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Speaker 1: (00:00)
Welcome to Private Equity Profits. Clifford Locks is a certified board of director, a trusted confidant to CEOs C-Level Exec and high potential employees to help them clarify goals, unlock their potential and create actionable strategic plans. Seth Greene is the nation’s foremost authority on growing your business. He is the founder of The Direct Response Marketing firm Market Domination LLC. And he is a seven times best-selling author who has been interviewed on NBC, CBS, Forbes, Inc, CBS MoneyWatch and many more. Cliff and Seth interview top players in the financial sector, focusing on private equity and real estate funds, discussing developments and trends shaping the industry. These experts will share with you how they’ve leveraged the power of equity funding to grow their businesses and increase profits and how you can too. And now here’s your host, Cliff Locks.

Cliff Locks: (01:07)
Welcome to The Private Equity Profits Podcast. I’m Cliff Locks, your host and with me today is Patricia Baronowski Schneider, President and CEO of Pristine Advisers. Patricia is the self-made C level executive and entrepreneur. Her firm, Pristine Advisers is built upon personal relationships, helping clients with investor relations, public relations, marketing, media relations in raising capital. Patricia works with hedge funds, business development companies, master limited partners, exchange traded funds and closed end funds as well as corporations and individuals to decrease discounts wore off activist shareholders, increase share price and build relationships with current and potential investors. Be featured in top tier financial publications, appear on financial television radio and online broadcast programs. Patricia is an expert in helping position clients within the media world. Welcome Patricia. Thank you so much for taking the time. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell the audience about your path you’ve taken in regards to your amazing career.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (02:10)
Well, thank you for having me. Well, the past was a little tricky one. I started my career basically right out of high school. It was a job that I had right out of high school. I started as an administrative assistant. One thing I found really unique was that I worked with about seven or eight different people and I found the company really exciting. It was not like a typical receptionist where you have the same job every day and you never knew what the job was going to be for that day until you opened up your emails. So it was a lot of work because I was one person working for about eight different people, but I found it really exciting. I was also a single mom of two small babies, so I definitely needed a job that paid well and had good medical. So that job suited me.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (02:53)
So I stayed there and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I put myself through college, earned my master’s degree, but still was going to school now on top of being a single mom and working 16, 18 hour days. So it was a lot of work, but I really, really enjoyed it. And yeah, I mean, I basically started with investor relations, public relations. It was a big global company. They also did marketing and media relations. So it was a lot of work, but yeah, it definitely kept me on my toes. I learned so much through the various different people I worked for, the clients that we had across the globe. So yeah, it was really exciting. And that was where I got my feet wet in the marketing world.

Cliff Locks: (03:30)
That’s exciting because one of the things I look for trying to communicate to our guests and our listeners is that we have an opportunity for our youth to bring them into our organizations, internships, summer jobs and to be able to share the moving pieces in the viberness that’s in our companies at this point. And I hope that’s a message that our listeners will take into their own companies, that they can mentor our young people to thrive because you could see right out of college, you found a career that’s been an amazing career and I’m glad we’re going to share it with our listeners. So tell us about Pristine Advisers and how you’re different from other firms.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (04:09)
Well, one thing that makes me a little different was we do IR, investor relations, PR, public relations, media relations and marketing. People think that we sound like we’re all over the place, but we found a need for it. The company that I was working for had various different departments. You might’ve had your technology department, your Europe department, your It department, but we all pretty much worked together. So I had a taste for every aspect of the business. And even when I worked for that one company, I was there for 16 years and they were close in their department. So I had to go look for another job. And I was actually surprised when I would go to a company that says, okay, we do IR, investor relations. So I had applied for the job, but all they did was annual reports. And I was like, wow, we do so much more than that.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (04:54)
And another company said we do PR public relations, but all they did was advertising. So we do a lot, but we always feel that it’s needed. I mean we do IRP or marketing media relations. We always found that if there’s a void that has to be filled, we’ll fill it. Like for example, we also host conferences. Not that we want to be conference organizers because we have nothing else better to do. We found that when we had clients that wanted to present to the investment community, we would go to various different conferences. And it was kind of tricky. Either they were paying for assets under management pang, large amount of money to present, but yet maybe the audience was a mix of people from totally different backgrounds and different interests. So now you’re paying this money you’re presenting to them, but they really have no interest in your company at all.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (05:40)
Or they have X amount of speaking opportunities and you might be giving a good slot or what you think is a good slot. But this huge company is also speaking in another room at the same exact time. So we had comp clients repeatedly presenting at these events and got no ROI for it, so we started hosting conferences. We just always found like, what else can we do to help clients? So it was never about us wanting to take on more work. It was pretty much just what else can we do to help people. So I think that’s one thing that helps us, keeps us separate from other companies.

Cliff Locks: (06:14)
That’s a breath of fresh air. If you think about an organization will grow and thrive. When it finds that the clients are asking, they trust you emphatically at this point, you understand their business. And then they’re asking you to help them with other areas within the company. And you’re actually growing along with them and you’re helping them move in a positive direction. But you also have cohesiveness, meaning you understand the business and that allows you to speak in a single type of the brand will stay forefront at that point on the messaging versus diverse companies coming in and trying to handle, manage different aspects of it and everybody’s on the same page. You have a unique view of market share. Tell us why you’re not more interested in market share.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (07:00)
Well, it’s not that we’re not interested in market share. It’s just a little different. I mean, nowadays the world has changed. Obviously with COVID, everybody’s online now everybody’s pitching something different. And one thing that amazed me is how many life coaches are out there. I get pitched repeatedly all day long from everybody under the sun. I think the International Coaching Federation said that it’s the industry has gone up about 33% of this time and they predict about an 8% increase by 2029. So yeah, I can certainly tell people, everything that I’ve gone through and, but it doesn’t make me a life coach. Does it mean that people should drop thousands and thousands of dollars on these courses? People are actually doing it. So from my marketing experience, I’m competing with the self-help coaches and marketing dollars in my own business.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (07:49)
I’m trying to pitch people what we do and they’re pitching what they do and it’s kind of hard. I mean, I’ve learned so much since COVID, I mean, we pitched another firm and I have to give them credit, their pitch is unique. They said something, for example, why pay another company thousands of dollars a month for media when they can’t guarantee you media coverage. So I was interested and I’m like, okay, because it’s easy for me to market clients, but I don’t always have time to market myself. So I wanted to hear what they had to say and what they were pitching was they had like an expert writer on two online publications that I’ve never even heard of. So their attitude was why pay somebody else money? We can guarantee you coverage on these two publications every single month. And I’m like, okay, but I’ve never even heard of that.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (08:34)
So if you pitch that to somebody what’s to say their customers or their investors would ever read that either like that’s where the marketing comes into play. Yeah. You can do that. You can totally do that, but then you have to market the heck out of it to make sure the right people see that. So I always say it’s not about getting it done fast and go away. It’s about building a client’s reputation, forming the relationship with the investment community. Nothing happens one two three, but if you build these relationships those are the people that you want in your corner and they’re going to be there for you.

Cliff Locks: (09:08)
Very positive. We often learn more about the deals that don’t work than those that do. Have you learned any big lessons from the clients regarding investments that didn’t quite work out as well as they expected?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (09:21)
Yeah. I mean, say for example, the conferences that I mentioned, we weren’t making any money on that. We just felt it was a need that people needed that. So what we did is say for example, we had a networking sit down lunch and networking, cocktail, reception, whatever that let’s just say, for example, to host this entire venue was $50,000 and we had 10 presenters. So then those 10 percenters would be considered sponsors. We would have investors, analysts, brokers, media tent, those sponsors would also pay for the venue. So it was 5,000 a piece. But then it got to a point where people were saying, okay, well, why should we pay? We could just show up because the audience we want to meet is there anyway. We’ll just network with the investors, analysts, brokers, media there. It was like, okay, so now we started doing it as a loss.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (10:06)
And I’m like, well, it kind of just got to the point. It really, we weren’t doing this for me. We’re doing it for you. So that was just one lesson that we learned also through our years, we have over 800,000 connections in our database. These aren’t purchased databases. These are people that we’ve met through networking conferences, events, webinars, whatnot. We’ve had people take us on, but then they wanted access to all of our clients. I mean all of our database, but if we give you that, then why hire us? That’s why that’s our database. So we’ve learned a lot. A lot of things like that happen along the way, but it’s just the nature of the business.

Cliff Locks: (10:42)
Well, I’m proud of you. No one said it was easy, but you’ve had success. And I think you’re really very passionate in helping the clients. And that’s really the most important part. Can you talk a little bit about the unique dynamics and relationships needed to successfully raise capital in today’s changing financial market?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (11:00)
Yeah. I mean, we believe that people have to build trust before they ask for money. Many investors in the early stage companies, they’re not only evaluating the business decision. They’re also assessing the personal characteristics as well. At this end of the day, they want to know if they can trust you and rightfully so. It’s not as simple as just going to anybody you don’t know. I mean, we have lots of people. I myself know lots of people. Venture capitalists, hedge funds, whatnot. I can’t go to them with every single person that’s looking to raise money. It doesn’t work that way. And then you have to know them. Who are they? What are they investing in? Who’s your competitor. You want to make sure you’re pitching to the right people. If I just go to some group online, like say for example, LinkedIn and I start pitching technology venture to real estate capital.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (11:43)
I mean, they’ve got to turn me off and block me because they’re going to say, I don’t know what I’m doing. So we just say it’s relationship fundraising as opposed to transactional fundraising. It may be time consuming, but it’s the key to get the funding and build it. Building a set of core advisors and investors hold back you for the long run. I mean, there’s no doubt that relationship fundraising can be intimidating process, but it’s a valuable way to get in meetings and to build authentic relationships with the people.

Cliff Locks: (12:12)
Trust is the key and doing your homework.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (12:15)
Absolutely.

Cliff Locks: (12:17)
When professional like yourself, Patricia, it makes it easier for the defining who is our best target or prospect to help us with the raise at this point. There’s a lot of money out there that needs to get put to work, but that needs to get put together intelligently with a proper risk profile. So what is your working process with your clients to help them identify investment opportunities will to build the next fund and to promote them to obtain the needed funding?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (12:42)
Well, we always say to do a peer analysis and to see what their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are ahead of them. We want to have answers to questions that potential investors may ask and show that they’re at an advantage to their peers and why. And this will also help us promote them to the investors better. And we’re always researching various investors in groups and events for various fairsome funding resources to keep on top of who’s investing in what to ensure that we target the right people. If we pitch a real estate venture to commodities investor, chances are, they’ll see us as inexperienced and block us.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (13:13)
So we want to ensure that we know what we’re doing and do it right. Once we narrow down the target investors, we either arrange a meeting with the client pre COVID, obviously, or now Zoom a visual chat or conference call, et cetera, to introduce the parent, let them tell their story and what they have to invest in. And sometimes it could be as big as flying investors down to save plantation or whatever’s needed to ensure the investors have all that they need to make the decision. I mean, we handle it all to ensure that the clients have the best advantage to obtain the funding and investments that they need.

Cliff Locks: (13:44)
So you really have a turnkey solution for those that are smart and will work with you and your team to be able to have a good outcome at that point.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (13:53)
Yeah. We had a client one time in Hong Kong where we did that. We had a group of probably about 15 investors that we flew all the way to Hong Kong to visit their whole entire venue, just to make sure that that was something that we weren’t lying. It was in Hong Kong, but they wanted to see it themselves and really make a decision. Then they wound up getting a lot of investors that way.

Cliff Locks: (14:11)
Very, very positive. One of your recent journal posts is titled how to ensure your investor relations data is safe. Can you share with us the biggest concerns that people should be aware of?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (14:21)
Yeah, because of the financial nature of information, it’s crucial to be aware of and to be prepared for any breaches insecurity this information. Protect on the data from cybercriminals is major and more challenging these days. As technology advances so does sophistication of these hackers. I mean, I’ve seen it firsthand myself and it’s truly sickening. Today long-term investors want deals and presentations that show just how companies are collecting and analyzing the data to inform them of strategies and modernization business models. They also want examples of new products and services as well as information and benchmarks that help them to check and measure performance and benchmarks that help them track and measure performances and progress. Yet they also want to know that management teams and corporate boards are continuously evaluating cyber threats and making necessary investments in security programs, as well as updating plans to address the near [inaudible 00:15:13] of the breach. Technology and caution are never-ending process to ensure companies are secure.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (15:18)
These concerns keep us IR and PR people on our toes. We’re constantly keeping aware of who the experts are and what systems they have and what resources are useful to us and our clients. If there is a breach, we need to know the steps that are needed to respond immediately. We need to know what shareholders need to be informed in what sequence. We have to ensure that our clients have communication plans already drafted for potential scenarios. Data breaches can obviously lead to PR troubles long and strenuous distractions, legal issues and customer attrition. Investors want to be confident that cybersecurity is a top priority and rightfully so IR teams need to be on the front lines of these communications, ensuring that they’re comprehensive, informed and updated. Basically you want to have a plan in place before the problem happens.

Cliff Locks: (16:03)
Well, I think that’s brilliant. There’s no question to it. Being reactive to a cyber breach is going to be very, very challenging. Actually, we’re recording this in June of 2021, and we’ve seen a couple of breaches in the couple of folks, pipelines, meat packing facilities and it’s a very, very challenging and a new at this point. It’s not going away. The White House is involved at this point on cyber security. It’s front of mind. They’re wondering if there’s some rogue actors at this point, some countries at this point, but they may just be folks living in those countries creating havoc. In recent times, retail investors have become a significant force that must be considered while strategizing in an investor relations and public relations policy. What are some of the factors that we need to consider in that space? And how is in the environmental, social and corporate governance refer to CSG impacting the investment community and business?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (17:05)
Absolutely. We’ve always been a big advocate for the retail investors. I mean, we speak to them daily and understand the concerns. In the past many firms focus on the institutional investors because of their large investments, but retail shareholders or customer really your long-term holders and deserve equal appreciation. So we pretty much go guide our clients to cater to both of them. Today’s investment landscape is more complex. There’s a shift to passive investing, greater emphasis on ESG issues and a greater commitment to all shareholders, not just investors intensified by recent statement and the business round table, which read, while each of our individual companies serve its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to our stakeholders and this was signed by 181 CEOs.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (17:49)
We commit to deliver value to all of them for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country. That was obligation to come champion obligations to customers, employees, suppliers and communities. But also in the middle of a major transfer of investor impact from referring baby boomers to emerging millennials, the millennials are now coming of age, growing in their careers and increasing investing. In the US federal data shows that the median household income from millennials tops 85,000 more than any other generation in the last 50 years.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (18:19)
So pretty much, we cater to investors on all avenues. The institutional, the retail and everybody in the investment community. Now they require much more marketing materials. They’re demanding disclosure that provides a more in-depth view on Outlook’s complete measurable performance target expectations. Investors expect to see this in presentations and invested decks along with ESG goals and accomplishments, including details about how this work positively affects customers, employees and society, how this work positively affects customers, employees and society broadly. Investors expect a very detailed discussion about longterm opportunities as well as risks.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (19:00)
They want to know things such as how can a company capitalize on broader economic and common trends to create and execute a feasible long-term plan. And at the same time, they want to know things such as what are the most notable threats and where’s the company is most vulnerable. What steps has management taken to reduce the risk of this? And what’s a clear view of profitability and shareholder returns and also with the focus on customers for all stakeholders. So they have a lot of questions, but rightfully so and they deserve to have answers. So we are the middleman between the investment community and the clients. So we’re constantly trying to make sure that all the questions are answered before it becomes an issue.

Cliff Locks: (19:38)
It’s definitely going to come up in those conversations with the shareholders, especially the major shareholders at this point. We have active shareholders at this point. Exxon just put three people on the board at this point that were nominated outside the company. At this point benchmarking Shell versus Exxon and Shell has been moving into clean tech where Exxon has been a little lax, let’s suggest. Yes, they’re doing some biofuels, but again, they’re not moving in the direction that probably on a global level legislation is going to change what the mix of fuels that we’re going to be able to be using at this point. So it’s going to change the business they’re concerned.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (20:18)
Yeah. Well, years ago we had a lot of activists coming after our clients and what happened is we actually had some big clients, some big shareholders at that point, when an activist knocks on the door, now the clients want to reach out to the shareholders. So one big very well-known shareholder had said, I’ve been trying to contact this portfolio manager for years. Now you want to talk to me? I don’t have anything to say to you. So we decided, okay, we actually did a webinar one time. I’m sorry. Yeah. A webinar on activist investors. And it was basically giving them the floor to say, okay, what puts a client on your radar? And let them, they have the floor. They spoke, that webinar was usually attended because it gave people an opportunity to say, okay, this is what puts me on the radar.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (21:01)
This is what I have to do to not be on the radio. So we did that and then we started an outreach. Every quarter, we’d have our clients reach out to shareholders. Sometimes they wanted a one-on-one call. Sometimes they didn’t need it, but they appreciated being asked because they feel okay. We invest a lot of money. At least they value me enough and you’re not giving information that’s not already public.

Cliff Locks: (21:20)
Very good.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (21:21)
You’re just giving them an update on here’s what we’re doing with the company, here’s what we expect here, whatever. But they do appreciate being asked. And that goes a long way.

Cliff Locks: (21:32)
It’s a breath of fresh air. Yes. People who are listening at this point and companies, they have stakeholders. Yes, the shareholders are important, but we’ve got our employees. We’ve got communities, we have our facilities. And at this point we have legislative government agencies that we work with. Those are all stakeholders at this point. So yes, it is more sophisticated and complicated, but people like yourself can come in and actually help them create a plan that they can execute and feel confident that they’re in a position where it’s well thought through. It’s concise, there’s fluidity to it. And it builds confidence. The C-level executives or CEOs, they have a lot of responsibilities at this point.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (22:18)
Yeah. They want to have the trust. I remember we had one portfolio manager who was always talking to investors and he was as honest as could be. He said, I remember one time he invested in something. It didn’t work out the way they wanted. He reshuffled the portfolio. They wound up doing really well. And he just told them point blank, I took a chance. I thought this would work. It didn’t work, but I moved it and look, we’re in a better position now, blah, blah, blah. But we had another portfolio manager once upon a time who was heavily invested in the financials when the financials are tanking. And I don’t know if this manager just put it, set it and forget it and didn’t do anything. Now we’re an outsider. So we can’t tell them what to do, but we can only offer our opinion.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (22:58)
So we started showing them what their competitors were doing. They were reshuffling the portfolio. And as an outsider, we were told, it’s not our job to tell the portfolio manager how to run their job. So we couldn’t do anything. We just kept showing them, okay, this is the stock prices of your competitors. And yours is going down, down, down. And we have the 800 number for the investors would call on my desk is ringing off the hook where people were saying, okay, is the portfolio manager paying attention? What’s going on? And they just didn’t acknowledge it at all. And that company winds up being taken over. They’re not in existence anymore. Not to say that we could have prevented that, but give us an opportunity to express our guidance. We can only offer our opinion and show you what everybody else is doing and you can explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. And maybe people would accept that. But to just ignore everybody is not the way to go. You have to have that trust.

Cliff Locks: (23:52)
So you have a nice relationship with the clients if you think about it. You’re an early warning, your predictive analytics benchmarking against the industry at this point in time. And you really got an eye on an ecosystem at essence, in the area that these clients we’re operating in at this point. So that’s important. You’ve got a team player, let’s say helping them look out for them, but also looking down 3, 5, 10 years out also. What is the landscape going to look like? And the brilliant clients listen.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (24:24)
Right. Exactly.

Cliff Locks: (24:25)
And at that point, they get a lot of value for what you bring forth. So what do you include in the way of advice and education to in credited investors and the general public, when it comes to investing in a particular sector and what do you tell them to do before they invest?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (24:41)
Well with people and investing, you can make money in all types of markets. When the markets are up, when the markets are down, you can definitely make money. But the whole thing actually boils down to having keeping everybody informed. Like I said, a portfolio manager who you only hear once a month having their monthly fact sheet. And sometimes they’ll give a manager’s commentary, which is just boiler plate bullet points. That’s not enough. I mean, you should do minimum a semi-annual webinar. It would be nice if you did a quarterly one. A two paragraph blog or your blog and then have a blog. So people can see you. A lot of times we have clients international and yeah, traveling here, isn’t always feasible. But letting people see your face that goes a long way, they can trust you that way. Because reading something for all they knew your secretary wrote that they want to see you and know what you’re doing on 10 minutes. Once a month or once a quarter, isn’t a lot to ask of somebody.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (25:37)
From the investor side, I always say, invest with a portfolio manager that you can trust. It obviously varies on whether I’m speaking to an institutional investor or retail. If it’s a new investment, they have to do a little research about the company. Is their website providing enough of the details? If it’s not, if either the company or the IR team is probably not paying much attention and as such, this is a major red flag for investors and investors are able to seek information on the investments on the company’s website, it hasn’t been updated or it just doesn’t provide adequate information or it’s incomplete or hard to find. Then it’s a short sign that providing you with the information you need is not their top priority, because if it was, it’d be readily accessible to them on the website. This is why me and my firm routinely do website audits for our clients to ensure the information is readily available and easy to find for our clients, customers or shareholders.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (26:27)
We even do perception studies with the shareholders to find out what type of information they look for on the site, how easy it was to find on the site, what problems they were having so we can ensure the clients meet the needs. Also, how does the historical data charts look? Does it appear that the PM is on top of the investments and the stock prices moving in sync? We don’t expect the investors to do all the work, but these are things that they have to kind of look at to see in terms of an investment. The institutional investors, obviously they have a lot more programs in place to analyze, but again, they want to know it’s a portfolio manager that they trust is the company that is well-known. If the company is it has issues, that’s where their marketing teams should come into play, because you can always tell a story, explain. A lot of times bad things happen, but explain why and what you’re doing to help the situation, but just ignoring things, doesn’t make it go away. So that’s my advice for shareholders.

Cliff Locks: (27:23)
So visibility admit EA may have a challenge and the corrective actions. It will all be visible to our shareholders at this point in time, he has a breadth, allows people to really have the confidence which maintains trust and that’s the key. Thank you. Do you have any advice for people that are running startups that want to become entrepreneurs regarding raising funding? How do you build trust? De-risking ensuring investors feel that your plan is sound transparent and sharing you have the conviction to see the project through.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (27:56)
Yeah, I mean, for us, we say it’s all about relationships, connections, trust and et cetera. That’s trust is on both sides. For starters, I’d suggest that they protect their businesses idea with a patent or copyright or something or someone that they can see their pitch on a crowdfunding site or a VC and steal that concept. Unfortunately, this is a cruel world that we live in and you want to cover your base. That being said, there’s various ways to starting out. They can consider launching a crowdfunding campaign. Crowdfunding helps businesses raise capital and grow their business when they otherwise might not have access to that money. They can also seek an angel investor when trying to find an angel investor, best place to start as in their industry. They should look for compensation related to their field and visit online angel networks like AngelList.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (28:41)
They can also find other like-minded entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants, venture capitalists, or investment bankers that might want to invest. LinkedIn, for example, has tons of groups that they might want to join and pitch their idea. Now, there are other venues such as clubhouse. So lunch club, et cetera, these options are endless in terms of networking ideas. They can also consider getting an investment from a venture capitalist. They could create a target list of VCs that are good fit for the company then look for BCs that invest in companies like theirs, then show that the firm invests in the stage of funding that they seek. They should also check out the firm’s past deals and see how they’ve done. So depending on who they are, what their business is, their level of comfort, there’s always raising capital by asking friends and family as well as applying for a loan. So it really depends what their comfort level is, what their experience is, what their connections are. But yeah, there’s lots of different opportunities for them.

Cliff Locks: (29:32)
Well you shared a lot right there. It was very, very positive. So we’re finding the friends and family usually is the stark at that point in time. The ability at that point to drive revenue will allow some of the private equity. Now I’m an angel investor in 27 companies at this point. So you get an idea of a portfolio. What we’re starting to think about companies with a million dollars worth of ARR, annual reoccurring revenue to try to… Can’t be everything to everybody at this point. And we have a lot of respect for the private equity, limited partners family offices and VCs.

Cliff Locks: (30:05)
They have certain areas they want to operate in. It’s a privilege that they have that domain knowledge in that vertical and they want to stay comfortably in that. And Patricia, you shared something that was very, very important that you need to do the research or hire somebody like yourself to look at helping you define those investors that actually are in your space to go out and start that conversation. And then the collateral material that needs to go with it, to provide the confidence that you’re going to be successful with the venture. What do you consider to be the greatest challenge in the post COVID era for the investment community?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (30:41)
My think UBS’s CEO said it best. He said 2020 featured unprecedented shutdowns of economic activity, a fusion of monetary and fiscal policymaking and a vote for new leadership in the US. 2021 will see us start to shift back to pre pandemic norms while simultaneously accelerating forward into the post pandemic feature. Now, from where we stand in the post COVID 19 landscape, we can see that the new consumer trends will emerge. These will include a shift toward online shopping and working. A new focus of sustainability will be key investment trends in the future. All Stolt alternative data will become an important tool for analyzing future investment trends. And there’s probably no going back even when most businesses reopen. New systems, new habits, new patterns have emerged changing our day-to-day lives forever. And this is likely to keep the information technology sector blooming. We also believe that ESG investing will be a big in the post COVID-19 era. COVID-19 has been a wake up call for a lot of businesses, which has shown us how markets and supply chains are easily disrupted and fragile.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (31:44)
Maybe it’s in an increased focus on sustainability. Investors will start to focus on ESG performance and climate risks that have to go to decisions about future investment trends. Some examples of growth and adoption of ESG can be found everywhere. For example, IFC has become the first issue to formally integrate ESG consideration for its underwriter selection process. So COVID-19 is magnified on fairness and made evident the importance of companies to expand the strategy and risk management process to now include key stakeholders that go beyond shareholders. Businesses policymakers are by now committed to building back better and aiming a green recovery. One possible good outcome that comes out of COVID-19 nightmare will be a shift to a more resilient, inclusive, circular and sustainable economy.

Cliff Locks: (32:30)
Well, that was well said.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (32:32)
Thank you.

Cliff Locks: (32:32)
Very comprehensive. I appreciate that. What are the greatest rewards for you personally, in what you do and what you consider to be your legacy?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (32:41)
For me, Business Wise was basically the start of my business and how clients appreciated me and valued me enough to follow me through three firms and with me on my own firm. So that’s a great reward. Personally I have two wonderful grown children and three beautiful grandchildren. I would want my legacy to be about impacting people’s lives for the better. This is to anyone I’ve encountered both friends and business people. I want them to remember me as someone who’s helped them, given them company or a shoulder to lean on. I’m a good and empathetic listener when a rant or a vent was needed to be expressed. And an insightful person, one who gives a different perspective and now able to see things in a broader view. I’ve gone through so much in my life and I’ve always made time for people and I hope they remember me put my warm heart and smile as I never substitute that despite my own heartache and drama.

Cliff Locks: (33:28)
Patricia, can I share your contact information with our listeners?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider: (33:31)
Absolutely.

Cliff Locks: (33:33)
Thank you for that. Patricia’s email is Pbaronowski@pristineadvisers.com and I’ll spell it for you. It’s P-B-A-R-O-N-O-W-S-K-I@pristine, which is P-R-I-S-T-I-N-E advisers, A-D-V-I-S-E-R-S.com. The website is www.pristineadvisers.com. I want to thank you to our listeners. I look forward to being back with you shortly for another episode of The Private Equity Profits Podcast. The show has been produced by Market Domination, LLC.

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Why Investor Relations Matters

Why Investor Relations Matters…..

Listen to the podcast here

Louis Fernandez:
All right. So, talk to us about starting your own business, and that initial leap from… Because it’s a mental shift just as much as it is a financial and everything else shift, too, going from I’m going to be an employee and look for a job to I’m going to make a job.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. Well, the one company I mentioned that I stayed at for almost 16 years and I wanted to go on to the other company. So, it was a good thing that they forced me to work remotely because I was doing that anyway. Now I got the sense of, okay, you don’t even know what it is I do, the only difference is the companies that our clients pay you, but you don’t even know what it is I do. So that was fine. But after six years of working for them, they were going to be selling their company to somebody else.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So now that company would have been in New Jersey, which meant that I would have had to commute every single day, would have been another hour and a half every day for a company that I don’t even have anything to do with. So it got to a point where I was like, you know what, I need to make a decision. Do I this commute and blah, blah, blah for a company that I have nothing to do with or do I look for another job, which I’ll probably have to commute again or do I just start my own company, because I’ve been doing this for how many years all by myself.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So I reached out to every client and I said, “If I branch out on my own, would you guys follow me?” Now the tricky part was the one company I was at when I moved to the one stayed 16 years and moved to this company, every company followed me. So that show that they valued what I did. When I mentioned that I would branch out on my own, they all agreed to follow me again. So I thought that was pretty cool.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
I even offered, I said, “Listen, you don’t even have to pay me the first month. Let me prove to you that nothing changes.” So all they paid me anyway and they were like, “We got it, Patti. It’s all good.” So I wound up just started my own company. And again, the only thing at that point that had changed was who the check got made out to, but nothing else changed. So, the tricky part to that was you learn a lot right off the bat that you wouldn’t have really had to deal with if you were an employee.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
You have all sorts of things, medical and government rules, and blah, blah, blah. And we had one company tried to sue me for unfair competition, which was a total BS lawsuit. They didn’t win but still cost me stress and cost me money for legal fees for something that really if this happened to another company and you’re just an employee, you’re not involved in any of that.

Louis Fernandez:
Right.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So I was like, “Okay. Well, this is bad.” And then we were representing several companies. And we had one company come in and take over three of the companies that we represented. So it’s like a three client loss right off the bat. We just started the company. And again, if you’re an employee and a company loses clients, it doesn’t affect your job right off the bat. But I’m like, oh my god, this is three client lost. We have bills to pa. I’m like, this is not good.

Louis Fernandez:
So what did you do?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Nothing we can do. I mean, the tricky part with that, too, is that when we’re involved with a company and we work very closely with the CEOs, CFOs, and whatnot, we know a lot of what’s going on and we probably would have seen that coming and could have made steps to prevent it. But a lot of times we get outsourced work from the internal IR, PR, or marketing teams because they don’t want to do the day to day work, which is fine.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
But that being said, in those cases we’re not really involved with the day-to-day communications that the company has. So we had no clue that this was even something that was ever going to happen. So right when we started the company, apparently this is something that was being planned for a while. But by the time it’s surfaced, we’re now two months of opening my own company and I’m like, okay, this is bad. So, I mean, nothing you can do. It’s just upward and onward and keep moving and try to recoup the loss.

Louis Fernandez:
Wow. Now, at this time, your family situation, because I seem to remember you did a lot of this on your own at the same time.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had two other people working with me at that time. One was just like me, she had 30 something years experience. She was very involved. The other person had about 15 years experience. But now, again, I have payroll to come up with, where before, the company is paying for it, not me. Now I have to pay for it. I’m like you just took money away that I was going to use to pay people. So it isn’t good. But these are all things that we learned right off the bat like, all right, we need to really focus on not letting this happen. It was bad because we never saw that coming because we were on the other side.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to make it sound bad, but you poached, your clients, they followed you. And I mean, it’s not necessarily poaching because they also just for anyone that’s an employee to build relationships with your clients, so that if you do want to peace out. That’s pretty cool they followed you twice.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. Well, the only thing with that just to separate, it’s not like I took them from the company. They were totally different company anyway.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
I did invest, they did proxy solicitation.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So even if I left basically, if they didn’t come with me, they would have to find another company. They couldn’t have stayed where they were at either way.

Louis Fernandez:
Right. Okay.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
There’s a lot of reasons.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah. So, you start off this way and then you get hit with this three client loss. So I know that there are people that have experienced this exact thing just now. And especially anybody in a B2B world, we have all lost clients in the last year and for differing reasons. Some got out of business. Some just couldn’t afford the service anymore. Some unfortunately passed away.

Louis Fernandez:
We’re all experiencing this. So, hitting the grindstone, again, talk us through, because, like you said, you still have payroll. And that’s like a new stress, too, of it’s not just me that’s going to suffer from this. I mean, there’s at least two other families in this particular case that are paying for it. So, talk to us about how you get back to let’s making up that revenue and going after new clients. What was that like?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Well, initially, it gets to a point we’re like, okay, X amount of dollars is coming in. I have to pay out X amount of dollars for A, B, C, D, E. I could either fire somebody or take a loss myself. So I wounded up taking a loss myself thinking, okay, not quite what I was looking to do right out the gate but I value the people I have and I’m like, okay, I think together we can really push through this. So, we started branching out thinking to try to get new business. And one thing with me is I can market the heck out of any client but I never had time to market myself, which is always an issue.

Louis Fernandez:
I hear that from marketing agencies all the time.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
That is the number one most common. If you were a marketing agency for marketing agencies, you’d probably be okay.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
For sure. Well, the one thing with this was that I always say we always were good about if that if we found that there was a need for something, we fill that void. So we were doing that right out the gate. And especially since I bought on that other person who was coming, the other girl followed me from the other company as well. So this person I bought from the outside but who had run in the same space as me.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So, it was like an outsider giving her take on things. So it was actually good. But right off the bat, we were focusing on the financial company. So, financial companies being closed on funds, ETFs, BDCs, MLPs, and REITs. So, she worked at a company at one point who hosted an annual conference, and we found that there really was a need for that sort of thing. So we started developing an annual conference for financial companies.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Because when we had financial clients that wanted to present themselves to the investment community, there really wasn’t any other venue. So we went to other conferences but there were such a mix of presenters that you have financial, tobacco. At the end of the day, you might have 200 people attend your booth. But when we did follow up, we found that they were only interested in a giveaway on the table.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So we’re like, okay, so there’s a need for this. So we were very strict on putting together financial conference. We would only have investors, analysts, brokers, media come. It’s a networking sit-down lunch, a cocktail reception, and we became very well known in the industry for hosting this event. People were coming from around the world for it. So that put us on the map, which is really good. We didn’t make any money on the event, which was fine. We weren’t looking to.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
If the event say cost 50,000 for the networking lunch, cocktail reception, the whole venue, recordings for the interviews and whatnot, and we had 10 presenters, each presenter paid 5,000 and that covered the cost of the venue. So like I said, we did that for a long time. That was putting us on the map. So we started getting people saying, okay, these guys really know what they’re doing. They have valuable people attend these events. Then we’re hosting webinars, basically, educating the investment community on industry topics.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So say, for example, in the financial world, we had clients. There’s something called Reg FD regulation, federal disclosure, which had come up years ago, decades ago about social media. And SEC basically said for insider trading sort of thing, every information has to be told at the exact same time to the whole world. So we put together webinars, basically, educating people. We had activists on the webinars saying, okay, what puts you on my radar so that you knew what not to do?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So these were becoming very well received and people were saying, okay, these guys really know what they’re doing. We were putting together a quarterly newsletter about an interesting topic. So, for the financial space, just doing these little activities which were coming out of our pocket, really, for most of that, it was really just putting us as experts in that field. So even though we didn’t have time to fully market ourselves, it was becoming more or less word of mouth who these guys are.

Louis Fernandez:
So, I’m going to dissect your strategy here a little bit from somebody who looks at things on a strategic point of view. So the first thing I noticed it did was establishing a deep customer understanding. So you took a moment to understand what are the problems that our customers are actually facing? And then providing a new product offering for that solution, which is really interesting because it’s important to know that you were solving for a need, not necessarily what the clients were asking for.

Louis Fernandez:
Because I don’t know that if you went to ask any of your clients what they needed, they probably wouldn’t have said that. Like the Henry Ford who said if I asked my clients what they wanted, they would have said give me a faster horse, instead of providing a real solution. So then you provided that solution. And what’s also interesting is that you essentially made an investment on the business. When you were down, you took another risk. So that’s like an all in gutsy move right there because, $50,000 conference, when you’re already down on revenue, I mean, you literally pushed it out there.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. I always said, that was one thing about me, I said, quitting is never an option. And always said I’m a perfectionist. So it’s always what could you do to do this better? But it was like even with the activist investors, it’s like I can give the best advice but I can’t force somebody to listen to me. So say, for example, when I was dealing with this, some of the financial companies.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
I’ll give you one example. Not even with the activists. One example. When we had mutual funds, we were representing them. And they were heavily invested in the financials. So the financials, this is years ago, started to tank. And this portfolio manager wasn’t reshuffling the portfolio. So I’m like, okay, well, this is odd. So now I’m showing my competitors and whatnot and saying, okay, this is what your competitors doing and the 800 numbers for these companies were ringing on my desk.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So now I’m getting my phone is blowing up and I’m trying to tell the management, the investment management company like, oh, just so you know, shareholders are really concerned, they need a little update, and blah, blah, blah. And here’s what your competition is doing. Look at their portfolio. And we basically got told it’s not your job to tell the portfolio manager how to run their fund.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Okay. You have to trust me that I have experience. And I’m not involved with your company. I’m the outside. I’m here to help you but I can tell you what the outside world is looking for. So needless to say, that company didn’t want to take my advice, they wound up being shut down. Again, another client lost. But again, we tried to help. So when it came time for the activist, basically, we have companies that… Say for example, one company was from my old company, they were approached by an activist investor.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
And basically what that is, if you have a company that’s doing A, B, C, D, and your investors are trying to reach out to you saying, “I don’t agree with this. What do you think about that? Why are you doing this,” and you don’t communicate with them, they’re going to basically join forces and try to take over your company. And they’re very successful at doing that in many cases. So when we try to guide a company, again, I can’t force you to listen to me, I can only give you my best advice.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So it got time where we were giving advice to so many people but not everybody would listen. So we basically had an activist investor webinar. And it was a little off because people were like, what, is she signing with the activists? See it as you want but that’s not what we’re doing. We basically gave them a floor and said, okay, tell us what it is that put somebody on your radar. That webinar was so well received, because people were like, okay, we need to know what’s going on.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
I’m like, if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to them. And then we had another issue where were shareholders were trying to reach out to them and they just didn’t acknowledge it. Because sometimes companies, maybe management owns 52% of the portfolio. So they don’t care what you think because they own the majority, and it is what it is. And that’s all great.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
But again, don’t you want to have your shareholders keep them involved in what’s going on? I mean, if a stock is going down, well, that’s a good opportunity to buy more shares. If you look at the history of the stock market, it’s like a roller coaster, up and down, up and down. So just because it’s down, doesn’t mean panic and sell it, it means is a great buying opportunity.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So we had one company who they were running into an issue and one of the shareholders was joining an activist investor campaign. And the company was like, oh my god, we need to reach out to them and the person said, “I’ve been trying to reach out to you for four years and you’ve completely ignored me. Now you want to talk to me? No. Thank you.” So, this is all my 33 years experience. So when we came on board with Pristine, we’re like, okay, one, let’s have a quarterly webinar. And you reach out to all your investors and have them on board.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Just to give an update on what’s going on, what’s new with the company, what are you changing, anything, have Q&A and let them feel involved. And then every quarter, we would reach out to the institutional investors. These are people who own large plots to share. And I’d say probably 85 to 90% of the time, they don’t need a call but we give them an option to say, do you want to have a one-on-one conference call with the portfolio manager?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
They’re not going to talk about anything nonpublic but they’ll give you an update or answer any questions. And I’d say 85 to 90%, they don’t need a call but they appreciate being asked. So I’m like, these are things that, again, we feel that there’s a need for it, we fill the void, and people who do know us and respect our 33 years will follow suit. And those that don’t, sorry.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah. There’s a lot there, especially with this quarterly call and doing that I’m going to call it a client check-in. When we’re establishing a relationship with somebody that’s going to be a long-term client relationship, not just a B2C buy a product, never see you again, but some service based we’re going to be engaging regularly, I think it’s important to have a conversation about what their expectations are, in the beginning. If this was a great relationship, what would it look like for you? What are your top things? And then checking in with them.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. Well, we found two with the shareholders. You have retail shareholders which is you and me. And then you have your institutional shareholders. And 99% of the time, everything was geared towards the institutional shareholders. Well, we kept saying, okay, well, does your mom and pop have the same news or the same access to information or even the same questions that your institutional shareholders, probably not. But 9 out of 10 times you don’t know who your retail shareholders are. So we came up with an idea to purchase a NOBO list, which is called a non-objecting beneficial ownership list. This is a very tricky thing. It’s not something you can just go by, you don’t have emails. It’s just mailing address.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So we came up with a solution to get access to the NOBO list, and basically give them an option to opt in. Because what happens is as the shareholders are calling my phone, I would hear information about, “Oh, I didn’t even know that the funds issued a dividend until I opened up my bank account and saw that. That was so cool.” And I’m like, “You didn’t know?” The law is that these are people who the brokers own shares, represent these companies, these people. So they’re supposed to, by law, keep them informed of any news and anything that’s going on with the companies. Are they? Obviously not.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
They’re supposed to but they’re not. So we give people an opt-in to say, “Would you like to get information available as it becomes available?” So we have hundreds and thousands of people opting in for this. So now, you have exposure to your institutional and your retail investors. So the one time we did a webinar, we’re like, okay, let’s have both on. And you could just see the difference between night and day of what they knew, what they didn’t know, what their questions were.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So then we would do perception studies and say, okay, give questions that will help you to know are you doing everything right? Should you do something different? Are you giving the information that both sides want? Any type of questions like that. And it was like night and day between the retail and institutional, but these are things that this company would never have known otherwise. So we always try to think of what else can we do to help you be the best that you can be.

Louis Fernandez:
Well, that same mentality and approach applies everywhere. The thing is if you’re calling all the time and you’re soliciting feedback, one is most of the time you’re going to get positive feedback. And what you’re doing is your clients are basically giving you praises. So that’s also we hear what we thin, we say out loud. So you’re getting your clients to admit you’re doing a great job.

Louis Fernandez:
And so, every three months, they’re telling you you’re doing a great job, they’re hearing that too. Or they say I have this problem, and now you have an opportunity to fix a problem and maintain a relationship. Because what happens? We’re all customers. What happens when something ticks you off? You don’t immediately call, usually. It’s not until you’re done with the relationship.

Louis Fernandez:
And then at that point, you’re like, I’m done. I want my money back. This problem has been festering for months and the other person is first time you hear about it, like I don’t have a chance to change anything or fix anything or anything like that. So, those quarterly check-ins are absolutely critical. And then understanding that when you say let’s get all these other investors involved, a lot of companies are learning that lesson the hard way right now with, look at these, the Wall Street bets thing that’s going on. And now these little guys are banding together.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
That’s what happens. Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Power of numbers.

Louis Fernandez:
And they can do it via the internet. And this is important for those folks in the senior leadership and director in the C suite is that they grew up, they’ve been in a company for 20 years. So let me just tell you that your experience 20 years ago is not the same as it is today. The world is much different. The world of marketing, the world of engaging with these people, and those non-institutional investors’ ability to band together today is infinitely stronger than it ever was before.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. And while people might not have known who you were before, I mean, now with the internet, I mean, there’s like trading chat rooms and blah, blah, blah. I mean, they all connect somehow. And you could sit here and say, well, I have retail shareholders. But we could have five billion of them but they don’t know each other. Well, now we have the internet, and they can know each other really quick.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah. And I’ve got this app on my phone that I can trade with.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
Like I don’t need to call anybody to make those trades anymore. I could do it myself and have the same capabilities as these large trading companies. So the world is different and it’s changed. And this is just a matter of the last few years.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. That’s the same when you say we’re trading is that, nowadays, like Seeking Alpha, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, it’s an online portal where news and things like that, but they have trading rooms and stuff like that. And I can go into their post under any old name. I can call myself, I don’t know, IR Pro. You don’t know who I am, I mean, but I can set up this whole profile.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
And so if I want to sit here and promote Pristine, I could write these stories really high stories. So people are doing that for companies. So, it’s like your competitor, if you have a company that you’re trying to promote and somebody else is posting these crazy stories about them, whether they’re right or wrong, investors don’t know. And they’re like, “Oh my god, this reporter said this. I need to go buy more.” Yeah, but that’s also your competitor. So the whole Internet’s changed the whole landscape.

Louis Fernandez:
It absolutely has. And the other thing is that folks are much more educated and have more access to information about you and your company, and the younger generations are getting better at sniffing out the BS. And they take review. They can tell when a review is fake, when it’s real, or watching how companies respond to reviews.

Louis Fernandez:
If you’re only responding to the five-star reviews and you’re not responding to the one-star reviews, they know, okay, those five stars are probably… The sophistication, that’s the word I was looking for. The sophistication of the customer today, they’re much more sophisticated than they were 15, 20 years ago. And that is due to our ability to access information, in my opinion.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah, I mean, there’s nothing sacred anymore. I mean, you can’t hide anything. It’s just all out there in one way or another. And if you don’t know, I mean, like Google, if I just sit here and say I need to know, where do I uncover this? Google search it and you’re going to get 100 answers.

Louis Fernandez:
Right. Yeah, I have in my pocket a supercomputer capable of accessing all the knowledge mankind has ever acquired in our entire history. So, your bullshit is only going to get so far.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Exactly.

Louis Fernandez:
And that goes across the board. That goes across the board for absolutely everyone that you’re engaging with. And you can maybe get away with it a little bit. But eventually, everyone is going to find out and then it all comes crashing down. And I’ve seen a lot of this like with these Bitcoin guys that they’re doing these pump and dumps.

Louis Fernandez:
So they get everybody fired up, these influencers, and they get all these people and they pump up the price and then the influencers sell their shares. And the FTC hasn’t caught up to this yet. There’s no Bitcoin regulation. So it’s not yet but it’s also one of those like gray areas where they can still catch it.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
But the thing is people got wise to it now. So, congratulations, you made some money, now you’re going to jail and nobody else is ever going to do it again. The marketplace capabilities and intelligence is something that I think you cannot underestimate anymore.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. Well, it’s crazy because these scammers, they’re everywhere now. Like I said, they’re on LinkedIn, they’re on Facebook, they’re on everywhere. And so many people have fallen for these scams or know somebody who has that even now I’m getting these text messages from Venmo that basically I can win a chance… I literally just got one again today. I get them at least once a day.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Notice, Venmo customer, you’ve been selected to receive a free gift of $200 for three minutes survey with this link. And, of course, I’m like, it’s weird. But the minute you mentioned something it’s like, “Oh my god, don’t click on that. So and so clicked on that they fell for a scam.” So there’s so many people involved that the scams are left and right but I almost want to say they’re not as productive because so many people know now but they’re everywhere.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
I mean, the best is LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually had scammers on that that set up an entire profile and have connections on all part of this whole scam. So when you see the person, they have a profile picture and this and that, and they have all these connections and employees, and you’re thinking, okay, this must be legit, all part of a scam, I’m like, wow. Become high tech now.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah, right. And so, it’s up to us to protect ourselves. And the thing is, by doing that, like I get an email message and I’m looking at where did that originate from. What’s after the at sign, and looking at that information. Does that match with the subject line? And is it a link to download a file? I’m going to check the source of this link and then say, why don’t you just send me the file? Why did you send me the link?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
But we’ve kind of been forced into it to protect ourselves but it also helps people sniff out. We all do the same thing. You’re going to go buy a product in Amazon, what do you do? You look at the reviews and say, okay, what percentage is the one-star reviews? Well, let me look at the one-star reviews, because that’s where we all start.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
And we look at the one star and we’re looking for is it the same problem over and over? Are there a series of different issues? And if there are series of these like one-offs, this is what the buying process looks like for customers. You just can’t get away with being disingenuous. Your best bet is to get out there with the information. Stop trying to hide stuff. Just get out there tell people what it is. That’s how you’re going to build trust in those long-term relationships.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
Which is obviously what you did for your clients.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
No, but I agree with that, building a trust. I’ll never forget we were representing one fund and the portfolio manager he was so upfront and honest. He would have annual meeting. He would invite shareholders and whatnot where a lot of people, they invite them kind of but they don’t. So anyway, this guy had a lot of retail shareholders. And he was downright honest. He was like, yeah, I thought we can invest in this. I took a chance it didn’t work out. But I was on top of it. I switched the portfolio, we reinvested into this, and now the stock is up, blah, blah, blah. But people appreciate the fact that you were honest. I took a chance, it didn’t work. But I wasn’t asleep at the wheel. I saw it and I changed it and they’re okay with that because you’re honest. And that goes a long way.

Louis Fernandez:
Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
And so the first time somebody finds out that you’ve been dishonest, if you have a chance to repair that relationship, it’s going to be a long time.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Long time, yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
Before it happens again. And you’re just better off being honest. They’ll forgive a mistake. They’ll forgive many mistakes before they’ll forgive a lie.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah, rightfully so.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah, absolutely. So, I think that’s awesome that you guys have done that and pulled in folks. And I think as an application status for anyone else is just to understand that be open and honest about your product, about the business, about whatever it is, you’re going to get a lot further. You’re going to hear no more often but you’re going to hear it faster and you’re going to be able to move on to the next person quicker by doing that. And what is it, the salesman hopeful, the let me think about it. You’re not going to hear as many of those, you know what I mean? But the think about it is just a nice way of saying no, right?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:39:20].

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah, exactly. We’ve all been there, every one of us. And then you go and research for a while or you make a proposal and it never comes out to anything. But the point is that you can’t get away with hiding anything anymore. And the person that is the most open is the most honest, that’s up there and out front and that’s real. I know there’s a lot of LinkedIn influencers that tell the same story, because apparently everyone has interviewed and hired somebody that didn’t shake their hand or showed up late or whatever it is.

Louis Fernandez:
But that doesn’t build trust. So it’s like let’s be honest and open. And that trust building, maybe sometimes a slow ride but that’s the one that’s going to be the most solid foundation that you can build a 30-year business on, not a three-year little rocket ship or a firework like explodes. I want a house. I don’t want a fireworks show.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. I mean, the thing with us is that even though you have hiccups, I am who I am, I mean, I’m honest, it’s what we do. I can help you if you are receptive to getting the help. And if you’re not, well, then good luck. I mean, like I said, people acknowledge what I do and they obviously like the work that I do. Because I’ve had three companies within the past year or two put together a marketing plan. Let me see if we’re on the same page. So I go, I put together this whole in-depth marketing plan, website audit, competitor analysis, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they take it and said, “Okay, thank you. Bye.”

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
And I’m like, well, obviously, they know that I know what I’m doing. That’s why they wanted it. But the funny part was I’ve never heard you after that. Well, if you knew how to do what I told you to do and that thing, your name would be everywhere. So, all I could say at that point is good luck to you. I mean, obviously, you’d have to understand I have 33 years experience, I know what I’m doing. If you’re willing to, let me help you. And again, I’m on the outside. I’m here to help you. I’m not in your company trying to get brownie points. I’m here to help you because I’m in the middle of both sides of your audience.

Louis Fernandez:
Right.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So it’s frustrating because you get used a lot. But at the same token, it’s like I get somebody, now we get a lot of people who are looking to start their company. But I get told like, well, pay for performance. No, I mean, even say for media, the whole world has changed. Years ago you have reporters writing about a company. Now, probably 75% of those are contributors, which are probably your competitor who’s writing about them and not you anyway.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
As the 25% that’s left, 15% of them are paid reporters. So yeah, I can get you a Forbes or Fortune article tomorrow for $10,000. It doesn’t work that way. So out of all 100% reporters, you have 10% that are writing stories, now you have to sit down and say, okay, who are they? What are they writing about? They’re probably not going to do a feature story on you but I can probably get you quoted here and there as an expert in certain things to build that relationship, blah, blah, blah. It’s a lot of work, and they want to pay me for performance. I’m not right out of high school. You got to give me a little credit here. You need to pay me for my job or good luck. I mean, I don’t know what else to say.

Louis Fernandez:
Right. I have a friend or a contact who charges for proposals.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah.

Louis Fernandez:
So if somebody wants a proposal, he has a fee for it. That’s a technique, I guess, like you’re going to weed out the people that are serious. And I’ve heard of stories of this guy that I follow. And he says he’s got a client where they’ve got two different proposal types. One is I’ll put whatever you want so you can go to your current vendor and get a reduction in prices, like I’ll put whatever price you want for it. And he charges, I don’t know, 100 bucks for that one or 1,000 bucks.

Louis Fernandez:
I don’t remember what it is. And then there’s another one that it’s like or you can ask me for a real proposal about what I can actually do. And then there’s a different price for that one. Because I know I’m not going to do the work so you can go to your current provider and get a price reduction. So, you’re going to get $5,000 price reduction it will cost you 1,000 bucks for me to get it.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Even with our connections, through all the years, we have 800,000 people in our database, investors, institutional retail analysts, brokers, media, but we also have investors, angel investors, VCs, LPs, hedge funds, people who are investing in seed or growth companies just starting out or whatnot, so people always want access to that. And then we’ll get, well, if you introduce me to somebody and they help us raise our capital, then we’ll pay you. Well, I’m not a licensed broker so we can’t do to the extent that they want. But even if I did do that, I can pitch your story to anybody. But once they have that first conversation, I’m out of the picture anyway. Because who’s to say I was even involved in that?

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
So again, it’s like these are valuable contacts. We’ve had clients and potential clients that just want to buy our databases.

Louis Fernandez:
I was going to tell you, you could probably sell that.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
I know, but I’m like that’s my whole business. If I give you that, then who needs me? So that was one of the cool things, even with our newsletter when we were putting together a newsletter. We had clients but then we also had other people just to kind of give it both. We had everything industry specific news. But people who weren’t clients we’re like, “okay, do you have any news, any information that we can include in our newsletter?”

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
But then people got to the point where they’re like, well, they’re going to distribute it to their database, we don’t need to hire them. So we were doing a lot and then it got to the point where like, okay, it’s helping them more than it’s helping us. So then we’re like, all right, let’s just take a break from it for a little while.

Louis Fernandez:
Sure. So if somebody wanted to listen to you talk and they’re like, “Hey, we could probably use this,” who might that be and how are they going to get hold on you?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Well, they could always find out more about us on our website, which is www.pristineadvisers.com, and that’s advisers…ers. My email is pbaronowski@pristineadvisers.com. On there, we have all about us on our website. We also have our blogs, our videos, our webinars and all that good stuff. And who? Like I said, any company that’s listed on the stock exchange is somebody who’s receptive for investor relations. The tricky part is getting them to understand why they need this. Because like I say, investor relations is something that many people don’t realize they need. And by the time they do, it’s already too late.

Louis Fernandez:
Right.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Public relations is anybody who’s looking to be marketed to the public. I know some people just feel like we put out something once a month. It’s a matter of really who’s the client? Who’s your competitors? Where are they? Do they even know about you? Where is your competitor? We do a whole analysis. Where’s your competitor? Where are they posting stuff? Who’s following them? Where are they even finding out about this company? Are you involved in that?

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
There’s a whole lot of work involved in marketing a company and we put together this whole plan. But, again, most companies, if they have an internal person, a lot of times they’re dealing with the annual things and there’s a lot of day to day functionality. So we’ll get outsource stuff for that, which is totally fine. We’re happy to do whatever. But yeah, that’s kind of who we work towards and what they need this for.

Louis Fernandez:
Awesome. So if you have somebody internally, you probably don’t have somebody internal with 30 years experience in this particular category and a list like you guys do. And while they’re back and forth from the legal office, making sure they’re hitting all those legal requirements, you guys can be helping them out with the day to day at improving those overall relationships.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. I mean, believe it or not, companies starting out, we help them with their IPO. We help them with their bell ringing, once they go to market. I mean, we do everything from soup to nuts. So it really is just a matter of getting a company to understand who we are and what we do. The tricky part was we started Pristine Advisers. And I remember meeting somebody at a meeting one time who actually wound up being a client but they were like, “Oh my god, you’re Patricia. Everybody told me I needed to talk to Patricia. I didn’t know who you were.” Technically, if you Googled me, you would have found me, but whatever. So then we changed the name to Patricia Baronowski to Pristine Advisers but it’s a lot of mouthful.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Yeah. It’s not like, here’s who I am. You know what I mean? A lot of it is through word of mouth, just trying to get people to see who you are and what you do. And the biggest trick is if they don’t know, getting them to understand why they need this.

Louis Fernandez:
Love that.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Because even if they say we’re doing great, we do all this already, if your competitor is doing A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, and you’re doing A B, C, look at how much you’re losing. You might think that you’re doing enough, but you could be doing more and think of the revenue in the end. Whether you’re selling a shirt or having a company, your whole revenue stream could double, triple, quadruple if you did it the right way, or if you did anything at all.

Louis Fernandez:
Yeah.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
But again, what do I know?

Louis Fernandez:
So, we’re going to drop your contact information there at the bottom so folks can get in touch with you. This is really outstanding. You gave us a whole bunch of good stuff. And then those are also really great general habits for anyone in any service-based industry, which I think is absolutely critical.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
We have case studies for every type of company, every type of thing. And it’s not just me talking out my butt. I definitely have proof of case studies that we’ve done this before.

Louis Fernandez:
That’s awesome. Well, thank you for coming. And I look forward to getting all the feedback that we get from these great tidbits of advice.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Me too. This is marketing for me. I love it.

Louis Fernandez:
All right, there we go. Awesome.

Patricia Baronowski-Schneider:
Thank you.

Listen to the podcast here

Need capital for your business?

We believe that people have to build trust before they ask for money. Many investors in the early stage companies, they’re not only evaluating the business decision. They’re also assessing the personal characteristics as well.

At this end of the day, they want to know if they can trust you, and rightfully so. It’s not as simple as just going to anybody you don’t know.

I mean, I myself know lots of people, venture capitalists, hedge funds, whatnot. I can’t go to them with every single person that’s looking to raise money. It doesn’t work that way.

And then you have to know them. Who are they? What are they investing in? Who’s your competitor? You want to make sure you’re pitching to the right people. So, we just say it’s relationship fundraising, as opposed to transactional fundraising. It may be time consuming, but it’s the key to get the funding, and building a set of core advisors and investors who’ll back you for the long run.

I mean, there’s no doubt that relationship fundraising can be an intimidating process, but it’s a valuable way to get in meetings and to build authentic relationships with the people.

Listen on to the best way to work on raising capital for your business……

Wishing you health and success.