The Dayna Simmons Real Estate Show 01/25/25--with guest host Andy Hemmings and guest Craig Escamilla

Today's guest is Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce Board President Craig Escamilla.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for tuning in to
KLVI and the Dana Simmons Show. This is Andy Hemmings
with Capitol title, and I am the guest host today
for Dana. So Dana, thank you once again for giving
me the opportunity to host your wonderful show. We appreciate
you so much and I hope you are enjoying your
day today. We have our guest today is mister Craig

(00:25):
Escimeilia with CAE Solutions. He's a local business coach, but
he's been around this community for many, many years. As
soon as I said his name, I know a lot
of y'all recognize that name, and we have just a
lot of good things to talk about about the work
that he does in our community to help businesses grow
and improve. So Craig, first of all, just welcome, thank
you for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Absolutely, good afternoon, Indy. It's good to be here. Hi everyone,
and yeah, let's have some fun.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, let's have some fun. You're just such an easy
guy to talk to. We've been sitting here chatting for
twenty thirty minutes now about everything, So I just I
appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Parents are laughing right now because they're Yeah, because you
just said that I talk a lot basically.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
So well, and you mentioned your parents. I was talking
to my mom this morning and my mom knows your
parents very well. My mom major mcgey. So hello mister
and missus Escamillia, if you're listening. So yeah, Craig, you
and I kind of got I've known you for many years,
but we kind of reconnected an event that we had
here recently on a commercial real estate networking and you

(01:25):
were there, and that's when I invited you to come on.
And I'm so glad you could be here. So first
of all, just tell everybody a little bit about your
your roots here in Southeast Texas. Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Absolutely, well, I'm glad to be here. And so you know,
born and raised in Beaumont, been here my whole life,
and I just love this community. And so I went
to Lamar. I got a music degree. Yeah, so there's
something interesting there. I've always loved music, and.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I wanted to ask you what intrment did you play?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, I was a voice major at Lamar, but I
always kind of say that piano is really my primary intact.
I played piano at a church for a long time
and just it's still kind of my stress relief, you know,
at home. So got my music degree and went to
work at the Symphony of South East Texas and started
a master's in business at Lamar because you know, I
saw an ad in the newspaper back at the time

(02:12):
that you know, NBA, and I thought, well, that sounds
like something that probably would be useful. So I got
an MBA and less than a year after I'd been
at the symphony, my predecessor as executive director of the
organization moved to a larger orchestra and the board invited
me to be considered for the position. And I was,

(02:33):
you know, twenty to twenty three years old, and I
was like, wow, that's you. Hoh, thank you, but no,
thank you is really the truth. And they came back
again and said are you sure, And I said sure,
why not?

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Oh, that's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
The you know, I had a great, great, great board
that I got to work with at the Symphony. It's
still a wonderful board of a lot of good friends
and colleagues of mine and people that were involved when
I was and just just a fabulous organization. But they
really got involved in me. What a nonprofit board could
could be like, and I think we pulled a really
great team together, and so we had, you know, seven

(03:07):
years of just some really fantastic success at the symphony,
really turned some challenging financial situations around. Hired Chelsea Tipton,
who's still the conductor. Everybody loves Chelsea and me too,
and just really created a lot of energy and enthusiasm
around the orchestra. After I completed my MBA, I had

(03:27):
the opportunity to start teaching management classes, just kind of
an intro to management class in the College of Business
at Lamar as an adjunct, you know, just kind of
part time here and there, and they kept giving me
more and more classes, and I kept enjoying it more
and more. And so when you know, when we finally
got to a point where I felt like the symphony
was in a good place and you know, it was

(03:49):
time maybe to do something different. It worked out well
that there was an opportunity to go teach full time
at Lamar, and so I taught full time there and
then had some administrative responsibilities. But all through that time
to when I worked at the Symphony, you know, other
nonprofit organizations, they are board members that I knew would say,
you know, really impressed with what y'all have done at
the symphony. And I was always very grateful for that.

(04:10):
And you know what, would would you come, maybe spend
an hour with my board and kind of tell us,
you know, what we could do better. Yeah, And so eventually,
you know, that turned into some paid gigs, and then
that turned into you know a little more substantial consulting
work on the side, and of course teaching in a
College of Business, you know, get calls all the time, sure,
and so you know that that gets spread around amongst
the faculty and you know, whoever is best suited or

(04:33):
is most interested, or has capacity or whatever. And so
you know, I got to work with some great businesses
in there, you know, in there.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
And are you still doing any teaching at Lamar No.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
I taught until I think the end of twenty twenty one,
and you know, it's still very connected to the College
of Business, to the university as a whole in a
variety of different ways. But it was just getting difficult
to find a time that you know, I could consistently
commit to two or three days a week for a
couple of hours hours to be out there. And so
it's a good problem to have. But yeah, so in

(05:05):
twenty twenty, I said, you know, I think I have
enough consulting work going on here, so I'm going to
take this full time. And it's it's been just fabulous.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
So used c AE solution started in twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Okay, yeah, yeah, the entity began then, I guess the
work began back in about I don't know, twenty ten
or somewhere, maybe even a little earlier than that.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah. So yeah, well that's an interesting evolution that you
had because you know, being musically inclined right, creative endeavor right,
And let me I just have to ask, what are
some of your favorite stuff to play?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Elton John? I mean, if you're if you, I mean,
if you're a pianist. You know, if you're a pianist
and you're in you're interested in any rock and roll music,
you're basically you got Elton John and Billy Joel. So
you know, I never, I mean, come on, like everybody else,
I never practiced to the level that I developed the
technique to be an effective classical pianist. I'll play at things, sure,

(06:00):
you know, being a church pianist for a long time,
I'll still pull out some sacred music and some books
that I have just kind of you know, something that's
relatively easy to sit down and get it, you know,
ninety percent right now for my own enjoyment. So yeah,
but definitely Helton John.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, I got you okay.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Well, Well, being a singer, you know, it works well.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
I have to say I always envy good singers because
I've I've worked on my voice for many, many years
and it keeps getting a little a little bit better.
And I love playing guitar. I'm a guitarist. So I
always just had to talk a little bit about absolutely
but your evolution because like music is a creative endeavor
and how you transferred that experience into business, because that's

(06:41):
that's two completely different parts of the brain. But you
somehow made it, made the transition. You know.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
I'm a I mean, I think I've always been a
linear thinker. I certainly have always been someone who's been
a little bit let's call it OCD, but you know,
just just organized and very systematic approach to things in
my life and including music and practice for those kinds
of things. And so you know, I guess there was

(07:11):
sort of a natural inclination toward understanding systems and teams
and how to put people in organizations together. So you know,
I took naturally to that, where I'd never was the
strongest person early on, you know, during my MBA I'm
happy to admit this, you know, at the symphony. Much much,
much more comfortable with this now, But was just with

(07:31):
kind of the numbers, the financial aspect of yeah, you know,
I mean, here I am, you know, twenty three at
an organization. I'm not how to put a budget together.
So I just pull out the template that the predecessor
used and start, you know, doing my best estimate of
filling in and then, of course, you know, ten years later,
when I'm more comfortable with this, it's like, well, that
is how you make a budget, right, It's sort of
the best estimate based on you know, what you know
from the history and what you expect is coming in

(07:53):
the future. Yeah, but you know, reading financial statements things
like that. You know, I'm far, far, far more comfortable
with that now. But yeah, you know, I mean they
didn't teach us that in our music degrees how to
read financial sty They did in the MBA program, and
they did a good job with that. So so yeah,

(08:14):
so but the yeah, the the evolution has been just
very organic but feels very natural. And there is a
lot of creativity still involved in the work that I do.
And I, you know, I taught for I taught for
eleven years total if you count all the adjunct period
and I you know, I still do a lot of

(08:34):
professional development workshops and speeches and presentations and things like
that as part of my consulting work. And all of
that is just a form of performing honestly. Right, You've
got to get the content across, but you really have
to put on a show, right, So you have to
engage people. You have to be able to stand in
front of people and communicate material in an interesting way.

(08:57):
And man, there are very few things that I feel
like I can't handle after dealing with twenty year olds
for eleven years. They're brutal, but they can be a
lot of fun too. Yeah, And I have some really
really cherished memories of my time teaching students of LAMAR

(09:17):
so fantastic.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Well, and I love that you said that in your
role now, there's a lot of creativity involved. I can
see that and I can understand it, you know, in
my role with capital title as Essentially, I'm a sales rep,
right and I'm always have to think of different ways
to engage with my customers. And I have different places
to look for customers, different ways to connect with them,
and I enjoy that. I love when I wake up.

(09:40):
I love waking up with an idea and then I
can go implement it. That's right.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, you know, and I like patterns a lot. Like
I said, you know, systems, patterns, those things are just
very interesting to me. And so you know where the
creativity I think kind of comes in even in the
work I do today is you know, I have to
kind of cover the patterns or the underlying issues you know,
that are causing a problem or creating an opportunity in

(10:06):
a business and help guide someone through that. And now
that requires a lot of creativity.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
It does.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
I mean, I could plug people into a template if
I wanted to, but I I think that's what most
consultants do, and so I don't really want to do
what everybody else does that gives consultants such a bad name.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Well, we have a lot to unpack there. My mind
is racing. I just want to mention to everyone that
Craig here he is has just so much to share
about growing your business, about improving your business, about problem solving.
If you have any questions for him, now is the
time to call in. Now's your opportunity and our call
in number is four O nine eight nine six KLVI.

(10:48):
That's four O nine eight nine six five five eight four,
So call in and I know Craig would be happy
to answer any of your questions. We're going to take
a quick break right now, but when we come back,
here's what we're going to do. I've off into just
so you know, because when I went through I was
looking at you, your a bio and your website. You
said something that really piqued my curiosity, piqued my interest,

(11:09):
and it was you are fascinated by the intersection of
human behavior and business decisions. Right, So that's what we're
going to talk about when we come back. You're listening
to the Dana Simmons Show here on kov I. I'm
Andy Hemmings with Capital Title and we'll be right back
bat Welcome back everyone to the Danis Simmons Show. This
is Andy Hemmings guest host today from Capital Title, and

(11:31):
we appreciate you listening. We have mister Craig Escamilia as
our guest today and he is the owner of CAE Solutions.
It's a business consulting firm. If you have any questions,
if you're a business owner and have questions about your
processes or any any sort of business decision you're trying
to make or struggling with, be sure to call in
four O nine eight nine six kov I that's four

(11:52):
O nine eight nine six five five eight four. So Craig,
tell me about this intersection of human behavior and business decisions.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Well, you know, okay, So I'm obsessed with Apple. I'm
fascinated by the idea that you have a company that's
almost fifty years old, or is fifty years old, that
is formed by two guys in a garage, right right,
and is the most valuable company in the world, right,
thirteen figure company if I'm doing that math right right,

(12:24):
that's unbelievable, and first company to a trillion dollar market cap.
And so what is it that we can learn from
them is always interesting to me. And one of those
things is focus, right, and when when you talk at
a fifty thousand foot or when you hear them talk
at a fifty thousand foot level about their focus. It

(12:45):
is on the intersection of technology and the arts. That's
what they always say, so sort of creative arts and
artistic output and how technology can enhance the way we
live our lives and the creativity that's involved that. So,
you know, when I when I thought about what it
was that sort of energized me about working with businesses,

(13:07):
about teaching management courses and things like that. It really
is this understanding that if you have the right people
around the table, or if you have the right people
on the bus and the old Jim Collins good to
great Lingo right, they will they will figure out where
to drive the bus, they will figure out what problems
to solve, they will tell you how best to solve them,

(13:28):
et cetera, et cetera. And so nothing happens in businesses
without people, right at least yet I suppose, you know,
we'll see if the AI revolution eventually, you know, can
can allow us to do all. But we have plenty
of time, I believe. So, so nothing happens in business
without people. Nothing happens in organizations without people. And people

(13:52):
come with their own you know, biases and sets of
experiences and ways that they make decisions and all those
kinds of things, and ultimately some has to make a
decision and execute or implement whatever that decision is. And
that might be one person, it might be a team
of people, it might be an entire organization, but it's
still people. And nothing is going to move forward without

(14:15):
the people. So understanding those behind the eyes things that
go on in people's heads helps us put the right
people together in order to handle whatever is in front
of us better. So we make better decisions if we
get the right people around the table. So that intersection
of those two things is just really really interesting.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, in another life, I might have been a psychologist.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
I was going to say, there's a lot of psychologist.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
You know that. You know, that's a path that you
really have to start down from day one in undergraduate school,
and you know, there's trade offs in life, and you know,
that's not something that I'm going to go down that
path anymore. But you know, just just kind of understanding
human behavior and what motivates to people. One of the
things that I've kind of always thought, and I don't

(15:03):
mean this in an arrogant way, but that I've always
thought it was kind of interesting and maybe an advantage
that that you know I had in life is I'm
an only child, and so I have, you know, spent
my entire life around adults. Because if you're an only child,
you're you're you you sort of are have a different
part of your parents' lives than if you have siblings, right,

(15:27):
And so as an only child, you spend a lot
of time with your parents, which means that you spend
a lot of time with you know, the people that
your parents are around, which tends to be adults, right.
And so I've spent my life kind of just by osmosis,
absorbing how people think and act. And I've just always
been fascinated by those things. And I am in myself too, right,

(15:47):
and sort of studying you know, Craig, why did you
do that? Why did you make that decision? You know,
why did you?

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Boy?

Speaker 2 (15:53):
That was impulsive? And now you regret that? Why And
it's not all negative, right, you know? How did you
get the positive outcome? That's interesting? How that happened? What
happened there? And so those are the kinds of things
that I like to discuss with people and with teams
and with business owners and with organizations, is what can
we understand about what's motivating or what's what's going on

(16:14):
sort of inside people that's driving the way that they're
behaving or the decisions that they're making, And how can
we use that that's so powerful. We're not going to
change who people are once they get to a certain
point in their lives, right, it's sort of baked in.
So how can we use who the people are to
be to make our organizations the most effective that they

(16:34):
can be?

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Such a powerful concept, that notion of self reflection, self analysis,
our decision making and seeing like where we are today
as a result of these this decision, these decisions in
the past and so so kind of walk us through
if you would like when you first meet with it.
Now you work with small and medium sized businesses primarily.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Correct, Yes, well, what I the way I like to
say it is, I like to work with sort of
closely held businesses. So owner operated enterprises is really my
kind of ideal thing because there's a certain skin in
the game that is very rewarding for me personally to
work with those clients. They can they are closer to
their ability to implement a decision faster, which allows us

(17:15):
to get feedback from the situation faster, which allows us
to course correct faster, which allows us to get better
results most of the time ideally right. And so working
with somebody who has that decision authority to implement something
and get right on it is very rewarding. And then
if you add in the fact that these are you know,
family companies or multi generational businesses or something like that,

(17:36):
you can see the impact that this has on them
when something works right. And that's much different than working
with a large corporate client who who are you know,
wonderful many wonderful corporate citizens out there, right, but the
ownership is a lot more diluted, and the positive impact
of something that works is a lot less. Is a
lot less than if it's your baby, gotcha? So yeah,

(17:58):
so quick? If I can go back just first absolutely,
I was just gonna say when you were talking about,
you know, a second ago, about just people and putting
teams together and kind of this understanding what motivates people.
You know, two big influences on me for the last
probably fifteen twenty years, where Jim Collins, who I mentioned
a minute ago, who wrote Good to Great in a
number of other books, and David Allen, who wrote the

(18:21):
book Getting Things Done, which is a personal organization, personal
productivity systems book. And what's interesting is probably about five
six years ago I really got into ancient Stoic philosophy
Ryan Holiday, who read The Daily Stoic every morning he
too for years now.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Oh man, and so we need to do another show.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Oh yeah, lots of sounds great. I'm in so of course,
Ryan Holiday is you know, I think maybe about my
age and has really almost single handedly been responsible for
this resurgence in sort of modernizing ancient Stoic philosophy. And
it was so interesting when I started reading some of
our Bran's writing, and particularly The Daily Stoic, I realized, hey,

(19:04):
you know, the business concepts in Jim Collins books Built
to Last, Good to Great, Great by Choice, and the
personal management concepts in David Allen's Getting Things Done, it's
all just stoic philosophy. It's all just this idea of
what is within my control, you know, and what am
I going to do about that? And don't focus or

(19:26):
worry about anything else because you can't do anything about
those things.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
And that is so true, and I tell you it's
I love it, like literally, that's part of my morning ritual.
I wake up read the Daily Stoic and I just
got a little what my observation from saying it, and
it helped me, like just this morning, you know, just
challenging things I'm dealing with at work, which we all
have challenging things, and it really literally what I'm reading
made me stop and think about my next.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Movie and what was today's Today's was a conversation about
people like Warren Buffett and other people who no matter.
And Ryan uses two examples at the extremes, Warren Buffett,
you know, one of the wealthiest people on earth, and
somebody who was not very wealthy at all, and he says,
what what is the commonality between these two people in

(20:10):
the stories that he describes, They wanted less. They developed
a life for themselves where they always had enough because
they put curbs and limits on wanting more.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
That's so that's so huge. I wanted to run in
there and show my wife, you know, look, we don't
need us. But I let her have her coffee in peace.
You know, she didn't she didn't need a lecture from
me at you know, at six o'clock this morning, but
I did literally wanted to go sure it says right here, Yeah,
that's so funny, very good. Okay, No, that's okay. Stoke philosophy.

(20:43):
So I'm so glad you mentioned that, and I'll just
mention it to anyone listening that the book that we're discussing,
it's called The Daily Stoke by Ryan Holiday, and every
day it has an excerpt from one of the one
of the Stoke philosophers. Very easy read, very impactful, and
highly recommend it. Okay, So when you first meet with
a company, right and you sit down and you have

(21:04):
an initial consultation, how does that look is that? Do
you do you have a process that you use every
time or do you tailor it depending on what the
business is looking for.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
So I'm already working on that when when they're just
a prospective client, because I need to understand in order
to put a proposal together and decide if I can
work with you know, if I can bring value to
this client. I need to understand exactly what's going on
and what their challenges really are. And you have to
read between the lines because most people myself included in this,

(21:35):
probably can't articulate what the real challenge is, right they
get that surface level. I'm struggling with this. You know,
I'm working seventy hours a week and I don't have
any more capacity. I can't grow this business if I
can't get out and sell. But I you know, I
got to run the business every single day and it's
taking me fifteen sixteen hours a day including weekends too,
And how am I supposed to sell? And so you've

(21:59):
got to get deeper in that to go Okay, So
what is the challenge here? Have they not built a
team around them? Have they not delegated to and empowered
that team. Have they not clarified that team's roles and responsibilities,
do they have their own do they not have good
systems themselves? Or are they not organized right? And so
you've got to sort of ask these questions to get
to the deeper issues. I'm also trying to figure out

(22:20):
at that early stage, what are our personalities like together?
Are we clicking? Are we sort of speaking the same language?
Is this going to work? And I'm also trying to
figure out, you know, is this company about to go
out of business? Because that's it's gonna take me a
little while to figure out what's causing any problems. And
if you're you know, sixty days from closing the doors.

(22:41):
It's probably gonna take.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Me longer than that good point.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
So so that I'm trying to I'm looking for that fit. Right,
you know, it's just me, So I don't need you know,
five hundred clients, you know, ten is plenty to really
serve them well. So you know, I have the somewhat
the luxury of being able to sort of assess the
situation and say, eeah, maybe this is not a good fit.

(23:05):
So I'm looking for that fit. Now, assuming that we
move forward, we start working together. The first thing in
almost every situation that I'm going to do is go, Okay,
why does this company exist? What are you trying to
do here? What's working, what's not? Who works here? Let
me talk to them and ask them the same questions
and just trying to get sort of what in business
school we would call a situational analysis. You might even
have heard the term a SWAT analysis was an acronym

(23:25):
for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And so generally, the
first let's say three months, you know, give or take,
is going to be me talking to everybody that I
can associated with this organization to get a sense of
what our situation is, and from there we can begin
to develop a plan customized to the nature of that

(23:45):
business that allows us to start to pick apart each
of those things. Right, So, when you develop a SWAT analysis,
typically you have you know a handful of strengths, right,
things that we do well that we want to continue
to build on, and you have a handful of threats,
which are things outside the organization that could have some
negative impact on the company that you just want to
guard against because in stow At philosophy, you can't eliminate these, Right.

(24:06):
Everybody in Southeast Texas has to guard against hurricanes because
it's the nature of where we live. But we can't
eliminate them. So you know, you just prepare. Where the
meat tends to be is in the weaknesses, which are
kind of the internal things that don't work so well,
and the opportunities, which are the external positive things. And
so you know, we start to build a plan around

(24:28):
how are we going to you know, correct for weaknesses
or improve on weaknesses or eliminate weaknesses, and how are
we going to match things that we do well from
that strength column to external opportunities to move the business
forward or grow it or change some things that we
want to and so we develop kind of that plan
document and then you know, there's it could be anything

(24:48):
from fifty up to fifty down to you know, ten
percent of whatever we identify. And there are things that
you know, I'm just not qualified to help the business with.
But the remaining items are the things that will sort
of say, Okay, how do you want me to help
you with these things? And some of that is simple
coaching and accountability. Sometimes it's you know, kind of working

(25:10):
with the team and developing systems, you know, dashboards, right,
data dashboards, so that you can know what in the
world is.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Going on in your business exactly. You know, I know, uh, personally,
one thing that I just implemented in my business because
I consider what I do, I look at it as
my own business. I have to, you know, I'm I'm
you know, this is my own little my own little company.
And I started doing a better job at measuring my activities.
I've made this many phone calls, I set this many appointments,

(25:39):
I had met with this many people. And once you
start tracking your your behavior immediately improves, I mean it,
and it's just uh, you know.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
What what you measure the same place here. Yeah, what
you measure is what you see, right, And a lot
of times when I hear business owners who one of
their biggest complaints is, man, you know, I just I've
got to be in the office, It's like, well, do
you have some way to know what the status of
your business is from your phone in your bed at
six am or whatever time you wake up? Because if

(26:10):
you don't have that, then you're right, you've got to
be in the office. You can't be you know, on
vacation somewhere, you can't be on a beach. But if
you've got the systems and the and the people in
place who are empowered to run those systems and run
the things that feed into those systems, where you can
wake up and check the dashboard and go, hey, nothing's
on fire today. Yeah, I'm going, you know, get in
the water.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Is there some sort of a couple questions here, you know, one,
is there some sort of software that that would be
common for most business owners to help them track their
their business? And the second question, if you could, like
if there was one issue that you would say most
businesses face, like what's the biggest challenge that you see

(26:51):
businesses facing if you could identify just one thing.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
So on the system's piece. My rule is always this
as complex as it needs to be and no more.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
So I think one of the biggest this is a
you know, David Allen getting things done thing. One of
the biggest challenges is people love to design their systems
for you know, their inner geek on a rainy Saturday,
and it's like, oh, let me make this complex system.
And if I put just the I'm gonna color code
this and I'm gonna you know, this list and all
that kind of stuff, and it's like, you know, two
weeks later, you get the flu, somebody quits, kid breaks

(27:21):
their arm, you know, et cetera, et cetera, and it's like, wow,
I can't maintain that system. So as simple as you
can get by with. And I say the same thing
about dashboards. Now, some people have you know, data tracking,
you know, not CRMs, but sort of I'm blanking on
the term that I'm looking for. But you know, they
have systems for managing their business in place software and

(27:41):
those a lot of times have dashboard capabilities that they
have never taken the time to build build. So so
you know, we try to start with what do you
already have? But some people their systems would improve if
they just did things like opened up their banking app
and opened up quick books on a daily basis and
just made sure but you know, cash on hand and

(28:01):
ar balance are healthy.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, I'd be a good start. That's a good start. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Okay, So we try not to make the systems too complex,
but I'm a big fan of accessible everywhere because that
is what that is what unchanged you from the desk
in the office, is the accessibility of the data from anywhere. Yeah,
because if I can be in Europe with a roaming

(28:26):
plan and I can check in and see that something's
on fire and call the right person to handle that
issue and talk through what they're going to do with them,
and they know what to do and they go execute
and they're going to report back on what happens. I
can put the phone back in my pocket and go
have some gelato, good point, good point, or wine, depending
on what time of day it is, right and where
you are. Okay, So now to your next question, what

(28:46):
are the common problems that I see? Well, again, like
I said, I work a lot with closely held businesses,
owner operated enterprises and the Probably the biggest thing I
see is some form of a challenge with delegation letting go.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
That's a huge problem.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
It's hard for me too, okay. And so you know,
we spend a lot of I spend a lot of
time with clients looking at have they built the right team,
have they empowered that team, have they given them decision authority?
Are they going back behind them and second guessing and
micromanaging the decision the team is making, et cetera, et cetera.
So it comes back to what people dynamics, right, the

(29:22):
intersection of decisions and human behavior. And so that's probably
the biggest thing I see.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
I think that's huge.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, and you know it's it's not easy. It's not
an easy thing because you know, I have many clients
who will say some form of if I could just
get everybody else to think like an owner, and of course,
my my joking quip back is, yeah, well, if everybody
thought like an owner, you know, you might have a
lot more competitors, right exactly, So you know, careful what

(29:51):
you wish for, but they're not gonna think like the owner.
And I'm not saying that in a dismissive way. We
have wonderful, wonderful people that work in organizations all the world,
but we need people that are not owners. We need
people that will show up and do the job right.
And and so you know, you can you can train

(30:11):
or develop a little bit of that ownership mentality. But
I think more than anything, it's just kind of clarifying
the goal, clarifying the path to get there, get out
of the way, have your checkpoints, you know, check in
if things are off track, figure out why, and get
it back on track. I would in general, not not
really talking specifically about my clients here, just more generally,

(30:32):
I would love to see more business owners and leaders
kind of guiding, working through other people, taking that problem
solving approach of what are we trying to do, how
are we going to get there? Okay, you go work
on this. Let me know where you need help. Hey,
we don't seem to be on track here, let's bring
it back. Let's talk about that. You know, in my

(30:56):
community service and volunteer activities, when I chair committees, when
I chair boards things like that, that's my approach is,
you know, choose a capable person to chair a committee.
I'm here to support, I'm going to attend as many
meetings as I can. If you need help with something,
let me know. Otherwise, I trust that you're going to
do your job. And on the front end, I'm going
to clarify these are the things that I think need

(31:17):
to be accomplished by this committee, whether that relates to
a strategic plan that's in existence, whether it's some short
term goal or whatever.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
And if you have the right person in that role,
they're going to respond much better to that trust you
place in them, and they may come up with new
ideas and new solutions that you never even thought of
if you empower them.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, and I mean sometimes you have to get people
off zero, right, you know so, But yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, we are going to This is fantastic, by the way,
I love this. We're gonna be flying. What time is fly?
We have to take a quick break here. This is
the Dana Simmons Show, and we will be right back
with mister Craig es Camelia with c AE Solutions. Welcome
back everyone to the Dana Simmons Show. This is Andy
Hemmings with capital title your guest host, and today we're

(32:02):
talking with mister Craig Escamelia with c Ae solutions. He
is a local business coach and solutions oriented individual to
help you grow your business. If you have any questions,
please call in four O nine eight nine six klv
I four O nine eight nine six five five eight
four Craig. When we were talking before the show, you

(32:23):
brought up a really interesting topic, and the topic being
multi generational businesses in our community because we have a
lot of them, and you were saying how important it
is to maintain and keep these these businesses in our community.
So one tell us a little bit about that and

(32:45):
maybe just some of the unique challenges if you would,
of keeping a business in the family.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah. So you know, if you go ninety miles west
of Beaumont, you'll run into the fourth largest city in
the nation, right, And there are plenty of locally owned
businesses in Houston. I'm sure I haven't done the research there,
but when you have, you know, five six million people
in the greater metropolitan area there, you can you can

(33:15):
sustain a lot of things on chains and corporate businesses
and Amazon and you know, Amazon orders and things like that.
In a community of our size, it's critically important that
that we know the people we're doing business with. And
that we have people here who can make decisions about when, where,
and how they're going to invest in the community. And so,

(33:36):
you know, I tend to get my coffee from local
coffee shops here and so on and so forth. And
so one of the things that I see, and you
know this happens every twenty to thirty years, you know,
is we're at one of these generational transitions right now.
People that have owned and built locally owned businesses throughout
the US, are you know, approaching quote retire age whatever

(34:00):
that means, right, I love that we you know, so
we're we're roughly on the third you know, if you
talk about the generation that is getting ready to retire,
which would be your baby boomer generation, we're roughly on
the third generation that we've ever tracked in sort of
the industrialized workplace. Okay, And and we say that that
they're not that they're they're working longer than traditional retirement age.

(34:22):
And I'm going do we have enough of a pattern
in history to really call it traditional retirement age? But whatever,
they're young, you know, medical technologies advanced, there's still anyway.
So so you have this generation that is looking to
in many cases exit the businesses that they're in and
what worries me sometimes in a community like let's call

(34:43):
it Southeast Texas in general, is let's say that I'm
just going to make up a number. Let's say sixty
five percent two thirds roughly of the businesses in Southeast
Texas are locally owned, you know, and and figure out
whatever the you know, whatever you want to call it
is GDP or whatever economic measure you want to use
of Southeast Texas, if sixty five percent of that is

(35:06):
generated and let's just say that it's even right. It
may not be, it may be disproportionate. But let's say
that if sixty five percent of the businesses are locally owned,
and that means that translates into sixty five percent of
the economic activity in Southeast Texas is generated by those businesses.
Right if if half of those sell to organizations that

(35:28):
are not here or don't pass them on to the
next generation, or something like that, to where we begin
to dilute local ownership and local decision making. What happens
who goes to buy their coffee at the local coffee shops,
Who invests in the symphony of Southeast Texas as donors
and supporters, who attends the concerts, who goes to eat
at the locally owned restaurants, who calls Capital Title and

(35:50):
Dana Simmons, who listens to KLVI. What the sort of
ripple effect ramifications of not having that local skin in
the game. Investment in the community can do a lot
of damage to a small community like ours. Not so

(36:11):
much in a Houston, right, because you have a large
transient population. They work for major global corporations in a
lot of cases, etc. It's just a totally different dynamic.
But you have multi generation families that have been around
in Beaumont for four, five, six generations, and if you
start to dilute that, it worries me for what the
implications for other local owned businesses are. And yeah, there's

(36:35):
probably some self interest in this, you know. I mean,
you know, I'd like to have a client base to
continue to work with for the rest of my working
life and career. But also, you know, having started my
career at the Symphony, I saw at a young age
the impact of philanthropy. It's something that's very important to
my wife and me, and those are the things that

(36:55):
worry me too. People give to people, right, they don't
give to organizations or causes they give to the people
and the stories behind those things. And so if you
don't have a reason to have that personal connection, or
if one side of that personal connection is not here
seeing being friends, with doing business, with interacting with one
another every day, who cares? Yeah, I don't care about

(37:18):
your cause?

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, yeah, So this worries me well and well justified
concern there, because we just have so many wonderful multi
generational companies here, you know, Jason's Delhi Giglio.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Sure, and you asked about that, so yeah, you know,
so I do work with a lot of companies. I've
worked with a number of organizations that have worked on
their generational transition plans, their succession plans and have done
so very effectively. And a lot of that for me is, look,
you have to It's the same thing as working in
delegation that we were talking about before the last break, right.

(37:55):
You have to clarify what the goals for the future
of the company are, what the transition timeline looks like,
what is the skills gap that the next generation of
owners and leaders need to close? Can that be closed
in that time frame? And then you just develop basically
a training a management training program.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Are there any like when you when you compare working
with a family owned business that is looking at making
that transition and another company that you're consulting any specific
issues with with like familial based type of issues. And
that's a load good question.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Da, what's on Dana's program next week?

Speaker 1 (38:31):
So that yeah, right right, So I would imagine there
are some unique challenges when it comes to passing from
generation to generations.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, well, you know, okay, so there's generational challenges, which,
of course the biggest one tends to be you know,
we don't necessarily share the same vision that mom and
dad have for the cutting probably a huge yeah. And
so then you've got to find the middle ground. You've
got to look at the feasibility of what maybe the
next generation's dreams and visions are. But I will say,

(39:00):
and this is not because you know, they tend to
be my age right now, because that won't be the
case forever. I do tend to put more stock in
what the people that are going to be making the
decisions and having to live with those consequences in the
future are, And I do tend to try to encourage
that we that we put more effort into making their
vision for the company that we sility.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
So you have to put your thumb on the scale
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, well, I think so. I mean if as a
general rule, I think that in things, if if we're
making decisions that are that are decisions that the people
who don't have to live with the consequences of those
decisions are the if it's their choices, that's not fair. Uh,
and so it doesn't mean it's wrong, but it's something

(39:47):
that that is kind of one of those Hold hold
on a second, let's talk about this a little bit.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
And you probably have to be for me somewhat delicate
about the way you present that. There's a lot of
way we're built at.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
This absolutely yeah and yeah, and we didn't do it
with consultants. So the other dynamic though, that I run
into a lot of times is then, you know, in
family owned businesses, it's kind of two parts to this
is the spouse situation, right, working with your spouse, which

(40:18):
has its own set of challenges because then you know,
things that happened at the dinner table or makes their
way into the company, and you know, where do you
draw that line in terms of inserting yourself into people's
personal business and the impacts that that can have on
a company. And then the other one is siblings, right,
because you know, in that generational transition, it's it's not

(40:40):
always that it goes from one person to one person.
In the next generation, it might go to two or three.
And so you have those sibling dynamics and you can
get into situations. You know, I have a wonderful client
that worked with for a long time on that two
siblings running the business and they just they perfectly balance
one another. I mean that just strengths and strengths offset
each other weakness is just beautifully and they communicate effectively.

(41:03):
They work really well together. But you don't always see that,
you know. You know some people are still you know,
you know, want to pop their little brother on the
head for stuff, and it's like that's not a very
effective way to manage an organization.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Well, there's a lot of history there, I'm sure behind
all that.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
So you know, you get into those kinds of things,
and again, this is all just kind of what's motivating people,
what's going on inside their head, human all that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Gotcha, you know, before we part ways in our last
little bit here, I really want to. You mentioned something
on your website about Seinfeld and I found that fast.
And I can't remember the exact quote that you said,
sure from Jerry Seinfeld, but tell us about it.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah. So, so Jerry Seinfeld has this quote. He was
interviewed by a Harvard Business Review probably about ten years ago,
and they asked him, you know, did he ever hire
a consultant? Did he ever think about bringing Mackenzie in?
And he said, you know who's mackenzie? And they said, well,
they're you know, a global multinational consulting firm. And he said,
he said, are they funny? And they said I don't
think so. And he said that I don't need them.

(42:03):
And he said, look, you know, innovation is is is
just saying what am I sick of? And what am
I going to do to change it? Or something to
that effect. I'm paraphrasing what he said. I love Seinfeld
the show. It's amazing to me that the show is
I don't know now, you know, it ended almost thirty

(42:23):
years ago, so what is it's almost forty years old? Yeah,
I believe so the show is still relatable. Yeah, it's
got a few you know, time sensitive things and it's
got a few New York references that if you've never
experienced New York, you know, you don't know what he's
talking about. But the show is just so funny because
what is it really about. It's about human behavior. It's
it's just his observations about the ridiculously stupid things that

(42:46):
people do, exaggerated to the tenth degree. And that's what
his comedy is all about. And in my interest in Jerry,
kind of similar to what we talked about earlier with Apple.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Oh, we have to take another break. That's okay, we'll
talk about Okay, we're going to We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
That sounds good.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Welcome back everyone. We just have about one minute left.
I forgot one of the breaks there, so thank you,
Jim Love. But as we wrap up here with Craig Escamelia,
we were just talking about that book David Allen Getting
Things Done. It's now on my reading list. Tell us
a little bit about it.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, so, you know, just good personal organization tips. I'll
go back to the Seinfeld thing real quick and just say,
real quick, you know, of course I fell in love
with the show, fell in love with all of that,
but as I learned more about him. It was his
work ethic that I that I really admire. You know,
you think a comedian kind of just shows up at
a club and makes up some jokes, and you know,
Jerry gets up and writes jokes every single day still

(43:41):
today at seventy one years old or however. Wow, And
that level of work ethic is just amazing. And so
I really admire what he's done. And I think that's
why he's a billionaire as a comedian. Yes, that's with
a B.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
I just saw it. Yeah, And I saw a little
clip of him this morning and how he wanted to
end Seinfeld on a high note.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Absolutely y'all should take away.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, he said he didn't leave them wanting more exactly,
and that's what he did, because they.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
Speaking of I think we're not.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Thank you, Craig, thank you so much for coming you today.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Thanks Dana also.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, thank you Dana. Y'all have a great Saturday, enjoy
your weekend.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
By bye.