
David M G / Shutterstock.com
There are many content management (CM) platforms available, but at my company, we continue to use (and love!) WordPress for our clients’ web development. Sure, there are newer options available, but none of them hit all of the buttons that WordPress does when it comes to being a supple development tool, an easy system for clients to understand, and one with a robust and supportive user community. Since it came on the scene in 2003, WordPress has grown and changed to keep pace without sacrificing stability to the whims of the moment. WordPress may be getting on in years, but it still kicks butt with the best of them. Best of all, our clients love WordPress, too. Want to know why? It’s exceptionally easy to use. When we show clients how to use WordPress for the first time, they’re wowed by how easy it is to make changes to their website. Within minutes they can update text, add a new blog post, switch out images, and add new users. 18 BHM BIZ
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It’s cost and time effective. Clients love the fact that they don’t have to call us to make edits to their site. No one wants to wait a full day or a full weekend for someone to make changes, right? This saves a ton of time and money. It’s accessible from anywhere. Clients can tap into their WordPress site from everywhere they have internet access. On vacation in Utah and want to post a blog? In Norway on business need to update the phone number on you website? No problem. Just make those updates from any internet-accessible computer. That’s pretty cool and super convenient. It lets clients add custom touches. Because WordPress is a development platform, it lets us build extremely complex sites, not just static “brochure” sites that only display content. That means they can feature movies, videos, podcasts, animation, infographics, and more.
It has tons of themes and plugins to add. All the toys are at your fingertips. There are themes to fit almost any desired layout or style, plus plugins to accomplish almost anything. They can integrate your website with various social networks and services, including custom e-commerce solutions, membership programs, or even including an appointment calendar. It’s modular. WordPress can be shaped into practically anything you’d like your website to do. Whether it means installing a plugin or hacking the theme manually, any vision can be realized. It’s an awesome SEO tool. WordPress takes care of 80 to 90 percent of the mechanics of SEO for clients, according to Google’s webspam team. This means that WordPress makes it easy for the search engines to crawl through and discover your Chelsea Berler is content. an entrepreneur, That’s all pretty darn good!
coach, author, and motivational speaker based in Birmingham, where she owns and operates Solamar, a boutique marketing agency.
The
Justin Griffin, Business Development/Account Manager, Business Electronics Tyler Hillman, President of AllSouth Appliance
BUSINESS ELECTRONICS
Partnership
At Business Electronics you are more than a customer. You are a partner in technology, productivity and success. Tyler Hillman and Justin Griffin talk about implementing the BE Partnership. Q. What interested you most about a partnership with BE and AllSouth?
Justin: AllSouth Appliance Group represents exactly the type of company that we want to be partners with. They aim to build lifelong customers by catering to them every step of the way from shopping to installation to maintenance. Tyler: BE has a great reputation for optimizing the money you are currently spending, and spending it better. In our case, they took our standard office equipment costs and found a way for AllSouth to purchase technology that will bring more value to our customers. I liked the idea of BE being able to serve all our locations, that brings simplicity to managing our office equipment.
Q. What sets BE and AllSouth apart from other companies in the same fields?
Justin: Tyler and his team have created an amazing environment for customers to customize the most important room in their house. They now have a brand new show room that makes it even easier for customers to pick out appliances in person and make informed decisions on them. You can see so many different brands in one room rather than having to look through catalogs. Tyler: BE not only has the ability to offer us different types of equipment and technology, but they are also adding different
paths for us to utilize the technology. With our new Sharp Aquos Board in our showroom, our customers can interact with the board and customize their own space with our appliances. Allowing our customers to visualize our products in their own space creates a huge benefit for us and the customer. Plus it adds a “cool” effect and shows first hand we are investing in their showroom experience.
Q.What has been the best part about working with each other?
Justin: You can always tell when a company actually cares about the community, and the great part about AllSouth is that they actively give back their time and resources. Tyler is a participating member in area home builders associations, chambers of commerce and many industry related groups. AllSouth works with a number of local charitable organizations. It’s easy to work with someone who gives back and constantly stays involved. Tyler: Justin and his team broke down our office equipment expenditures at each location and made it very easy to understand and implement our new technology. He took the time to understand our business and came up with the best equipment for our locations. Now all our various departments, from sales to service have the most effective, state of the art equipment. Saving time and adding more ways for us to bring value to our customers.
TECHNOLOGY EXPERTS INTERACTIVE/DIGITAL SIGNAGE PRINTING SYSTEMS MANAGED SERVICES WORKFLOW SOLUTIONS TELEPHONE SYSTEMS 219 Oxmoor Circle Birmingham, Alabama 35209 205-942-6007
www.businesselectronics.com
SPONSORED CONTENT BY TEKLINKS AND CITRIX
BIZ
10 things ABOUT BL HARBERT whitepaper cyber security:
7 LAYERS
FREE THE HOPS To Create a Culture of Security
Harry Kampakis was ahead of the craft beer trend, starting its distribution in the state in the late 1990s. As a part of the Free the Hops movement starting in 2005, he helped change Alabama legislation to allow beers up BY DAVID POWELL to 13 percent alchohol by volume and in containers up to 750 ml to be sold in the state, along with reducing restrictions for brewery sales under the Brewery 7 Layers As a leader in your business, it’s your responsibility to arranged get your meetings Modernization Act. Kampakis with of Data Security network is different. As such, there is no simhead around this whole Gov. “security But for lobbyist most, it’s im- Every company Bob thing.” Riley, secured representation, and served as the movement’s chief financial ple, one-size-fits-all, three-step plan for putting a pad-lock on possible to shore up every conceivable security vulnerability at supporter.
once. Doing so is not only financially impractical, it’s simply not the best way to become secure.
The reason is because security is not just a list of checked boxes. It is a cultural mindset toward technology and data that exists throughout your organization because that is what is best for your employees, your company, and your customers. A culture of security begins at the top. The Path to Security The path to security is a series of baby steps. Just like our physical health, it’s common to aggressively pursue our goals in fits and starts, only to shortly get overwhelmed and burn out. In business, as in fitness, it’s better to implement a series of simple, gradual changes over time to develop a healthy lifestyle of security. NETWORK SECURITY
rules of thumb isolate systems
regulate user permissions
Design network with security in mind
properly configure network hardware
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your company’s technology. So instead of describing every possible contingency and how you should address it, let’s imagine your network as a series of layers that each perform a different function in protecting your Mission-Critical assets. Mission-Critical Assets are the devices, applications, and databases that makeup the crux of your business. Without them, your company could not operate. Here is a brief explanation of what each layer of security entails:
Layer 1: Perimeter Security Your perimeter is the point to which you have control of your network, technology, and data. It is the outer edge of what you can control and have a responsibility to safeguard. As such, it is also the first point of contact for many external threats to your network. Layer 2: Network Security Network Security is about protecting parts of your network from other parts of your network. It comes down to this: there is no reason that every department and job function should have access to every area of your network. Layer 3: Endpoint Security Endpoint Security focuses on any device by which a user accesses network data. This includes, but isn’t limited to, servers, computers, tablets, smartphones, hard drives, thumb drives, etc. This layer of security is particularly critical because of the sheer number of network devices connected at any given time.
SPONSORED CONTENT BY TEKLINKS AND CITRIX
Layer 4: Application Security Microsoft Exchange, QuickBooks, Greenway, Great Plains, Dropbox, CAD, Minecraft – they are all applications. Application Security is the process of securing the software an organization uses to perform a particular function. Layer 5: Data Security Because your data is so important, you hide it in the center of your castle. Surrounded by moats, archers on turrets, drawbridges. If, by some miracle, every layer of security you’ve put in place fails, your final option is to booby-trap the treasure itself. Data security is the process of making that data as difficult as possible to view, read, manipulate, and remove. Layer 6: Preventative Security There are two components of technology security that span all the other layers: Policy Management (Preventative) and Security Operations (Monitoring & Response).
•One in three companies does not have a written information security policy. •Lost or stolen devices accounted for 68% of the breaches reported to the Health Department from healthcare providers. •75% of attacks take place at the application layer.
Your preventative security strategy should address four tactics: Policy Management, Risk Assessment and Management, Testing, and Training. Without a policy management strategy, all other efforts will fall flat, unable to execute effectively across the organization. Layer 7: Monitoring and Response Monitoring is the “neighborhood watch” of your IT environment. Monitoring software works while you sleep. It’s the barking beagle that can’t do much to repel an intruder, but it makes you aware. Monitoring systems allow you to: •Identify potential threats within your network •Observe network hardware performance •Observe application performance •Log, analyze, and report on security events Building a Strong Security Culture Sound daunting? TekLinks can help. Learn more by visiting our blog with the expanded version of this article in stages at www. teklinks.com. Follow along to learn more about the layers of security and ways you can build a strong security culture within your business.Or have TekLinks’ team of experts conduct a security assessment for your business. Email us at info@teklinks. com. WHO IS TEKLINKS? A national leader in cloud computing, managed services, engineering services, and value-added resale. We’re a team of expert techies and business professionals who are passionate about building valuable relationships and getting things done right. Simply put: We make IT work for business.
David Powell is a 17-year veteran of the IT industry, the last 12 spent exclusively in Managed and Cloud Services. Named one of the Top 250 People in Managed Services by MSPMentor for four consecutive years, David has worked for 3 of the top 100 Managed Services Providers. Since coming to TekLinks, he has helped transition TekLinks from a traditional VAR to a company with a nationally recognized Managed and Cloud Services practice. TekLinks received the Top MSP award from CRN at the VAR500 awards in both 2010 and 2012. Additionally, he has a “Tek is the New Black” web series that airs on the TekLinks YouTube channel each week.
FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO TEKLINKS.COM
www.BHMBIZ.com
We Make IT Work for Business.
21
Coffee
With...
Terry Chapman and Fred Smith [BUSINESS ELECTRONICS]
[THE FRED SMITH GROUP]
We met up at The Red Cat Coffee Shop at Parkside for this issue’s conversation. What is the focus of your business? Chapman: We focus on taking standard office equipment costs and spending that money better to get you top-ofthe-line technology. Copiers cannot make your company more efficient or more profitable, but other technology like telephone systems, interactive touch display boards, document management, and digital signage can. Most companies have to deal with one vendor for each office need, but Business Electronics is able to create a partnership with the customer to take care of every office technology need. Smith: Our primary focus at The Fred Smith Group is to provide the highest level of service for our clients whether they are buying or selling a home. My team, The Fred Smith Group, is comprised of 10 associates. Being a member of RealtySouth’s brand offers us a large box of tools that helps us assist our clients. However, our team’s philosophy is to offer far more. We provide two times more marketing for our team’s listings than the average agent in the area.
What is your philosophy of customer service? Chapman: Being a locally owned company, we have the flexibility to do
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whatever is necessary to make sure we exceed the expectations of our potential, new, and existing customers. That is one of the reasons we send out customer surveys for every service call and every closed sale. We calculate and evaluate results quarterly and annually to track our success as a company. We also offer the best performance guarantees in the business, with a 90-minute service response time and a complete satisfaction or replacement promise. Smith: We employ an aggressive market plan for our sellers. They are always surprised by our state-of-the-art tools and the efforts we practice when marketing their homes. We market to two different groups: consumers purchasing a new home and agents who are working with buyers. The most popular way to reach consumers today is by forward-facing websites like Realtor. com, Zillow, Trulia, RealtySouth, and our own site SoldByFred.com, as well as the emerging ones. We reach other agents by constant networking, agent open houses, and the various ever changing social media groups and pages.
What are some of your biggest challenges and opportunities? Smith: Heading into the fall of an election year, business remains strong. However, after the election there are going to be questions in the minds of people that will cause hesitations mainly
because we are not sure who or what the new president’s policies will be. Despite this, I feel the market will be strong through the fall and winter months. We remain at historically low inventory rates, and that drives the demand higher for the homes currently on the market. For buyers who are looking to upsize, their current homes should sell in a reasonable time. However, their challenge could be finding the right home for them. As for first-time home buyers, they will have to move quickly and with the best offer. The ones that have few contingencies and can jump on a new listing as soon as that house becomes available will reap the benefits of being able to do so. All signs indicate that interest rates are likely to rise in 2017. Chapman: With the addition of my business partner, Troy McCawley, and numerous new technology solutions, we have experienced huge growth since the start of 2016. Expanding and improving our services has allowed us to build stronger relationships with current and new customers. We have the capability to make our customers more successful, and that adds huge value to the partnership. With rapid growth comes a couple of challenges. We are constantly reevaluating our processes and adding new positions to accommodate the increased success. I think it is safe to say we have been in constant hiring mode since January, which is a great thing. Photo by Beau Gustafson
Terry Chapman and Fred Smith at The Red Cat at Parkside. www.BHMBIZ.com
23
frequent flyer
Kerri Vanderbom
UAB Researcher // Lakeshore Foundation Athlete Kerri Vanderbom is no stranger to air travel. As a member of the Lakeshore Storm wheelchair basketball team out of the Lakeshore Foundation, she’s off to Florida and Texas with a dozen team members for tournaments in the winter. As a part of her work as a researcher with the UAB Department of Physical Therapy, she flies to conferences or training once or twice a month. Even outside of those realms, she and her husband, Derek, frequently travel to see their family in Northern California and to compete in water ski competitions. Traveling in a wheelchair looks the same as that for an able-bodied person in many ways, but several steps are different. Instead of going through a metal detector in security with a metal wheelchair, both she and her chair must be manually patted down, and you never know when that might take extra time. “There’s a lot of little things you have to keep in mind,” Vanderbom says. “Sometimes you are tired and you just want to get to your destination.” People with disabilities are usually the first ones on the plane and the first ones off. At check in, they have to get a special tag for their wheelchair that notes any current damage, and then it gets checked at the gate much like a stroller would. After you land, you have to wait for your wheelchair to be delivered and make sure it hasn’t incurred any damage before you deplane. “It varies by airport whether they are good at knowing what to do with someone with a wheelchair,” Vanderbom says. Vanderbom, who moved to Birmingham from Oregon in 2013, says the Birmingham airport is good at working with people with disabilities, in part, she thinks, because so many come to Lakeshore in addition to the general population. Lakeshore has also worked with the airport to train staff in this arena as well. Vanderbom is all the more attuned to airport setups since she researches how to adapt health promotion programs to be inclusive for people with disabilities. While she has a manual wheelchair, she says people with power chairs face even more planning and preparation for air travel, as do people who are blind and/or have service dogs. She takes notice of things like the helpfulness of having an accessible bathroom that’s clearly marked, or better yet one with multiple wheelchair stalls because people traveling with luggage like to use the wheelchair stalls. heights are too tall for them. “Seeing those things are always really nice,” Vanderbom says. Written by Madoline Markham Photo by Beau Gustafson 24 BHM BIZ
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We’ve got great things in store for you. At its heart, travel is about one thing: getting from here to there. But at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, our heart is in ensuring that your experience here is the best it can possibly be. That’s why our newly modernized terminal is home to passenger favorites like the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame Store and Museum and the Ebony Newsstand. Because while you may be focused on your destination, we’re making sure you enjoy the journey.
FLYBIRMINGHAM.COM
rocket pitch
Kevin McCroskey & Jason Oleinick Twist Technology
President Kevin McCroskey started his career in the music business, and his first venture was Odyssey Music Festival, a two-day camping event that featured 15 national, regional, and local bands. After graduating from Auburn University, he began working in sales at Oxmoor Corporation, where he managed ZON audio dealer direct accounts in addition to directing the domestic distributor program. He brings industry knowledge, planning, and sales skills to Twist Technology. Sales Director Jason Oleinick has been working with Twist for almost seven years and started his current position in 2015. He has sold projects here in Birmingham, as well as Tuscaloosa, Miami, New York, and Boston, and been the top producer each of those seven years, working with everyone from athletes to multi-million dollar developers. A people person, he has many years of experience negotiating big contracts for high profile projects. Photo by Billy Brown
Business Model: We concentrate on custom electronics systems in commercial, theatre, luxury residential, and multi-family spaces. We have completed projects worldwide, including New York, Boston, Miami, and Los Angeles. Opportunity in the Market: In high-rise residential buildings, we go into their sales centers and give them touch-screen video walls, table-top displays, and holograms that greet you. What we mostly do is help their sales people sell it. They are selling an $18 million penthouse, so they spend a lot in order to wow potential customers. In homes, we do control systems where a phone or remote will control whole home automation. If you are spending the money, it can also coordinate locks, shades windows, gates, TV, audio, and the thermostat. We sell these rooms that pretty much give you a surround projection. A sales center, for example, is trying to show the
actual floor view of the unit they are trying to sell. The walls can show you what you would actually see out the windows on the floor you want Our commercial department handles commercial work as well as worship spaces. A big problem for a lot of worship spaces is sound. We have the kind of background that lends itself really well to working in that field. Our engineering and design department solves problems. One of the things we do is become the project manager for the whole technology aspect of the project. We end being the company that knows how to put it all together. Where the Business is Going: Giant Theatres is a brand of Twist that we will use exclusively in that theatre market. Theatres and institutional theatres comes from our background in IMAX theatres. Our CEO founded Sonics Associates, which did the sound for IMAX theatres worldwide. We are getting back into that market with this company because some technology has changed.
WHAT IS A ROCKET PITCH?
Simply put, it’s you getting across the purpose of your business and doing it in just three minutes. Also known as “the elevator speech,” your rocket pitch should focus on three main points—the opportunity, market, and business model of your company—that convey the key reasons why a potential client should want to know more about what you do.
Do you have an innovative rocket pitch?
Send it to joe@bhmbiz.com to be considered for future issues of BHM BIZ. 26 BHM BIZ
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MULTIFAMILY A bee colony works in unison toward a single, focused goal. Colliers International’s Multifamily advisory business nurtures clients the same way. Whether you’re selling a single asset or a national portfolio, our combined resources —harvested globally and harnessed locally—help you to achieve your acquisition, disposition and financing objectives. Our strategically located Multifamily advisors are connected by purpose, focus and the desire to help our clients make the sweetest deals. colliers.com/alabama
+1 205 445 0955
www.BHMBIZ.com
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by the numbers
outdoor spaces
railroad park
19
acres in downtown Birmingham
600 trees are planted at Railroad Park: hardwoods, evergreens, and flowering trees including 50 Princeton Elms
30% WATER with a lake, a rain curtain, biofiltration wetlands, and ponds and streams
The outer loop around the Park is just under ¾ of a mile. The elevated trail is approximately ¾ of a mile. Two laps equal approximately 1.5 miles; four laps equal approximately 3 miles.
red mountain park
15
1500 acres of land along the Red Mountain Ridge
miles of trails featuring 2 city overlooks, 3 tree houses, the 6-acre off-leash Remy’s Dog Park, and adventures like the Vulcan Materials Zip Trip and Kaul Adventure Tower.
3
historic iron ore mining sites: Mines No. 10, 13, and 14.
Remy’s Dog Park’s is the largest dog park in Alabama, with 6 acres of green space.
The longest trail is Ike Maston Trail at 2.5 miles; the shortest is the No. 14 Mine Spur Trail at .13 miles.
Moss Rock Preserve is a 350-acre nature preserve with 12 miles of hiking footpaths and is home to four rare species of plants.
rotary trail
46 foot-tall Magic City sign. The trail itself is 0.4 miles.
The trail is a former railroad trench 14 feet below street level. It was once part of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL), which provided freight and passenger service to Birmingham beginning in 1904.
ruffner mountain
1038
acres in the urban nature preserve. In 1896 Ruffner mines produced over 200 tons of raw ore per day for processing at the nearby Sloss Furnaces. Ruffner Mountain contains more than 14 miles of trails.
oak mountain state park has 50 miles of hiking, biking, and equestrian trails set in a picturesque 9,940-acre park, as well as 2 fishing lakes and one recreational lake.
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MAKE THE WINNING PLAY You can earn an online graduate degree from any institution, but when you choose The University of Alabama, you’re choosing a degree program that sets you up for success. You’re choosing to earn a degree from one of the top universities in the country. You’re choosing to belong to a worldwide community of people who do more than graduate – they lead. Visit BamaByDistance.ua.edu/uabusiness to learn more about earning your graduate business degree online.
ONLINE LEARNING
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product placement
Saban Sprinter
McSweeney and Mercedes create the ultimate tailgating vehicle. By Jesse Chambers University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban has certainly built a strong brand, winning five national titles— four with the Crimson Tide—and being named one of the world’s top 50 leaders by Forbes magazine. McSweeney Designs, a family-owned specialty vehicle manufacturer based in Trussville, has also built a strong brand as a maker of high-end luxury vans and transport vehicles for car lovers, entertainers, business tycoons, and heads of state on three continents. These two brands recently combined forces to create a special luxury vehicle that takes the football ritual of tailgating to
a new level. Saban and his dealership, Mercedes-Benz of Birmingham, worked with McSweeney Designs to design and produce the Nick Saban Signature Series Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, a luxury vehicle designed for tailgating, corporate entertaining, and family travel. The limited-edition Sprinter—only 15 were made in 2015—features comforts such as rich leather upholstery, audiophile-worthy surround sound, and a multimedia entertainment system with three ultra-high-definition TVs and a satellite feed.
Power retractable side awning with seismic wind sensor and auto-retract technology
Audiophile quality home theater and digital surround sound processor and speakers with two 40-inch HD LED SmartTVs create an entertainment and mobile conferencing experience.
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The McSweeneys were thrilled to work with the legendary Alabama coach, according to Michael McSweeney. “Nick Saban being the celebrity he is in the state, I don’t think we could have had a greater honor than to work not just with him but his entire family,” he says. Saban’s son, Nicholas, is a product manager at the dealership and worked “hand in hand” with McSweeney executive Jeffrey Hunter to complete the project, McSweeney says. “They are truly great people,” Hunter says of the Sabans. “They have a high standard of excellence.” McSweeney says he and his family had another reason to enjoy working with Coach Saban. “We’ve been raised to be big Alabama fans,” he says, laughing. “It was a fun project to work on.” McSweeney Design, a division of McSweeney Holdings, has modified interiors on platforms such as Chevrolet Suburbans and Cadillac Escalades, as well as the Sprinter. SCA Performance, McSweeney Design’s sister com-
Dedicated tailgating system with state-of-the-art 48-inch 4K curved UHDTV and premium audio system in rear boot space
Intuitive touchscreen universal remote system with integrated iPad controls for all audio, video, media, and lighting are throughout the mid-cabin executive lounge.
pany, creates high-end off-road trucks for several makers, including GMC. As a specialty or second-stage manufacturer, the company works in “special niche categories” and does things to vehicles that the original manufacturers “don’t want to do or there’s not enough volume to do,” McSweeney says. Hunter is happy that the Saban van, which attracted a national buzz, drew attention to the skilled workers at McSweeney. “We have world-class designers, engineers, and craftsmen who pour their heart and soul into everything that comes off the line,” he says. “What was meaningful for me was to see them to get the credit they deserve.” “We can do things our competitors can’t do,” McSweeney says of the vertically integrated company founded by his dad in 1979. “We can take a project all the way from the idea phase to manufacturing in house. We have industrial designers and automotive engineers.”
Limited edition Nick Saban Signature Series with interior trim plate badges and personalized shadow box frame
Photos courtesy of McSweeney Designs
The interior layout offers conference-style seating for up to seven passengers in the mid-cabin and two in the cockpit.
Pinnacle luxury recliner has styled, heated ,and air-cooled leather seating with integrated power massage.
This photo: ESPN Anchors Chris Fowler and Tom Rinaldi along with Jeffrey Hunter ride in the Nick Saban Signature Series at the 2015 NCAA College Football Awards. Right: McSweeney Holdings Chairman Rod McSweeney (left) sits with University of Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban in the limited-edition Sprinter they co-designed and produced. Photo courtesy of George Edmondson of Seed Digital.
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cool spaces
Recycled Real Estate
Firm shows the versatility of office space with a Lego-style design. Written by Madoline MarkhamPhotography by Edward Badham Derek Waltchak had always wanted to work with shipping containers, so when his commercial real estate firm, Shannon Waltchak, purchased a warehouse building near Railroad Park to use for office space, it was time to bring his vision to life. Working with architect Richard Carnaggio of Cohen Carnaggio Reynolds, Shannon Waltchak transformed 20- and 40-foot shipping containers into individual offices. “It was an interesting and fun challenge,” Waltchack says. “It was like building out of Legos.” What results speaks of the firm’s creativity—no words necessary. Numbers marking the containers all have some significance 32 BHM BIZ
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to the company. 3014BL commemorates their first office address on Blue Lake Drive. Another is a zip code where a partner grew up, and still another marks a sales goal figure. At the project’s outset, Waltchak envisioned a space that was happy and spoke to the future of their young firm. The offices themselves are relatively small, allowing for more space for staff to get out and interact in what they call “creative collisions.” In the back of the office, a bumper pool table sits atop a putting green adjacent to their kitchen. A two-story silo rounds out the space on its edge. At the opposite end of the building, garage doors on the sides of two conference rooms
open to create a larger meeting or event space when they need it. “It shows (our clients) what you can do with real estate,” Waltchack says. “Their office can be an asset that works for themselves even when they are not selling. It opens their eyes to what’s possible and how it can work for them.” The rest of the office fits with the recycled material theme as well. The space isn’t LEED-certified, but Waltchack thinks they might be the most green office space in town without the designation. Using a newly acquired portable band sawmill, Waltchak’s team had Gray’s Tree Service send them hardwood
from Birmingham yards that otherwise would have gone to landfills. They cut the wood on-site and dried it out over the summer in a solar kiln they built. From that red and white oak and poplar, they made desktops and the wooden skins that divide office spaces. Running down the center of the firm’s space, railroad ties line a boardwalk of distressed dark wood, and the exterior of the cinder block structure boasts a herringbone pattern of rusty metal chicken house siding a contractor sourced in Alabama. One shipping container takes different form from the others in the office. It is hung vertically at the office’s entrance www.BHMBIZ.com
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so that you can look straight up the sides of it to see the sky through an opaque skylight (see the top of page 36). One of its walls also forms a section of the building’s exterior that will soon bear the company’s primary sign. In the middle of the office space, wiring on a staircase leads to a second floor where the company will expand and add new glassed-in offices on top of the shipping containers that will be connected by a catwalk. The happy tone Waltchak envisioned is perhaps seen most strongly in the orange paint on the shipping containers’ exteriors, which was inspired by Waltchak’s recent visit to the Golden Gate Bridge. When the company rebranded after moving in, they incorporated the hue as well. The space is also distinctively Birmingham. When you 34 BHM BIZ
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first walk into the office, a projector displays black and white photos of historic buildings like the Redmont Hotel and Paramount and of the evolving skyline—all mixed in amongst news clips about more recent developments in the city. Still within view of the slideshow, an 1885 bird’s eye view map of Birmingham lines the wall of the small conference room. Working with a digital file, Carnaggio tinted the map and added a few “Where’s Waldo?” anachronisms to it: The Stockyard building and its parking lot as well as subtle depictions himself and Waltchak. The specific location of the Shannon Waltchack office, in a building known as The Stockyard they share with Scout Branding, was also key to the company’s space. The firm helped kick off redevelopment in the area just after
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Railroad Park was complete—back before Regions Field was a certainty—by moving their offices into the 1914 National Biscuit Company building that would become Railroad Square back in 2010. “People loved it and flocked to it,” Waltchak recalls of the building, which was featured in the New York Times in 2013. But the firm was growing as their neighbors were, so they bought an empty warehouse building at the corner of 16th Street South and 2nd Avenue to allow space for expansion. Un36 BHM BIZ
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like Railroad Square, where they revealed the original beauty of wood beams that were there, they were working with a cinder block walls, so instead they focused on bringing in interesting elements with the shipping containers and recycled wood. The firm moved into The Stockyard in January 2015. “It’s invigorating to be in the bull’s eye of Birmingham’s renaissance,” Waltchak says. Plus, he notes, creating spaces that show off creative things happening in Birmingham makes for a better city and helps retain Millennials.
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8/17/16 5:05 PM
Long before you worked on your iron game, we were working on ours. Shaping the grounds dreams are built on. Just as we have for thousands of companies and organizations since 1957. We know what it takes to be a leader in Alabama. Not just the best equipment, service and team. But also a deep and abiding commitment to our community. After all, we don’t just work here. We live here too.
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What it takes.
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Banking Technology to Keep You Safe From Fraud Business owners routinely turn to technology solutions to make banking tasks such as accounts payable and receivable easier. And as these tools help business owners save time and money, there is also another advantage: They have strong security features that help protect the business owner against fraud. Here are some of the digital tools your business can implement that will make running your business easier, while also protecting your financial information and that of your customers: TOUCH AUTHENTICATION Customers can access their accounts and financial information from anywhere now by using mobile banking. Through the USAB mobile app, USAmeriBank’s business customers can check account balances, view transactions and transfer funds between accounts right from their smartphones. USAmeriBank is among the banks rolling out the option of Touch Authentication, also called biometric authentication. This offers advanced security by allowing users to sign in on their touch-enabled iOS smartphone using their fingerprint, adding another layer of security to traditional alphanumeric passwords. ONLINE & MOBILE SECURITY ALERTS Online banking alerts allow you to monitor your accounts via email, phone or text message. In addition to account and history alerts that help you monitor your account balances, current available balance, and transaction history, you can also receive security alerts that will alert you to activity in your online account, like password, login and challenge code changes, invalid logon attempts, address change requests, or external transfer setups. USAmeriBank sends security alerts directly to customers’ primary email addresses and messages sent to your online account. You can also receive these alerts as text or photo messages. REAL-TIME DEBIT CARD FRAUD ALERTS USAmeriBank recently added real-time Debit Card Fraud Alerts to its arsenal to help customers protect their accounts. Forensic and behavioral data is used to determine the probability that a transaction is fraudulent in real-time as the transactions occur over the card network. Customers are alerted immediately via text
message, email, or phone call and can respond in real-time to approve or decline the transaction. ACH POSITIVE PAY ACH Positive Pay allows for the screening and filtering of ACH transactions to authorize only certain vendors (originators) to electronically debit your account. Dollar limit thresholds are an available screening option. CHECK POSITIVE PAY Check Positive Pay compares the check issue information you send with the checks that paid against your account (serial number and dollar amount). Suspect items are provided to you for review and approval via the Secure Access Manager Positive Pay module. Stale date and dollar thresholds are available screening options. CHIP DEBIT CARDS New, more secure chip debit cards are becoming standard for use at many businesses. Chip cards, also sometimes called smart cards, are inserted into a reader at point-of-sale or at an ATM terminal. The chips in these cards provide an extra layer of security, because the microchip encrypts payment information, and makes it more difficult to defraud. USAmeriBank, for example, offers EMVready ATM terminals that accept these newer, more secure chip debit cards. PERSONAL SECURITY CODES Many banks offer the ability for customers to receive one-time, personalized passcodes that they can use to authorize and approve a transaction in Online or Mobile banking. Banks use two different
types of methods to generate these codes. Hard tokens consist of a physical token device issued by the bank, which displays a code for authorizing and approving transactions. Soft tokens consist of an app that generates the codes, with no physical device from the bank required. USAmeriBank will soon offer the ability for customers to use tokens at login, further securing the login process.
SELF-SERVICE CARD CONTROLS USAmeriBank will soon add customer debit card controls to further enhance card security. Through the USAB app, customers will be able to control their spending limits, add travel indicators, and activate and deactivate their card as needed. Additionally, the controls can be tied to a smartphone. When paired in this way, the smartphone must be present in order for the card to be used – further reducing the ability for counterfeit cards and online purchases to be used without your knowledge.
It is important to understand how your financial institution’s systems protect your information and your activity. Consider any options your bank offers for extra layers of protection: Banks offer a variety of services and products designed to help keep your business running smoothly while protecting your and your customers’ financial information.
USAmeriBank has several locations throughout the Birmingham area. Visit www.USAmeriBank.com to find a relationship manager near you.
Talk to your relationship manager about the options that best fit the needs of your business. Kelly Spica is Senior Vice President, Director of Deposit Operations for USAmeriBank.
Member FDIC | Equal Housing Lender ©2015 USAmeriBank
start-up city
MODULAR
BLOX GETS BUILDING DOWN TO A SCIENCE Written by Jen Barnett
Imagine that every new car had to be built by hand in the driveway of the customer who bought it. You would have to hire a contractor to manage the job, order components from thousands of vendors, and coordinate specialized workers from multiple unions. You’d have the car built in stages—chassis, body, electrical, interior, and finishes. Unhurried county safety inspectors would need to approve each stage of the build before starting the next. A mistake found at a later stage of the process could halt production and send you back to square one. Your next Toyota Camry might cost you $150,000 and take six weeks to build. Thanks to Henry Ford and others, we take the assembly line production of automobiles for granted. Building construction, on the other hand, nearly always goes through a laborious process like the one above. Why is that? It’s mainly because of size, mobility, and geography. Commercial buildings dwarf your four-door sedan, 42 BHM BIZ
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they don’t have wheels, and they need to be permanently built in the designated location. BLOX is revolutionizing that process. They believe that everything can be better and that people, communities, and the environment matter. This worldview led them to question how they could improve the building process for hospitals, where identical rooms were built across the country one at a time—much like the process for building a car in your driveway. The business builds entire rooms for the healthcare industry on the shop floor of a massive facility in Bessemer. Surgical suites and hospital rooms don’t need to be unique—they just need to work. BLOX standardizes things like the plumbing and head walls of a room, turning a typically three-month process into a single day of work. Rooms ship complete and ready to go—all the contractor needs to do is install them. These aren’t the traditional Butler Buildings that
BLOX
Type of business: Healthcare design and manufacturing Location: Bessemer Founders: Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio (GA Studio) In business since: 2011 Number of employees: 200 Site: bloxbuilt.com Phone: (205)424-3242
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dominate the prefab space. Each innovative hospital room or surgical suite meets the quality standards of thousands of complicated healthcare codes. The plug-and-play units slip seamlessly into the most massive modern healthcare facility. As pioneers in this field, they have no head-to-head competitors, and their first-mover advantage is a significant contributor to their success. They spent five years in research and development to develop their highly efficient process, using their combined 45 years of experience in architecture and healthcare to become a formidable player in a $40 billion industry. They’re experiencing 244 percent growth this year, and there’s no sign of a slowdown. As baby boomers age and healthcare continues its extended boom, BLOX is poised to become one of Birmingham’s biggest and best manufacturers. Read on to hear CEO Chris Giattina’s take on BLOX and its future. 1. What’s your elevator pitch? The cost of healthcare includes $40 44 BHM BIZ
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billion spent annually on the construction of facilities. Healthcare systems demand that the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry improve hospitals and lower costs, but the industry lacks the tools to comply. BLOX targets this gap with products and services that improve healthcare facility quality, deliver them faster, and reduce their cost. BLOX extracts the most complicated conditions of traditional construction—including headwalls, bathrooms, operating rooms, and multi-trade racks of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems—and then standardizes the components at a program level, manufactures them in a LEAN plant, and inserts the completed modules into any project in a day. 2. What’s your value proposition? The owner gets better buildings faster. BLOX allows the owner to open a typical 50-bed hospital expansion 100 days earlier. A typical hospital may have an EBITA (earnings before interest,
taxes, and amortization) of $500 per bed day, so the potential exists to harvest $2.5 million in additional profit (50 beds*100 days*$500 EBITA=$2.5 million). It is particularly enticing for a healthcare system that builds multiple projects every year. 3. Tell me about your founders and their experience. How many employees do you have? As principals of Giattina Aycock, Laura Donald and I started BLOX as research and development project within the architecture studio. We approached it like an architecture project, studied manufacturing, tested ideas, got help from friends, borrowed a temporary manufacturing space, and launched BLOX V.1. We kept iterating, simplifying, and adding talent until it worked. Now we have 200 people including architects, engineers, programmers, managers, and craftspeople working around the country designing and manufacturing hospitals, clinics, and free-standing emergency rooms.
4. How did you get the idea to launch BLOX? Designing training facilities for Honda and Kia introduced me to manufacturing methods that could improve the design and construction process. The key is bringing an understanding of manufacturing to design so that its productivity can be realized in construction. We made a framework to organize our ideas and methods: we call it Design Manufacture Construct (DMC). The design portion happens at our architectural firm, GA Studio. We design thoughtful buildings and know how to knit the manufacturing methods into traditional construction that enhance a building’s quality while speeding its delivery to market. Our BLOX division handles the manufacturing. It was created out of necessity. We needed a manufacturer interested in making our building parts. It is lean from stem to stern and routinely works with other architects, engineers, and trade contractors.
5. Why now? Why Birmingham? Over the last 50 years, AEC productivity has declined 25 percent. During the same period, manufacturing productivity improved 125 perecent. Nowhere is this lack of AEC industry productivity more acute than in the U.S. healthcare market. A perfect storm made the timing right for us—national attention on healthcare improvements, the economic crash of 2009 revealing inefficiencies of AEC industry, and our background as solvers of hard problems together paved the path for our DMC approach, and by extension, BLOX. We developed the process in our downtown Birmingham architecture firm and wanted to keep our plant equally local. 6. What are your competitive advantages? A comprehensive understanding of the Design Manufacture Construct, a half-million-square-foot factory, and
some really smart people. 7. Where do you want the company to be in five years? We’re building the team, the infrastructure, and the processes that, by 2020, will be able to make buildings that are twice as good for half the cost. 8. Who would you most like to connect with right now? We’re growing at more than 200 percent per year. Finding the right people who fit our culture is critical. We need architects, engineers, logisticians, material managers, programmers, robotic engineers, supervisors, craftspeople, and line workers. If you have skills and are interested in being part of changing an industry on a national level, we’d like to talk. Jen Barnett is an entrepreneur and marketing consultant at Redhawk Consulting, redhawkresults.com. www.BHMBIZ.com
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VISIONARY
Dr. Jack Schaeffer’s optometry kingdom is as much about science as it is style and service. Written by Madoline MarkhamPhotography by Beau Gustafson Vulcan isn’t the only one who watches over Birmingham. An astute eye is also looking out from 11 optometry centers in key locations in the city, usually accompanied by the signature Schaeffer royal blue (Pantone 2925, for the record). It’s the symbol that’s attached to the Crawfish Bowl, CityFest, segway tours at Red Mountain Park, a wildlife show and lorikeet aviary at the Birmingham Zoo, and the sponsor list 46 BHM BIZ
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at countless charitable events. And at the helm of it all is Dr. Jack Schaeffer, a business maven, nationally renowned researcher and doctor, and style icon. His eight-page CV boasts 21 affiliations with professional organizations and service on 14 advisory panels, including Allergan, Bausch & Lomb, and Valient. He has taught the most popular course at the No. 1 eye meeting in the country, Vision Expo, for the past four years. He
lecturers at major companies, conferences, and universities throughout the country, and his list of published articles rivals that of his investigative assignments. And when he boards a plane, as he frequently does, people know him. “Nice glasses,” he usually tells his seatmate. “Oh, I got them from you,” they will likely respond, often unaware of the name of the brand but fully aware they came from Schaeffer Eye Center.
Dr. Brooke Schaeffer Kaplan
Schaeffer Medical Director since 2015 Schaeffer Optometrist since 2012 UAB School of Optometry, 2012
Dr. Mark Schaeffer
Schaeffer Optometrist since 2012 Southern College of Optometry, 2011
Dr. Jack Schaeffer
Schaeffer President, CEO, & Chief of Optometry Southern College of Optometry
David Schaeffer
Illinois College of Optometry To graduate and start residency in 2017
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The science behind quality eye care and medical care is one of three cornerstones—along
From the Start Schaeffer, a Charleston native and University of Georgia graduate, first came to Birmingham in 1979 looking for a small city to raise his family and start an optometry practice. A few years in, he knew he wouldn’t leave. Schaeffer started lecturing early in his career after writing a contact lens paper. “It allowed me to visit new things happening all over,” he recalls, “so if I saw something in New York or California or Minneapolis or Florida and said ‘I’d like to do that in Birmingham,’ I’d bring that concept back to Birmingham, whether it be a better way to do contacts…or an optical shop in New York.” But he soon found that in order to do bigger things like hire a buyer and have Lasik equipment, he needed a bigger business, and so he tapped a passion for being doctor and businessperson as Schaeffer Eye Center expanded throughout the state. For each of the 30 years since then, the company has been more profitable and welcomed more appointments than the previous year. Over the past decade, their number of employees has grown by 60 percent and is now at a count of 138 at their 17 locations statewide. “Having the base here (in Birmingham) and growing to where we were profitable and (where) I could keep growing and bringing in other doctors made it so much easier for me to be able to do what I wanted to do,” Schaeffer says. “I (now) have doctors that can do 48 BHM BIZ
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with style and service to the community— that Schaeffer attributes to the company’s growth.
the pediatric stuff, I have doctors that can do the research, I have doctors that can do the FDA studies, because I sure can’t do it all. All that knowledge is sifted through me. My passion is going out and lecturing and being part of something new.” Science Today Schaeffer works with a team of doctors and researchers—including two of his children—who allow him to stay on the cutting edge of new research and product availability. Because he studies and lectures on dry eye and other topics, he always knows the next product coming out and brings that to Birmingham. The large size of the organization ensures that Schaeffer can run practices as he envisions them—with the newest technology. “We have always been on the cutting edge of everything,” he says. “A lot of doctors won’t pay for something that doesn’t make money. That’s not my philosophy. If it’s something that gives better care, we have to have it.” Schaffer readily admits they have three expensive pieces of equipment that don’t cover their costs, and they had the only LipiFlow dry eye treatment device in the state for two years before UAB and another private practice got one. The science behind quality eye care and medical care is one of three cornerstones—along with style and service to the community—that Schaeffer attributes to the company’s growth.
Their pediatric learning program can change the way children see in one to two years, addressing the approximately 20 percent of kids that are performing poorly in school because of their eyesight. A myopia prevention program can slow down children from becoming near sighted by 40 percent. What he calls the “greatest piece of equipment ever invented” can take a picture of an entire retina during an eye exam. Working with Dr. Lawrence Lemak, Schaeffer brought the King-Devick test to town to help screen for a baseline for concussions, and he is working to establish a program that screens all local children. “Those types of specialties are what we are about,” Schaeffer emphasizes. “Every decision I make and our team makes is based on what is the best thing we can do for our patients.” Style As much as Schaeffer is focused on the science of his business, he’s also all about style. That’s why his eye centers feature a “runway” of glasses vendors. Among their thousands of frames from more than 60 brands, you can find anything from a standard $99 pair covered by insurance to a high end piece from Cartier, Lunor, Robert Marc, or l.a. Eyeworks. Their buyer travels to New York or Las Vegas every six months to stay on top of the latest fashion frames, stocking a selection you see on the likes of Elton John, Madonna, Matt Damon, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman,
Matthew McConaughey, and a growing list of other celebrities. “We want to make it fun,” Schaeffer says. “A lot of people like to shop. Buying glasses at Schaeffer Eye Center is like going to New York and walking down Madison Avenue, or going to Atlanta to Phipps Plaza or Lennox. You get to try on all these brands and colors, and a lot of consultants have said, ‘You have too many products.’ I say, ‘Guess what? I’m going to add some more.’ “That’s who we are. We want to have that many. You can’t please everybody every time, but you sure can try to.” Quality frames, Schaeffer says, fit better and are more comfortable too, unlike cheaper ones you might find online and see everyone wearing. The breadth of choice continues into the realm of lenses, which Schaeffer says are the most important part of the glasses. Often, chain stores will only offer two choices, while Schaeffer provides 10 different designs, with basic, mid, above mid, or the best that’s made. Four levels of coatings include ones that are scratch-resistant and dust-resistant. Overall, their eyewear consultants sell only about five pairs of glasses a day, while at some other places they average up to 12. The difference is the amount of time they spend helping a customer with a selection.
Service Any article on Schaeffer would be incomplete without mention of the third pillar Schaeffer speaks of: service to the community. “If we don’t give back as a company, shame on us because then the community doesn’t grow,” he says, noting that the company puts half of its marketing funds into the community and half into traditional advertising. While the company’s list of community involvements is certainly long, it’s also not at a surface level either. If a member of his staff is on a board, Schaeffer wants to make sure they are heavily involved and writing a check, and their commitments to organizations are similar. “We lock into something and we try to support it, not (just) one year, not two years,” he says. “We try to stay so they can count on us.” Crawfish Bowl posters lining the walls at Schaeffer’s headquarters on Highway 31 in Hoover testify to years of support behind city music festivals (including CityFest and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra). More recently they have shifted their focus to funding projects at Red Mountain Park and the Birmingham Zoo. Through all of their years, they have not only put up sponsorships for countless runs and walks but also encouraged their staff members to attend them. “They come out in droves to everything we do,” Schaeffer says of his team. And that’s how it all ties together.
“We want to make it fun,” Schaeffer says.
At Schaeffer, you might pay more for glasses, but there are multiple layers of quality behind what you get. “It’s not because we charge more,” Schaeffer says. “It’s because those products cost more. If you want to really be in fashionable eyewear, this is the only place to go. “A lot of people say, ‘I may pay a little more to get those glasses, but I know part of that goes back into this community, both in time and money, and they are making this a better place for my family and my kids.’”
ALL IN THE FAMILY Dr. Jack Schaeffer has always considered his Schaeffer Eye Center a family business because of the closeness of the staff, but the terminology took on new meaning in 2012. His three children had never planned on attending optometry school, but today two are associates with Schaeffer (as well as fellow University of Georgia graduates) and the third is in optometry school. His son-in-law Justin Kaplan is also their CFO. “When they came in, they were just added to the family,” Schaeffer says. “But what made it special was that when the staff…saw the family come in, they said, ‘Wow, we really are family.’
“I try not to treat them that much different. I can’t say I don’t treat them different at all because family is family. They have to pay their dues. They have the same hours, they have the same job descriptions, they do everything every other person here does.” Today longtime patients who saw his kids grow up and work in the office in summers can opt to see Dr. Mark Schaeffer or Dr. Brooke Schaeffer Kaplan, freeing up their dad to spend more time traveling or focusing on being a CEO. “Working with your children is wonderful,” Schaeffer says. www.BHMBIZ.com
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Person-First Defense What UAB research has to say about the best ways for companies to avoid cyber security threats. Written by Madoline MarkhamPhoto by Beau Gustafson In an age where something as simple as an email can hold a company’s server hostage, one thing is certain about information security: uncertainty. That’s why UAB Associate Professor Dr. Allen Johnston is working to reduce the question marks that surround the field he studies. What he has found is that the key lies not just in policies but in people. Traditionally, companies tend to take what Johnston calls a “less mindful approach” to information security where they rely on well-articulated policies and procedures. “The problem you see is that there tends to be a moving field because hackers are always innovating, but the policies are static,” Johnston says. “We almost get on autopilot.” Instead, with a mindful approach to security, employees know they are needed to be alert and more creative in their approach to solutions. Another area of concern Johnston sees is a traditional use of “fear appeals,” sending warning messages to employees that might say that a security breach has occurred, that the threat is real, and here is what you should do to avoid it. “The fear part doesn’t really work but instead backfires,” Johnston says. “Employees sometimes don’t feel capable, so they put their blinders on.” Instead, Johnston says the best way to get employees to comply with a warning is still tell them about the threat but to focus on encouraging them to trust their training and judgment in how to proceed. “The employee feels more capable to help resolve it,” Johnston says. “That’s what you want—engaged, confident employees.” Looking closely at human reaction also comes into play in how corporate procedure enforcement policies affect 50 BHM BIZ
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certain personality types. Many companies enforce sanctions for anyone who violates policy, so, for instance, if you don’t reset your computer password every six months, you will be locked out of your computer. Johnston has found that certain personalities get more agitated in response to policies such as these, which affects other parts of their job. Before long, disgruntled-ness that started with having to change a password could bleed into everything they do at work. “Most IT professionals don’t think about the impact of their rules in that way,” Johnston notes. To investigate this dynamic, Johnston is using games on apps that test people’s behavioral traits, collecting data along the way. Through this game testing, Johnston hopes to identify people who might get inside an organization and let a hacker in. After all, about 75 percent of hacks are the result of insider information being leaked. Deviants tend to keep to themselves and have problems with authority, among other traits. Johnston’s colleagues Dr. Mark Keith at Brigham Young University and
Dr. Sam Thompson at UAB found that by having students play games for bonus points, they would be more likely to cheat if the rules were relaxed. From this gamification, they looked at the common characteristics of those who cheated and found that they shared that of hackers. But the researchers aren’t sure yet how these findings could best be applied to real-world scenarios. It could inform the hiring process, but still, there is a fine line. Companies want to know this information but not necessarily act on it, Johnston says. It is possible to screen for traits that might lead them to do something deviant—the key word is might. “It’s easy to do academic research, but applying it to business is new,” Johnston says. “And I would imagine it’s scary too.” One thing is for sure, Johnson says: Students in UAB’s business school will be familiar with this research upon their graduation and entrance to the local workforce, and Johnston believes they will have a heightened awareness of how to be secure with the technology they use.
When Bias Meets Innovation Dr. Allen Johnston collaborates with colleagues, including Dr. Paul Di Gangi, in the Collat School of Business to research how new ideas are vetted. In one study, they asked UAB students about what services they wanted to see from the university, and a group of faculty met to come to a consensus on which of the ideas were most important. What the researchers initially determined was that in each group of three, an alpha always arose, but it wasn’t always the highest ranking person or the one who spoke the most. Instead, this person was unconsciously elected. From this, the researchers concluded that how you construct decision-making teams makes a big impact and shared the study’s initial results in presentations to companies like Regions and Protective Life. Who does the vetting and what biases those people bring has an effect on how they find the best—as opposed to the most popular—idea.
UAB Associate Professor Dr. Allen Johnston www.BHMBIZ.com
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The Family Business
Consistency and a small-town, family approach have kept Central State Bank on a healthy growth path for a century of progress. Written by Alex WatsonPhoto by Beau Gustafson For Central State Bank executives Mitt and Shane Schroeder, the path to success in banking is clearly marked with sign posts from the past. The centennial celebration of the 1916 founding of the Shelby County bank has been an opportunity to look back at the history of the institution and see how certain principles continue to inform the bank’s future. “We are after consistent, steady growth,” senior vice president Mitt Schroeder says. “We are methodical. With the family having the predominant ownership of the bank, we don’t have shareholders demanding growth at all costs. We don’t believe in exorbitant lifestyles; that is not where you derive your happiness. It comes from inside.” With brother Shane, Mitt Schroeder plays a lead role in the bank’s management, and their father, Bill Schroeder, remains active as chairman of the board. Central State Bank began serving customers in Calera, Alabama, in February of 1916. William Schroeder’s father-in-law, Roy Downs was hired in March of 1945, and just two years later purchased controlling interest in the bank. Upon the death of Downs in 1971, Bill Schroeder was promoted to president and chairman of the board at the age of 29. Downs successfully grew the assets of the bank and invested time, energy, and resources into economic development for the town of Calera and Shelby County. It was old-fashioned community building from a banker who understood the value of investment and growth. Those early principles Central 52 BHM BIZ
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“We have a family orientation. We view bank employees as family. We have one lady who just celebrated her 51st year with Central State Bank. And then we have 17 people who have been with us more than 20 years, and we have 24 who have been with us greater than 15 years.” State Bank was built upon permeate throughout the bank today. It is above all a hometown, community bank. Under the Schroeder’s leadership the bank’s mission was clearly defined: to be the bank whose community is enriched by its presence and the bank whose customers would not consider banking anywhere else. Today Central State Bank has five locations in Calera, Pelham, and Alabaster, and at the Shelby County Airport. The bank also owns Central State Mortgage in Greystone. “We have a family orientation,” Shane says. “We view bank employees as family. We have one lady who just celebrated her 51st year with Central State Bank. And then we have 17 people who have been with us more than 20 years, and we have 24 who have been with us greater than 15 years. Then multiple employees have been here over 10 years.” “It is important because of the consistency. As a community bank or a bank in general, you are able to walk in and see the same people. One of the things on our mission statement is we want to be a bank whose customers would not consider banking anywhere else. The
second is to be a bank whose employees are envied by their peers.” “You have to be in good health to accomplish that mission,” Mitt Schroeder says. “Our father always taught us that if you are solid in the regulator’s eyes, you are doing pretty well. So we listen to them. Many bankers look at regulators almost as adversaries. We look at them as how can they help us. “We have a diverse loan portfolio. We have a lot of commercial property as well as personal and business loans. We are able to maintain a high rating because our risk is spread across so many areas. Our real estate portfolio is very diverse. We are fortunate in that growth has come toward us as metro Birmingham has grown south.” Even with growth, their distinction still lies in their size. “In the well managed community bank, the employees really do care,” Mitt says. “They see the effects and the connections. In a larger bank it is more about self and not so much about the client you are actually serving. We both sell money, but it is the approach and delivery that is different from a big bank.”
Mitt and Shane Schroeder www.BHMBIZ.com
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You’re Hired
Fetch creates a web-based hiring platform that upends the standard staffing industry model. Written by Alex Watson
HR ambassador Concetta (CJ) Lewis, co-founder Jason Hutson, and founder Chase Morrow
Chase Morrow is breaking at least a couple of rules. His new company, Fetch, is putting the reins of the employee-employer courtship in the hands of the talent, the place Morrow says it naturally belongs. “A lot of the data we gathered is that the talent is tired of being hit on by staffing agencies,” Morrow says. “They get 27 LinkedIn messages a day about this great job an agency has for them. On LinkedIn they are not protected. They make one change on their profile, and their HR department sees it. It is so 54 BHM BIZ
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public out there. The platform we created is protecting the talent, giving them a very safe place to go and help them find the next best job that might be out there for them. We are dealing with passive talent. They are usually working, and if we can just drip the job to their phone, they get to decide whether they want to pursue it or not. Protecting the talent is very important to us.” Morrow, who had previously been a founder of two Birmingham staffing agencies, ITAC Solutions and Moxie, saw a need for something new. “We felt
this industry was antiquated and dated, and we felt that we could improve it through technology and automation,” he says. Morrow and his team spent close to a year building out the software for the massive hiring platform, a sort of Match.com for human resources. Jason Hudson, Fetch’s CTO, directed all of the technology space working with Isotope11. The technology, Morrow says, is very sound and fully scalable. Another rule that Fetch is upending within the staffing industry is the rev-
getfetched.com
enue model. While employers will be the revenue source, they will be paying based on a software subscription model as opposed to the standard fee based system. “A fee of 25 percent of first year salary with a 90-day guarantee is pretty standard in the staffing world,” Morrow says. “Our model upends that. We had some pretty good success with a payper-hire model initially. As of August we moved into a true subscription model. It was where we wanted to go. We just got there a lot faster than we thought.” Fetch launched with an emphasis
on IT and creative professionals. “We had some pretty rapid success with that, and we have now launched into sales, compliance, accounting, and human resources,” Morrow says. “So we moved into other verticals pretty quickly. We acquired our second international client just last week, so we even have people overseas signing up on the platform.” Active in beta since last February, Fetch moved to more than 500 users rapidly after initially seeding colleagues to try out the system. It has been organic growth, which is what they wanted in
order to test it and make sure it is scalable. Employers sign up on the platform, building out their company profiles and loading in job descriptions of positions they need filled. Potential employees or talent similarly create profiles outlining what they are looking for in a position in terms of compensation, culture, and other factors. “Our algorithms determine whether there is a match in the system,” Morrow says. “The match is only sent back to the talent. The employer never sees the match, so we are completely protecting the client. It is the only platform out there that we know of that is completely talent-driven. “So the talent gets the match information. They can scroll through it all on their phone (and) read all about the company, the position, the culture, everything about that job. Then they choose whether they are interested in taking the next step or not. If they choose not to pursue it, the match disappears, and nobody ever knows anything about it, except Fetch and the talent. “If they are interested, our algorithm pulls all the data we have on the talent and sends it to the hiring manager offering that position. So the only time the talent’s profile is viewable is when they choose for it to be viewable, and it is only viewable by the hiring manager for that specific job opening.” Letting the talent decide whether they want to “date” a company is key to what Fetch does. “We really believe that hiring should be transparent and unbiased,” Morrow says. “The best way is to match the employer and the talent together and then step out of it. It removes that need for third party agency recruiter...We think that the middleman is unnecessary and expensive, and our platform removes the need for that person.” www.BHMBIZ.com
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SPECIAL PROMOTION
PROPERTY NOTES
Financial Center Downtown. Daniel Corp. made a major investment in the city center by purchasing the Financial Center, a 17-story building at 20th and 5th Avenue North. The company, long a major player in Birmingham’s development scene, will utilize 15,000 square feet of the building for its corporate headquarters and home for about 50 employees being 58 BHM BIZ
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relocated from its Grandview office building. Grandview, which housed the Cahaba Grand Conference Center and was the original headquarters building of HealthSouth, will be filled by Church of the Highlands, which had previously purchased the conference space. Daniel will continue to own the Grandview building in a joint venture.
Box Row Avondale. The Star Motel in Avondale has been demolished to make way for one of the hot neighborhood’s newest and largest projects. Box Row Avondale at 4121 3rd Ave. South will house retail stores and other businesses in shipping containers. The concept calls for a mix of retail, restaurant and office space. Golden Bell Capital took over
R E TA I L
M U LT I - FA M I LY
INDUSTRIAL
OFFICE
728 Shades Creek Parkway, Suite 210 • Birmingham, AL 35209 • (205) 802-7202 www.FairwayInvestments.com
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development of the project from the original developer, Blue Oak Development, earlier this year. Among the tenants announced for the project are Mountain High Outfitters, Steel City Pops, Continental Bakery, State Traditions, and We Have Doughnuts. The development can house up to 39 retail tenants and 12 office tenants. Colliers Office Renovations. A new initiative to showcase open modern office space in established Class A buildings is underway by Colliers International Alabama, which leases the Wells Fargo Tower downtown. Colliers plans to renovate one floor of the building into an open space concept not typical of what is found in a top-tier corporate building like Wells Fargo. The intent, according to 60 BHM BIZ
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Colliers, is to showcase appropriate space for companies that are seeking a more modern alternative in a traditional downtown space. Colliers has also been at work transforming the 880 Building on the former Trinity Hospital campus from a medical office into traditional office space. Colliers International Alabama is headquartered in the building. The 880 Building is approximately 60 percent leased with tenants including the headquarters for the law firm, Lloyd Gray Whitehead & Monroe. The demolition of the medical offices in the building has allowed for the development of more open and collaborative space. Fairway Investments is currently an owner in almost 7,500 apartment
units in ground-up developments across the Sunbelt. Since 2012, Fairway has invested almost $20 million in those deals, the majority of which have been in the major metros of Texas (San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and Austin). During 2016, Fairway has invested in two new development communities in Austin, Texas, one in Charleston, SC and has committed to two deals, one in Jacksonville, FL and one in Wilmington, NC. Most of Fairway’s investments have been in traditional, suburban, surface parked deals.Investment decisions are made after careful review of market and even sub-market supply/ demand fundamentals. Fairway wants its multifamily investments to be in markets with strong population and employment growth. Throughout its
SPECIAL PROMOTION
HANDLING FINANCIAL BULLIES
history, Fairway has made investments strictly for its own benefit. In 2014, Fairway undertook its first ever outside equity raise in San Antonio, Texas. Raising outside equity allows Fairway to enhance its returns by participating with its development partners. Fairway will continue to seek multifamily development investments but will also continue to be cautious with the markets in which it invests. The major metros of Texas will remain long term target markets as will Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, Tampa, Raleigh, Charleston, Jacksonville and Southeast Florida The Pizitz. Downtown’s biggest real estate story, The Pizitz building $70 million renovation, continues to add innovation into the mix with the addition of the The Sidewalk Cinema and Film Center. It will include two state-of-the-art 100-seat theaters. Bayer is turning the old department store into apartments, offices, a food hall, and this newly announced center that will include a permanent home for Sidewalk and art house theater.
We all remember the school bully—the kid from two grades ahead who used his size to push around weaker children. Looking back, it’s funny to think that the great, hulking, ogres of our childhood were probably at most 4’ tall and weighed no more than 60 pounds. Our parents gave us advice for dealing with bullies: •Avoid them •Protect yourself •Stand up for yourself •Tell someone •Fight back If you’ve been in business long enough, you know that some bullies never grow up. You’ve seen people who press others unfairly or attempt to renegotiate the terms of completed deals simply because they know the other party has less bargaining power. Handle financial bullies the same way you handled playground bullies: avoid them; protect yourself; stand up for yourself; find someone to talk to; fight back. By following these steps, you’ll find that your bullies are still smaller than they seem. Avoid doing business with someone who has a reputation for taking unfair advantage of others. If you engage in business with anyone—known bully or not—protect yourself. Read the contract, shareholder agreement, or prospectus carefully or hire an attorney to analyze the documents for you. If a partner or someone you do business with starts acting aggressively towards you, stand up for yourself. Hold them to terms of the contract you both agreed to in advance. If a bully is pressuring you to renegotiate terms, talk it over with someone you trust. Sometimes a new perspective can help you find exit strategies and resolutions you wouldn’t have seen on your own. If the bully won’t listen to reason, fight back. Consult with a commercial litigation attorney to determine if there are laws that protect you.
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restaurant biz
Chef Chris Dupont Chris Dupont, chef/owner of Café Dupont, grew up in New Orleans, a city known for food and for creating extraordinary chefs. While he worked in restaurants from the time he was 15, his passion for cooking developed after he graduated from BirminghamSouthern College and worked at The Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover. He returned to New Orleans in the late 1980s to hone his skills in a series of fine dining establishments, working with chefs such as Emeril Lagasse at Commander’s Palace, Susan Spicer at Maison du Ville, and Daniel Bonnet at Tour d’Eiffel. In the early ’90s, he returned to Alabama and opened his own restaurant, Café Dupont, in Springville. There he developed his slow food philosophy, featuring produce grown locally on his menu. He was able to work with growers who were literally right in his own backyard, walking over to pick his own blackberries or watercress. But Dupont missed the urban energy that a city location offers, and he spent a couple of years seeking the ideal location in Birmingham. He eventually purchased a circa-1870 storefront building on the city’s 20th Street North, relocating Café Dupont to the space in 2003. The dining room’s original floors, and high ceilings reflect the building’s history. Upstairs, a private loft with expansive windows and period lighting creates the ideal setting for special events. Dupont’s philosophy, for dining and for business, reflects his vision of the new urban South: contemporary, locally relevant, but aware and respectful of tradition. The menu, which changes daily, reflects a fresh
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Photo by Beau Gustafson
perspective on regional ingredients. Classic cooking styles paired with locally grown ingredients create contemporary flavors and signature dishes. Café Dupont is a strong supporter of the slow food movement, which seeks to encourage the enjoyment of regional produce and traditional foods that are often grown organically. On the menu at Café Dupont, you’ll find numerous items from local purveyors and farms.
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and then this happened...
Written by Carolanne Roberts
Brooke Tanner Battle’s Swell Fundraising takes new technology to the old-school ask with remarkable results.
LEARNING TURNING POINT UMS-Wright Preparatory School, Mobile; Birmingham-Southern College (full scholarship, SGA president, political science major)
“I remember driving with my father down Dauphin Island Parkway and being fascinated with the factories there. I asked him how you could get involved in management, and he introduced me to an investment banker. From the age of 14 on, I knew I wanted to go into business.”
CAN’T-SAY-NO SYNDROME
From Friends of the Railroad Park District to GirlSpring, and Alabama School of Fine Arts to Oasis Counseling for Women and Children, Battle is attracted to boards and their causes.
AHA HUGE MOMENT WIN “(Birmingham-Southern) has a very strong service component to it. College showed me the importance of community involvement and probably planted those early seeds in my mind that business and social good could be combined.”
The $89,137 top award in the Alabama Launchpad contest greatly helped fund her start-up.
BETWEEN THEN AND NOW
Battle worked first with AmSouth Bank’s real estate program, and then moved to Harbert Management Corporation and HealthSouth’s real estate departments. With marriage to husband, Bob, and the birth of daughters Jane Grey and Tanner, she transitioned to a robust consulting business.
THE SWELL PHONE
Battle’s growing business, Swell, equips nonprofit organizations with software to manage fundraising events. “You spend so much energy on the people who are available to come that one evening, but what about those who aren’t there? Everyone who buys a ticket to a Swell-powered event has a personal fundraising page and can invite other people to give before and at the event. Our clients love people on their cell phones reaching out for more donations during the actual event.”
IN FIVE YEARS SHE EXPECTS TO... course, technology changes quickly, so we will undoubtedly be launching new features.”
“have clients in every state in the U.S. and be looking toward expansion internationally. Of
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s, d n a h e k a e sh w e r o f e B s. d n a h d l o we h
At RealtySouth, real estate doesn’t simply equate to hard negotiation and paperwork. For us, it’s more than a transaction. It’s the relationship that matters most. For more than 60 years, we’ve been running in the same crowds. If I look familiar, it’s not necessarily because I sold your parent’s home. Our children were on the same field trip to the Zoo. They’ve laughed together for years. Your community is our community. We are proud to be your neighbor. It’s Who We Are.
www.realtysouth.com/visitus
Who We Are CLASSMATES BIRD-BHM Biz.indd 1
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