Business Talk: Travis discusses the importance of Human Resources for a small business.

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3:00With Sabi. With Sabi, the AI Storage Cloud. Proud Partner of the iHeart Podcast Network. Welcome to my show. I'm Richa MacDonald, the host of Money Making Conversations Masterclass. When we encourage people to stop reading other people's success stories and start planning your own. Now you don't want to miss an episode. So please take a moment right now to follow or subscribe to Money Making Conversations Masterclass. Follow me on iHeartRadio app, Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your podcast. New Money Making Conversations Masterclass episodes drop daily. I want to keep you on alert. Because my guests provide tips on how you can uplift your community. Improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be successful entrepreneur. Now let's get this podcast started. My guest, let's get to it. It's a season HR professional with over 25 years of corporate experience. It's company The Guardian is a private security corporation with three separate divisions. Armed and unarmed, uniform security officers,

4:00personal protection, and private investigations. He's serving Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina. Please welcome the Money Making Conversations. I'm a good friend of mine. Travis T. Wain. How you doing Travis? Good, how you doing brother? How are you? Because you always have a reshine. I do it for you, but I do it for you. Thank you. Thank you. But you know, you're New York born, not down in the South. How's that treating you there? The food exchange there, you know, Northern. Listen to the Southern House of Talladeen. Has been great. Atlanta has been treating me like I've been, I've lived my life. You know, I've had a lot of family down here, but moving down here is a different experience. And you guys have been awesome. And I'm kind of faithful and Georgia faithful. I've been treating you with open up. Well, tell me before we get started, let's talk about you a little bit in your company, the Guardian. That's a great name. Private Security Corporation.

5:00You have three separate divisions. Talk about, because your background is HR. Which means that you've been dealing for 25 years and the corporate experience. That whole way of how people should come to work, how people should be. Interview, prepare for interviews. And I was that translated and making your company, the Guardian, that much better because of your HR experience. So I think the, the, the uniqueness of being an HR, and I was ahead of an HR department at a community bank in New York, is the fact that you're dealing with all aspects and all departments and divisions of a corporation, right? You're dealing with the fight, actually dealing with the sales team. You're dealing with the operations. So, you know, I always tell managers and, and employees to learn the business of your industry. So, you know, once you learn the business of your industry, HR just fits right in there. It's translatable to every industry that there is, every industry needs an HR department that takes care of their people.

6:00How can a business run without your people? Your, your business is your people, right? So the HR facts, HR experience and, and that industry helped me to be able to, you know, first case for our people, you know, I learned the industry and their great mentor, Benjamin Manor, and then from that point, you know, took the experience that I learned from my, my finance industry that I worked in, in New York, you know, from the sales and operations, and took, you know, the things that I learned from some of those great people who have been great executive there, and translated it to the security industry. That's why that's great to hear. You know, when you talk about, you know, managing talent, which is basically what you're doing, your people who come in, different personalities, you have to get the work on a certain degree of leadership. You don't know, you know, the great thing about people feel out of the application, right? Travis, they say they want to work for you, but that doesn't mean that they really want to work for you.

7:01How do you find the right person for your company, to guard you? So what we do is, we try to, you know, we don't do the normal interview process, right? We don't say, they say, what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Okay. We get a person there, and we have a conversation with them, right? You get them comfortable. So you can see the genuine person. You don't see their representative. So you'll see, you know, how a person acts when they get comfortable. So you can see that through sales. You know, when you talk about how they get, when they get upset, or, you know, when they get aggravated, or they are a patient person, you know, these are the things that, that you have to be aware of in the security industry, you know, your guards have to be patient. They have to have that customer service attitude to them. They have to, you know, be able to get along with other people. So, you know, you get them comfortable. You get them talking, talking about themselves, seeing their family dynamics, and they have to be able to identify

8:02the person who they are, and then you go from there. Nothing is 100%. Right? It's not always, it doesn't always work. But, you know, if you do it that way, and you treat your people right, when you're in, after you hire them, you know, you can lower that turnover quickly. But I'm sure there are certain qualities you look for. Somebody is hyper, you know, talking too much, look like they're a little edgy. You said you're in the security business, which means that the number one thing that under my thought process and security is to be that person who buffers and stay, keep situation calm and makes people when something bad goes wrong, they're the leaders of direction. They're the show leadership immediately. So if someone comes in for interview for your company, the guardian, what are some of the no-nose that you should make sure they don't bring to the table to be interview for your company? Right.

9:02Well, one of my no-nose is their impatient. Impassion. You know, the impatient, you know, for person who's not patient, if they are sitting there and they can't wait, you know, good, maybe 20, 25 minutes for the interview process and you know, to sit there and meet security supervisor. Then this is not a person that we want. Right. They really don't want to work. Right. They have a whole stash of money somewhere that we don't know about and this is a little side game for them. You know, or that's going to relate to them being on the job. You know, not being patient, you know, maybe having a line and there's people on the line who are talking a little too much, you're not patient or a customer comes in and they're rushing them and they're not being patient with the customer. So you don't want that. So you want someone to be patient. And then you also don't want someone to be too hyperactive, too eagerly excited to react to. Right. You know, sometimes if you react to something too quickly, without having either all the

10:06information or kind of lean back and see how things transpired or so you think we ask them an appropriate way with having all the information, then that's someone we do not want. You just don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more money making conversations, masterclass. Not need for you to do me a favor. Right now, you'll follow or subscribe to money making conversation. It's free. And you can find it on the iHartRadio app, Spotify, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Please do me that favor. Follow or subscribe, money making conversations. Welcome back to money making conversation, masterclass hosted by me, Rashan McDonald. Let's get back into it. Because there's a lot of times you can overreact to a situation when you know it's well as I do. You overreact to something in the streets or some people that are in the street. They're going to react to you in time. They're going to overreact to you just the way you're overreacting to that. And it's always a level of disrespect, too, you know, because as a security person,

11:10they don't see you as a real authority. You know, you playing cop or something like that or a rental cop. And so they have to. I was a flashlight. I see you. Right. Right. And so that's something that has to be taken into consideration. But I want to follow up something you said earlier about HR because I made that mistake Travis. I undervalued HR. I didn't realize the. You can't do that. You can't do that, sir. I did it. I did. And so now I tell people and I tell myself, you know, if I'm going to start something, I have to have an account with legal on the accountant and HR. You got to have those three heads tied to your business if you want to start it successfully. Because if you don't have those things, you cannot be the person, mediating staff. You cannot be people. People person. Hiding everybody, filling out the application, filing the application, doing all the reviews. It is really a complicated job because a lot of people don't understand the nuances of HR. And it's a lot how you speak to people when you, when they're not doing their job or you

12:14motivating them, you giving them the tools to win with. Really, you know, I'm saying all the flag things and I just want to bring that back because I made that mistake. Travis, I was like, I'm just going to be an applicant. Sometimes I wouldn't even take an application. I just hire people. I get the application later. You hire it. Not fully doing the backhand background check. I did the mistakes. And so when people do it on a regular basis, tell them the ramifications of doing that. What you do not do at the Guardian. So, I'll take a moment to step further to the side. It's all those things you just described. Plus, it's also making sure managers know how to manage their staff. Right? You know, a lot of managers, they have to be promoted or hired in these positions and don't really know how to manage people. You have to manage personalities. You have to manage behaviors. You have to manage different cultures, different genders. You know, understand how to relate to it. You can't treat everyone's thing. So it goes a little further, which is not just hiring, firing, the posting for positions.

13:19It also goes to coaching your managers. In my position, I form a position. I would coach the fee-suite team, the senior staff on how to manage their employees, how to view with difficult employees, how to have difficult conversations. So it's a little bit more than that there. But HR needs to have a fee-to-pean. Any type of discussions that you're having when you're starting a business, small businesses, medium-sized business, large businesses. HR should be somewhere in the room understanding. Listen, if you're so deprived of your winning a business in your own, you have no employee. I get it. There's time for you to have some time. At that point, you might not need HR. But as soon as you start to hire an employee, you have to understand you have to have policy procedures and processes in place to make sure your operations are in well. So HR needs the advocacy that they're table.

14:21HR needs to be at the forefront of every conversation when you're starting a new project. And you're initiative taking on the decline and the vendor. HR needs to be there. Now, you're doing security in three different states. That means it's different. It's time for Georgia, it's time for Alabama and North Carolina. I'm them, should there's different rules for HR, different rules for taxes? Did it start out like that? Or did you expand to that? Travis. So it started out in the line of Georgia. And then we expanded to Birmingham, Alabama with some parts of Hoover and Bessimer, Alabama. And then our latest four year into Charlotte, North Carolina started a few, the beginning of this year. So, yeah, starting in the hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, moved to Alabama. And now we're in North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina. And I named three different departments. You had armed and armed armed uniform security officers.

15:25Then you had personal protection. And then you had private investigations. Now, you know, I'm a TV guy, Travis. I have private investigation. I have Magnum PI. I hear all these little detectives on TV. Educate me because I'm going to play dumb on this because it gets worse. You try to jump out there and try to guide people down the wrong path. What exactly is private investigations when it involves your company, the Guardian? So, our private investigation involved more small business and corporations. We offer service of coming into your business and helping out with any type of investigation you may have. For example, it might be an HR investigation. You might have your retail store, small business retail store, and you see some money missing. And then you have this employee saying, no, I didn't do it. This employee saying, no, I didn't do it. You know, we can come in, right? Have the conversation, duty interviews, duty investigation.

16:25You know, do all the background checks. You know, do this, do that, gather all the information. Look at all the documentation. If there's video, if there's tape, if there's audio, we come in, we do all that. And then we sit down with the executives and we present to them, you know, what we found, what the case is, what the case may be. So they can make an educated decision at that point instead of guessing and blaming people, you know, and assuming, right? You know, we helped them put together the fact, the information, the data, and each other's evidence, so they can make an educated decision or make an educated understanding of what's going on in the situation. Yeah, great. Before we go to bake, is there a number? If one is interested in seeking employment opportunities at the Guardian, what does that number? That number is 404, 7662, 611. Again, that's 404, 7662, 611.

17:28Good. When we come back, we're going to hear more of Travis Wade, Travis T Wade. Like I said, I joked about it in New York now. He didn't plan on doing this. Now, you know, you know, you know, plan on doing this, but he pivoted and now he's doing it and he's doing it fantastic, but he's New York more than he's in the South. Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more money making conversations, Masterclass. Chad GPT can do more than answer questions. It can help you get real work done. Chad GPT work is built for bigger projects with multiple steps. You bring the goal along with the information it needs, like notes, files, customer feedback, calendars, project plans, or data. Then Chad GPT can help turn that into a useful work. A marketing grief, a sales tracker, an investment update, a deck outline, an analysis, even a workflow your team can use. It can also work with approved apps and connected tools to help move the project forward.

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21:39Bada, bada, bada. If you run a business, you've probably heard plenty of AI promises. But here's one thing we know for sure. When consumers here and add for your business, 90% want to know it's a real person talking. And that's what you'll get when you advertise with I Heart. We are guaranteed human. That means real voices, real connection and trusted audio that helps businesses drive results. Learn how easy it is to tell your story through our voices today at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. Welcome back to Money Making Conversations Masterclass hosted by me, Rishan McDonnell. Money Making Conversations Masterclass continues online at moneymakingconversations.com and follow Money Making Conversations Masterclass on Facebook, X and Instagram. On the way, there was a pivot. Talk to us about that because you went from corporate world to entrepreneurship. And a lot of people will resist that. A lot of people don't want to make change. But it happened to you. Tell us your journey Travis.

22:41So without without getting too deep, I think, you know, for years I've been wanting to and admiring people who were able to open up a business and be successful and be their own boss. You know, even through my career as I progressed through my career from managers to director to vice president to first vice president to head as department, you know, I always had it deep inside that I wanted to own my own and create generational wealth for me and my family. And at a certain point, I thought I wasn't doing that. I was helping other people make money, you know, and even though, you know, the bank I worked for when community bank, Carler Federal Savings Bank in New York was originally a black owned bank and now it's a black managed, publicly traded bank.

23:42There's a lot for the community. There's a lot for the end of city in New York City. You know, I still felt something, right, something that I wanted to do at the care of the community major and I'm high school out of Carler's wanted to be my own boss, wanted to have my own company. And then, you know, I got a call about, you know, being able to take over a business and win a day-to-day security business. So, like security business that hasn't, you know, done that in a while. I mean, I haven't done it at all. Excuse me, but I need to know. You thought about it. You thought about, well, let's do your thing. I mean, the cars in the front, you know, high security, you know, to monitor the banks and the branch, right, where I met, you know, HR usually does that and she tells us that it is, okay. But as I started giving them to learning the business, which I always advise people to when they are taking out the job and moving out of the industry, learn the business of

24:43where you're going. You know, HR can translate, but I needed to learn the business. So as I started learning the business and what this company was doing, it was a no-brainer. And, you know, I don't want to get too surgery, but, you know, I prayed on it and God told me, this is something you need to do. You need to move to Atlanta and take over this business, grow it to written, use it to do, provide your corporate executive HR experience, combined with the roots that it has already been in Atlanta and Alabama area. And you just grow it, grow it and do what you need to do. Now, now, now, it seems like you came with some ideas. Now, when people hear ideas, that only they always happy about the ideas, okay. Absolutely not. So, how did you make those ideas? A comedy to the unhappy people? Yeah, so what I always do is when you bring in a new idea, right, it's all about

25:46giving you the kicks, right? So, when you present the idea, you present a lot of things that come with you, you present what it takes to do it. You have to present, you know, let them know you're willing to roll up your sleeves and be a participant, not just someone sitting in the office calling the shots. You have to let them know the outcome. What do you want out of these ideas? What do we want from changing this and doing? What do we see? What's the future goal? And then you get behind in their thoughts and, hey, you know, get their opinions on, maybe we can tweak this or tweak that. You know, I think just coming in and preaching, hey, we're going to change this, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. We're going to do this like a military general with something that would never work. Once you explain everything, you lay it out to them, explain everything, explain how we're going to do it, the outcomes, you know, what we're looking for in the future, what is going to do for us in the future, you provide some very concrete details and some outcomes

26:49that you're looking for and also ensure that you're willing to roll your sleeves up as well. Right. You get down and dirty with it. You know, I think, you know, people tend to initially have a little push that. Once they see you, you're passionate about coming in and doing what you say you're going to do, always say, do what you're going to say what you're going to do and do what you're going to and do what you said. Right. So, you know, it's really great because, you know, of these lessons I've learned, you know, you can be a know it all or you can be the smartest person in the room and people will allow you to be that and allow you to make the mistake and just become a person who just will take their check, cash their check and show up the next day. And I think that's the environment that you are avoiding and a lot of people come in going, I don't care what anybody say, I'm going to do it my way. Yeah, I hear you. You are the boss. You do run the company.

27:50But sometimes you have to kind of like, even though you know the answer and I know you've done this just stuff, Travis, you kind of throw it out there and hopefully they react to the direction you want to go or you guide them in that direction through conversation and then the pros and the cons. Correct? Yeah, and you keep them updated. Yeah. Most of them. You keep them involved, right? You don't just make decisions, right? You keep them involved in the decisions. You know, you give them all the information and you give them by and like they are part of it, right? So then when they, and then you keep them updated on the outcome, right? As they see that she's got this big contract. Let them see how you got it. Right. You know, you see that their hard work, you know, played major part in you getting it, right? Because they see people see the history, people see the however you guys are doing, people see, you know, the professionalism that you're putting out there as your guard, people see, you know, how, how presentable you are, you know, in your uniform, people see that,

28:53you know, you're accountable for what you're doing there out there. You know, that's a big part of us getting this next contract, getting this next, you know, opportunity. You know, once they see that they're a big part of that and when people feel a part of something, you know, they'll do more. You know, when people don't feel like, oh, that's not my idea. Right. They'll trash it if they're to decide when you feel that you're part of it, when you feel that ownership, that entrepreneurial spirit that should be in them all and being a small business and they feel that they're part of it and a part of the growth and part of, you know, the maturity of the business and where we're going in the future. They're willing to do anything for you in the company. Yeah, you know, it's really important and thank you again for coming on the show Travis because, you know, your company, God, three, three, three states. Now, it's bringing that out because of the fact that, you know, your competition out there is non-African-American, maybe bigger.

29:54How do you compete and how do you win these contracts? So right now, I'm not even looking at it as a competition. Okay. They have these larger companies, they call primes. These are the larger individual companies like an allied universal, right? Which is global. Right. We can't compete with allied. You know, so what we do there is enough opportunity there. Maybe we do a some contract and we partner with allied or we partner with another minority security company, you know, to get a larger federal contract or a larger non-federal or a state of governing contract or a public or private contract. And we work together, you know, during some networking things, I've met, you know, a few security industry professionals and either minority and non-minority and always offered the opportunity to work with them. I met a gentleman and cyber security.

30:56We got together and partner with a few things. So, you know, it's not about competition right now, you know, because we can't afford the company with anybody. We can afford the partner with you. We can afford to get together and do some, especially with minority partners and both the systems out here. I mean, in the street, we would love to get together and partner with them. And then, at a certain point, maybe we get together and we get there enough to, you know, compete with an ally and compete with, you know, secure jobs and some of these larger security friends that are out there. Awesome. The Guardian is a private security corporation. He's hiring, this company is hiring. He uses his 25 years of HR experience. Their mission is to maintain a strict and unwavering code of ethics with their employees, clients and community to provide the most qualified, dedicated, professional officers that represent both the client and the Guardian. What's that number to call? If one wants to consider employment opportunities at your company, Travis. That number is 404-766-2611.

31:59That's 404-766-2611. Travis, thanks for coming on my show. I really appreciate you taking the time, man, you know, because you know, you laid it up, man, because I think that, you know, I always like to admit my flaws because HR, I really disrespected it. I did not consider it. I just, people come through that door. They say the right things, and especially when it came to family, I just hired family because they were family, which is another conversation you know. We can talk about that. But again, thank you for coming on Monday Making Conversations and Masterclass Trans. We talk soon. I appreciate you. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to this episode. Now I need you to do me a favor. Right now, you'll follow or subscribe to Monday Making Conversations. It's free. And you can find it on the iHardRadio app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Please do me that favor. Follow or subscribe, Monday Making Conversations.

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