CEO's You Should Know x Blind Industries and Services of Maryland

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
iHeartMedia presents CEOs you should know.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hi'm John Dinkle, founder and CEO of Dinkle Business Development
and former president and publisher of the Baltimore Business Journal.
This is iHeartRadio's CEOs you should Know, and I'm here
today with Mike Goss, president of Blind Industries and Services
of Maryland. Welcome Mike, and thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Well thanks for having me looking forward to this.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, yeah, me too. I appreciate you taking the time.
I thought we get started by getting to know the
organization a little bit more and then we can get
into some questions around leadership. So for those who may
not be familiar, could you tell us more about Blind
Industries and Services of Maryland or I guess some people
call it bisoms.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, we go for the short one. We call it dism.
We've been around since nineteen oh eight. Our charter from
the state legislature was to give blind people an opportunity
of employment and that the State of Maryland would purchased
those products that they made. Back then, it was brooms

(01:05):
and mops and things like that. We've grown significantly since
that time, but our mission really has remained the same,
to employ blind people, give blind people opportunities. We've added
also the ability to train blind people in the skills
of blindness, making sure they can live independent lives. So
we do a lot of work in manufacturing, still kind

(01:28):
of our route for the employment. We make jackets for
the military in four of our facilities. We have three
facilities in Maryland and one in Raleigh, North Carolina. We
also make some products for the state of Maryland, a
lot of janitorial supplies, cleaning supplies. We still do mops.

(01:50):
It's kind of a legacy thing. People still need mops.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
They do so.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
We have about four hundred and eighty associates company wide,
two hundred of them are blind or legally blind, and
we're the largest employer of blind people in Maryland. One
of our critical critical missions at this point is to
make sure that it's not just the manufacturing jobs we provide.
We want to have people at every level of the organization. Additionally,

(02:20):
that that training piece is also very important, and we
don't train people to come work for us. We train
people to live independent lives. They choose to work for us,
or they find a fit with our organization. That's great.
We deal with everybody from young kids all the way
up through seniors and just making sure that they have
the skills to live the life they want.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Got it, Thank you? Yeah, I don't want to dive
a little bit more into that programming, So talk about
some of those you know, kind of specific training programs
that you do, and not only obviously for the production piece,
but also just as you mentioned the you know kind
of living with with blindness.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Sure, right, we start out with youth programs. I'll go
through kind of the age progression. We have a bunch
of youth programs starting it. Really it's it's about the
age of elementary school where we feel that there's not
a lot of emphasis on taxle learning, brail beginning braille skills,

(03:25):
just exploring the environment with a cane, learning to navigate
around when we move up to and also at that age,
we try to give them experiences that their cited peers
are getting. Maybe go to an amusement park or go
to the mall, things like that, and we continue that
through the middle school years where we have longer term

(03:48):
camps a little bit longer, we start actually having them
book at potential careers, but they know that as a
blind person they can choose what they go into and
then we get to the transitional years. We actually start
teaching them how are they going to make it through

(04:09):
college or if their voice is to go directly into
a job, give them some job experiences. It's hard enough
for them to find a permanent job, but to find
a job as a teenager really hard. So we set
up we set up one or two week internships with

(04:29):
companies in the region, making sure that not only do
they get the experience, but the employer it's the opportunity
to seem to flying people have capabilities, and we move
from there. Our main program is our Core program. It's
a residential program where we expect you to take nine

(04:51):
to twelve months to get to know the skills you
need to live as a blind person. That includes braille, pain,
travel technology, independent living skills, job writing, his skills, all
those things, and there's there's milestones that you need to
go through in order to be a graduate of that program.

(05:13):
You have to be able to cook a meal for
a group of people. You need to be able to
navigate the city and the country. You get to go
on a trip around the country on your own independently,
come back, tell us what you learned with me, and
then of course, we have programs for our elder blind
where there's not a vocational goal, there's just you know,

(05:36):
maybe they lost vision later in life and they need
to know how to stay in their apartments, live in
their house, cook in their kitchen. So it's the same
set of skill sets rail can travel cooking, just not
with the same outcome expectations. So that's kind of all
those training programs wrapped up.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's right. I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, and I
also noticed you had kind of a work readiness assessment program.
What does that do?

Speaker 1 (06:05):
So we have a great relationship with departner rehabilitation services
we call that DOORS in Maryland, and sometimes they have
a caseload that has been sitting there and not making
any progress. I'm talking about a client who's looking for
a vacational outcome for a job and they don't know

(06:29):
what the obstacle is. The work readiness assessment program we
have that person interact with our team do things like
maybe they need to rewrite the resume. Maybe they're not
looking for a career that they're qualified for. Maybe they
just don't have job readiness skills. How are you going
to get to work every day? Maybe we need to

(06:53):
bone up your interview skills. So we cover all those
aspects of making sure you're ready for a job, report
back to their their case worker about what the gaps
may be. But we also find that probably in thirty
percent of the cases, we place them before they finished
the program in an actual job. So you know there's

(07:16):
a benefit there and it's very rarely is it with BISOM,
But you know we we do because we have partners
that we bring in to do mock interviews and things
like that, and well, we could really use this person.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, that's great, that's awesome. That's awesome. I appreciate that.
Thanks for sharing that. I wanted to dive a little
bit more into the kind of product operations side. So
where do you have manufacturing facilities and you know where
kind of who is your market? Who are you selling
to with your products?

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Well, our biggest customer is the Defense Department. We may
we do a lot of textile work that means cutting fabric,
sewing fabric, and that is mainly done in our four
manufacturing facilities. We have one in Baltimore where we make

(08:11):
the Army Physical Training jacket. In Salisbury we have our
main cutting facility we cut all the fabric we need
to make products in house, but we also cut fabric
for unicor federal prison industries for the projects that they sew.

(08:34):
We have a second facility in Salisbury where we make
a cold weather jacket, and down in Raleigh, North Carolina,
we have a facility that makes the Air Force and
Space Force track jacket as well as the Army combat
uniform jacket.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
That's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
So that's on the federal side. In our Baltimore plant,
we make products of some products for the state of Maryland.
We do ponet paper, paper cowls, hand sand and hand sanitizers,
hand soaps, and cleaning products like for cleaning products, a

(09:20):
lot of janitorial products. We also make coffee paper and
paper pads. One of our legacy products that we've been
making since the mid twenty first century is paper pads.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Gotcha, Where where do you see kind of the growth
opportunity for the product operation side.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Product operation side? I would I'm looking towards some more
kind of basic entry level opportunities for blind people that
don't have the necessarily the skills to sew. You have
ever said the sewing machine it takes skilled to sell. Yeah, yeah,
I couldn't even make the automatic machine do the right thing.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, yeah, there's no way I could do that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah. So we're looking for, you know, coming in the door,
what can you do so that you feel successful type
jobs because that has been our paper pad industry for
many years. We've seen such a reduction in the demand
for paper pads, and it makes sense people take notes
on their computer or their iPhone now, not so much

(10:30):
jotting them down on aligned sheet of paper with the
tear off sheet. So we're looking for opportunities with kitting,
packaging things like that. We do have a nice product
that we make for both the federal and state. It's
a new employee desk kit. So you get hired at
Social Security, you walk in and here's your desk, and

(10:53):
you don't have to go to the supply closet and
pick out all the little things you need. One package,
boom on your desk, you're ready to go. Yeah, we
just went to a modernization of that. We got rid
of a little pink pad that says while you were out,
it doesn't it doesn't seem to be a thing anymore.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
That's pretty funny.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
But we're love for you know, we'd love to we'd
love to partner with commercial UH companies that need kidding. Yeah,
you know, and also we have an opportunity if we're
kidding something, we have an opportunity to bring that product
to the state and federal marketplace if it's if it's
of interest to our partners. So a lot of opportunities,

(11:34):
I think, a lot of opportunities.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, yeah, Now it's the the production operation side. Is
that the biggest part of your funding model or are
you getting you know, funds from the government, you know, state,
federal government and you know, personal donors To talk about
your funding model a little bit.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Well, you're absolutely right. The production the excess revenue we
make from production funds. The majority of our training program.
We do have a grant from the state of Maryland.
UH comes through the Department of Education. It's it's it
covers about a third of the cost of our training program.

(12:12):
But our training is open free of charge to find Marylanders,
you know, in all those levels that I talked about, Yeah,
from from view fall the way through seniors. So in
that regard, right, our manufacturing funds and a significant portion
of that we we do you know, obviously have an

(12:34):
outreach program where we look for opportunities through some of
our fundraisers that we have throughout the year. And you
just campaigns for for donations from the general public.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Great, great, yeah, And how can the how do the
business community get involved with does them? And you mentioned
some some hopefully opportunities on the product operation side, but
where are the other opper change for the business community
to get involved?

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Well, they can buy our products. If you need cleaning supplies,
We've got them. We also have UH Shopbism dot org
is kind of ore. I'm sorry, it is shop Bism
dot com. UH is our outlet for selling not only
BISM products, but we can sell commercial products competitively. You

(13:25):
can be a one stop shop for your stuff or
you can just come and look for for products that
we make and we have that as one of our outlets.
Happy to have any business sign up and partner with
us that way. We also are looking for opportunities for

(13:46):
our our students to have job experiences. We love to
partner with somebody who thinks, well, I don't know what
a blind person could do, but I'm willing to learn
and we'll find We'll find somebody who we think we're
not going to send you somebody who we don't think
is work ready. We're not going to send anybody for
a job that is a mismatch really from their vocational goal.

(14:09):
But the more opportunities we have with local businesses, the
more we can give experiences to our students, but also
give experiences to those employers willing to take the chance.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
That's great. Yeah, And I also notice that you obviously
do some events throughout the year. Do you have any
events coming up where the either the general public or
the business community would would like to attend.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
We do. We have a great event coming up on
March twenty ninth. We partnered with Checkerspot Brewing Company and
they're brewing a beer for us.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, it's called blind Spot is refreshing beer and bism
is the spot to go if you have issues regarding blindness,
where we can solve all your problems. But yeah, and
it's open to the public. It's a lot of fun.
It's one event that we can get the community to

(15:08):
come to and build awareness. Last year we had this event,
I would say the mix of attendees was probably thirty
or forty percent blind people and the rest sided people
from the community. Great, and just the energy there and
the interaction that was happening that you don't often see

(15:28):
between a disability community and the general public.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
That's great. That's great. I'm sure this year will be
even bigger having to have the first one behind you,
that's great.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, looking forward to it myself.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, I have to make sure I try to get
down to that because that sounds like a lot of fun.
I love checkerspot to not to change the subject, but
I love to, you know, talk about leadership on the show.
You know, you've been in your role now for about
two and a half years as the Resident of BUSINESM.
How would you describe your your leadership style.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
I rely on my leadership team. It's important to know
that you have the right people on your team. And
once you know that, you got to trust them. Yeah,
you got to. Uh, you know, you can provide the
vision for them. They're the implementers there, you're there. You
are people who go out and get the job done.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
I'm not a I'm not don't have a really tight
grip on the steering wheel type of person. I like
to get the feedback. I like to do a lot
of listening. Uh, but I like to trust that their
of their skill set because I've been with them, I've
vetted them for the tasks that, uh that they're responsible for.

(16:48):
And I think that's really if I had to define
who I am as a leader, it's I can't do
it all.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah. No, I think that's great. I was gonna act
you where did you where you feel did you learn
to let go and liken to trust? Yeah, because a
lot of business owners heos have have a hard time
doing that and they kind of keep themselves like you know,
and everybody's said everybody's business in a way and not
let their team do what they were hired to do.

(17:16):
I see that a lot. What what what? Where did
you learn that?

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Uh? Well, you got to go back to my background.
I really am a doer, yeah, but a doer in
the in the areas that I think I know how
to do things. I'm an electrical engineer, I'm a programmer.
I've done those things for my career. That's not the

(17:43):
same thing as managing a factory, right, And when I
get to this other level, I don't have the confidence
to do it myself. So it's really the fact that
I don't trust myself to do certain things. Now, if
they asked me to write a program, I jump right in.
My IT team has more more oversight than any other group. Yeah,

(18:09):
I in my background. I wrote my very youthful background.
I wrote an accounting package because when I was doing that,
there weren't quick books and things like that. So I
I have a sense. I get what's going on in accounting,
but I don't like accounting on a personal On a
personal note, I's not my thing. But I understand what

(18:32):
they're doing, so I can have oversight there and let
them do what they're best at and take the advice
of my CFO when she when she says we should
invest here, we should not make that expense right now,
she's the one with the knowledge.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. No, I love that. I
appreciate you sharing that because I think it's an important
lesson for I think it like I said, and you've
probably seen this in your career too. Sometimes for managers
and leaders, it's kind of hard to let go sometimes
and let your people do what you you know, do
what they do, do what you hired them for, and
to trust in their abilities and know that they're going

(19:11):
to do it a little bit differently than you, maybe
and maybe a lot better. Maybe they need to learn
some things, but like just letting them go and then
you know, trusting that you know they're going to, you know,
get to get the job done. So I appreciate that.
Now you've been with the organization since twenty eighteen, so
going through the whole kind of pandemic stuff, and now

(19:32):
that essentially it's over, even though you know we're kind
of probably obviously live with it the rest of our lives.
But if you look back in that time, but what
did you learn about kind of managing or communicating with
your team?

Speaker 1 (19:46):
That's interesting because during that time my role with BISM,
I'd come in to be the director of Accessibility and
immediately asked to take over management of our toilet paper
and paper towel business up in Hagerstown. We no longer
have that business, but it was struggling and then we

(20:10):
get hit by the pandemic. Well, boy, so I did
get the opportunity to learn first or hand about managing operations.
It was the first time i'd done it. And what
I again, I realized pretty quickly that my team was
going to be better at that than me. I could
guide them in certain ways, but they were going to

(20:31):
be better at it. And the struggles that we had,
particularly in the pandemic, surrounded getting vow materials and managing
sort of our workforce and the finding people. But also
there was this fear we had to come to work

(20:52):
every day because we were an essential production facility, not
only in that toilet paper, paper towels, but the military
still on their uniforms, right, so all of our industries
were essential, and there was a lot of fear. There
are a lot of people who just opted out of
the out of the workforce because of that, right, And
since that time, I think we're still we're still seeing

(21:16):
ripples from that particularly and believe it or not, in
the raw materials, but the supply chain is still broken.
And if anybody out there listening is in the manufacturer
in the acquisition business, you know that it's not the
same as it was before the pandemic. And the same

(21:37):
thing goes for employees. A lot of people don't want
to come into work. Yeah, and when you have a manufacturer,
you need people to come in and sit there at
their workspace and actually make the thing or it doesn't
right now.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, there's no other way to do it right, So yeah,
I think that that Yeah, gotcha. I appreciate you sharing that. Well,
what gets you excited about the future of buying industries
and services of Maryland.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
I think as we get our message out more and more.
For a while, we were kind of kept to ourselves,
and one of my initiatives as the new president is
to make sure people know about us and just creating
those additional connections. Like you talked about, how can businesses

(22:28):
help us, well, a lot of it we don't know right.
Come to us, talk to us about about what you
can do. I'm very strong on upper mobility for all
of our associates. I don't believe that you necessarily came
into consider this own machine, but your first opportunity, and

(22:50):
we're glad to teach you that skill. We also want
to know if you can be an IT professional or
somebody in human resources or customer service and you want
to provide that up or mobility and one of the
other areas we're missing and opportunities at business kind of
them the mid level technical, white collar jobs, and we're

(23:11):
trying to look into opportunities to do service contracts stuff.
So I'm looking to grow the opportunities for blind people
from the very entry level all the way up through
the organization. Those are my goals. Giving our associates direct

(23:32):
access to our training programs that was not possible before.
But if you're going to provide up with mobility, you
have to provide training not only in this generic business training,
leadership training, but also in the skills of blindness so
that you're confident that you can move up to the
next level.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, for sure. So on the other side, what kind
of what keeps up at night.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Right now? It's you know, what's going on in the
federal environment, because more than sixty percent of our revenue
comes from that. Now, I think we're good because you know,
we're making things for the military and even our customer
whose Defense Logistics Agency is not a budgeted it's not

(24:20):
a budget item organization. But yeah, that keeps me up
at night.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, So still something you have to think about, and
I think a lot of a lot of nonprofits are
thinking about right now.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah. And we're we're always on the on the Our
margins are so thin. Months and months I worry about,
you know, are we gonna are we gonna lose money
or are we going to make enough money? To fund
the programs. Am I trying to grow too fast and
outrunning my ability to fund that? Those are? Those are

(24:55):
but I see such a need. Yeah, that I'm tempering
that and that's why I've got a great team also,
you know, it all comes full circle. I rely on
my team to to kind of rein me in when
it needs to be rained in. Uh. It's it's a
great partnership that you have with your with your team.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah, yeah, sure is well to kind of wrap things up,
you know, is there anything else you'd like our listeners
to know about you? And and ubisom, Well, it's not
about me.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Uh, it's it's about it's about our mission. And you know,
if you if you have interactions, understand that blind people
are just like everybody else. Uh. We have ambitions, we
have capabilities, and we have we have problems. And just
make sure that you are open to the idea that
blind people are capable. They know how to get about

(25:47):
the world just like anybody else, and they want to
they want to contribute to society, not only as workers,
but you know, you'll find a lot of blind people
out there volunteering and just be open to the capabilities
of blind people.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Right well, thank you and tell us how to find
more information about UH Busom.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Well, your best bet is to go to BISM dot org,
b I s M dot org. You can find all
about our training programs, our job opportunities, how to how
to purchase products from us. There will be a link
there to UH shopbisom dot com, and there'll be a
link there to events and activities, and you can find

(26:29):
out how to how to sign up and come to
the Checkerspot event. It is free to attend.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Awesome, awesome, Well, thanks so much. Michael's great great chatting
with you and learning more about you and and Busom.
We really appreciate you taking the time and and thanks
so much and hope to see you at Checkerspot in March.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Thanks looking forward to it. This has been iHeartMedia CEOs
you should know