Adam Torres and Sally Handlon discuss building businesses.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify / Stitcher / RSS
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
Building a strong sustainable business is the goal of many entrepreneurs. In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Sally Handlon, Founder of Handlon Business Resources LLC. Explore what it takes to build a business and the new book Sally released, Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Business Leaders Edition Vol. 10).
Watch Full Interview:
About Sally Handlon
Sally’s passion is to share the knowledge and experience that she has gained over a variety of work experiences and industries, to help advance others’ efforts through short term projects. Work experiences include recreation therapist, community liaison, bank manager, commercial lender, call center manager, business trainer, business development and small business owner while industries cover retail, education, government, health, private and public sectors. The goal is always to transfer the knowledge gained and developed back to the client.
Sally created the position statement “Executive trained, entrepreneurial-experienced in the areas of business development, customer development, marketing, business plans and business presentations for loan considerations” which represents her abilities.
Sally is a proud graduate of Penn State University. She has been involved in her community working with youth, history and economic development. Sally is very focused on health – physical fitness, organic food gardening.
About Handlon Business Resources LLC
Handlon Business Resources (HBR) is a project partner to business owners and executives to help them meet their goals in business and customer development by utilizing its extensive business knowledge and network of resources. HBR also works with businesses to create financing presentations which are used for lenders, investors or alternative financing specialists.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today is a very special episode. We’re bringing Sally Handlin back on this show.
We’re celebrating our recent book launch. And of course, we’re also going to talk about Sally’s other books. So we’re going to, we got, we got a lot to cover today. Sally is the founder of Handlin. Business resources. First off. Hey, Sally, welcome back to the show. It’s great to be here. I’m glad to be here with you in the audience.
So we’ve been on this publishing journey now together for, I don’t know, going on a year or so. And so thrilled to announce and to get into your book. And often in the book that we launched together, of course, but before we do that, I know you’ve been on the show, you know, the drill we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with what we call our Mission Matters Minute.
So Sally, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Sally, what mission matters to you? Well, you know, Adam, I’ve been giving this a lot of thoughts since the first time we did this. And one of the things that seems to weave its way throughout my long career is something that a motivational speaker named Zig Ziglar said back in the 70s.
And that was if you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want. And whatever I’ve done in my career, I’ve sort of kept that out. There is making sure that I help other people get what they want. I. Consider myself to be a connector and an educator. So I’m trying to help them move along in their journey as well.
Yeah. I’m a big Zig fan. I watched it. I listened to him all the time on YouTube and for anybody that hasn’t known, let’s just say the next generation, look them up if you haven’t. Well, let’s let’s just dive right in. I want to, I know you’ve been on the show prior, but I don’t want to assume that all our new audience and maybe our, our new our new listeners have seen some of our, our previous work.
So let’s just start with your background. Like, like, how did you get started? How did I get started? Well my main business right now is handling business resources, as you mentioned, and that is a short term project oriented support for business owners and execs and what. I decided after years in the financial arena was that people needed help understanding what the financial folks wanted and the financial folks needed help understanding what the business owner was going through.
So I sort of combined that into handling business resources and made that a short term project support. So I’m in and out based on what the need is and it’s not a long term commitment. That’s great. And we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit more about that, but I want, I want to get into this writing, I want to get into this book and both books, by the way.
So let’s start with, I want to start with your book actually. So let’s let’s tee this one up. Cause I think it’s going to also going to going to build, it kind of bridges over into all the other content. So your journey to aging. Well, first off, what was the what was the inspiration for this?
Well, the inspiration for this was really my mother. She was getting older and not handling a lot of things well, and I didn’t understand what was going on. I had always had an interest in health and wellness. As a matter of fact, my career in that area has been about 50 years. So, I wanted to get more educated so I took a couple of courses and one was on herbs as medicine and then the other one was on integrative nutrition and what I found and what I questioned was Why didn’t I know some of this stuff that these teachers were telling us?
Why didn’t I know? I mean, I realize I went to health classes, you know in the last century, but You know things to have changed quite a bit but some of the things were basic and I felt if I didn’t understand that and if I didn’t know the consequences of my choices A lot of other people don’t either. So I really wrote that as a primer for most people to understand their choices in key areas that affect their health and wellness.
And so just to be clear, like you didn’t have a strong background on this. You went and you took classes, you started to learn, you really put yourself in the learner’s seat and that’s how you came up with the book. Is that, or. No, you’re correct. I mean, although I had started my career in health and phys ed and then went into recreation out of college, that became more of a avocation than a vocation as I was on this journey.
And so I used the ensuing years, maybe about 20 years and tested things on myself just because I was interested. How did, how did this work? How did that work? What was my endurance like? And then I started to get serious in 2000 and started taking my herbal classes and herbal workshops. And that culminated in three years of herbal studies.
And so I would understand what, what our plant environment provides us and, and how we can use that. And then There was a missing link there and I couldn’t figure that out, but my business had started and I really didn’t have time to spend on my avocation at that point. But about six years later, seven years later, I figured out nutrition was the piece that I was missing and not understanding.
So I took a course in nutrition from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and that sort of pulled everything together. And the book was my goal. to help others understand what was going on with our choices. Now, I always find it interesting to myself, like, there’s, there’s different types of authors, and maybe there’s some that have done both, by the way, but I find some authors, you know, they go and they, and they write on things maybe they didn’t know, and it becomes this odyssey or this thing to learn more so that, that they can then create the book.
And it’s not necessarily that you went on this journey to write this book, but you went on this journey to learn more, and then as you learn more, then it… some point that came up. Other authors, maybe sometimes they write what’s what’s in their wheelhouse like they were like my first book. When I was years ago, when I was a financial advisor, I wrote about managing money because I, you know, I had 14 years in that business at that time.
I’m no longer do that. But so I was writing what I knew. But I find it super interesting the opposite, like that’s one of my dreams is to find something that I’m passionate enough about just outside of my normal day to day where I want to go down that, that odyssey of like learning more to the point to where I could write a book.
What would you tell to some others that are out there that are, that maybe are on this path of learning new skills when it comes to that next step? step of if it makes sense for them to make it into a book because that’s not an easy task. That’s not an easy journey that you went through to go to to create this book.
No, it wasn’t. But but you know what? It was a wonderful journey. I’ve loved every minute of it. When I started to write the book, it was just like it just flowed. I would say to most people, if, if you have a passion and if you want to share that passion with others, the best way to do it is to try and get it out of your head onto paper or, you know, digitally, however it works for you, but start to share that because I did some research yesterday, Adam, and what happens at least in, in my arenas, my, my wheelhouse is here in health, wellness, and fitness.
If you do Google searches. Yeah, there are over 369 million sources of information between websites, blogs, books, just a few , just a few. And then I did the same thing. And I’ll talk about that for the, for, you know, the, the management part. Mm-Hmm. And how there’s so much out there. Where do you begin if you have somebody that you trust that has the knowledge, person that is really interested.
Mm-Hmm. share it because people can’t find out about it. There’s, they’re overwhelmed with everything else that’s out there. Yeah, it’s so true. Like to have a trusted source. And I think that’s why individuals that are, you know, I guess the term we use nowadays is is influencers. It used to just be called experts.
It was somebody that spent a lot of time was a trusted source and a trusted name in a field. So if you know you saw their name attached to something, then, and you saw their journey of what it took for them, whether it was, you know, education or years of study or practice or, you know, whatever it was, you were like, Oh, okay.
This is a trusted source. Right. So it’s, it’s, it’s a pretty it’s a pretty common thought process, but not easy to find and, and as you mentioned like trusted and reliable sources for your information, because it can get overwhelming when you’re just on the internet doing a random search. Yeah.
And, and the thing that I, I wanted to do with mine is I didn’t want to tell people what to do, but I wanted to give them sort of the background of understanding. Make your own choices. I’m not going to tell you that one size fits all here, but you know, and I think that’s important to don’t have the expectations that just because you’ve shared it, that people are automatically gonna follow it.
Oh, yeah. That’s great. Well, let’s kind of like, let’s flip back and forth on these because I do want to cover both books. So in our book that we, that we did together your, your topic and your chapter was called building a stronger and more sustainable bottom line. So just some of the things that that, that you wrote about.
So introduct drink, move, eat, sleep, people, planet, profit, and place. For everybody listening, just so you know, we’re going to go through some of these. But we’re not going to go through them all. Why? Because, well, number one, we want you to go buy that book. But also I do sell books. I am a publisher.
No not shy about that one, Sally. So let’s start with what was your, what was your inspiration for bringing this content to, to our audience? Well, as, as I said in just a few minutes ago, we get overwhelmed with information and what is out there. And I had been in management in a financial institution for a number of years, and I kept looking for sources and resources and, and where to go.
How do you follow the same sorts of things? search that I did yesterday on health and wellness on business growth and strategy and management. There’s over 26 billion sources available. And so like with my book, my my first book, what I wanted to do is boil things down. What are the key and critical areas that you could use in this changing environment and still sort of keep steady to your mission and your vision if you understand these four and communicate these four.
So and you can’t do any of that if you don’t have a healthy workforce. If you as a leader aren’t healthy, if your workforce isn’t healthy, things aren’t going to happen. So that’s sort of the marriage of the two concepts coming together. Basic components for you to maintain good health. So you make good decisions and your brain is working fine and and muscles are moving correctly.
If you do that, then there are four, what are pillars they used to call them, but four core values that I think are extremely important for for businesses. And then, as you sort of mentioned, people, planet, profit and place are the four areas that I think any business can use and build upon that and sort of navigate through what’s happening today.
Let’s go further into into handling resources and your, and your handling, excuse me, business resources and your current project. So as we kind of open up the interview, you mentioned that certain, you know, certain people are maybe missing things when it comes to financing, whether they’re, you know, trying to make that connection to, you know, get.
get funding for for different projects or longer term funding, like, and they’re just not speaking that right language. So I’ve, I’ve heard, you know, things like outsourced CFOs and things of this nature, but can, can you maybe just talk a little bit more about what you’re doing? Okay. What I just, what I learned in my years in banking and finance.
Which is covering about a 40 year period as well is that there was a misunderstanding for borrowers as a banker. When I would share what the criteria was and, and how the the borrower needed to provide information. It was like, I get this blank stare, you know, they really didn’t understand what was going on.
Then when I got on the. The financing side, I realized that a lot of the financers that my clients were going to didn’t understand the small business world, and that’s predominantly who I deal with is small business. So what I tried to do was bridge the two. I’ve got the banking finance. lending, commercial and consumer lending background.
I’ve got, you know, three or four small businesses under my belt. So I try to bring the two together so that the banker knows that they’re getting the good information and it’s really solid. The borrower, potential borrower understands why the bank is asking for guarantees, why the bank wants to have co signers, you know, so So that everything can run smoothly.
And so I’ve put together what I call a financial presentation. That’s almost like a business plan, but it’s really just geared towards getting financing. And so looking at and I know there’s there’s many, I don’t want to, I don’t want to Lump everybody under this. But when you when you start working with new company, new business, and again, you have a lot of experience in this, what are some of the things that are typically like, like wrong, like that stick out, it’s like time and time again, you’re like, Oh, we got to take that.
We got to take care of that. That that’s going to be a big deal. Well, I know there’s a line. I know it varies by business size industry, but just some of those glaring themes that, that happened time and time again, I think probably not really understanding their cashflow cycles and the fact that it does flow up and down.
Yeah. You know, that people have to be prepared for. I’ve received so many business plans where people look at their their projections for revenue and for the next three years it’s just going up and up and up and up. they’re not putting any kind of seasonality or understanding what their client base is like and, and how it moves within what their product cycle is.
Mm-Hmm. That’s probably the major one that I’ve seen over the years. So circling back to your, you, you as a learner within, within health and wellness and, and aging I know that we last talk and I kind of cut you off a little bit and I’m like, I think you’re taking some more courses or you just finished another one and you’re continuing your progression.
Like, like, tell me more about that one. I believe it’s on water. Yeah. Yes. This one is on water. What I learned through my way, Sally, real quick, I just have to say, I’m so excited when you continue to learn more and do more because then I get to learn more like you’re my trusted source. I’m like, all right, Hallie Sally’s a button off more to that.
I want to choose. So come on, go, go get that information for us. Please go. Well, what I, what I learned when I took both my herbal class and my integrative nutrition class is that one of our key components to keeping ourselves healthy and the environment healthy is water and having good clean water to help us grow, nourish us land and individuals.
And we’re not doing a very good job of that right now. Our environment is really taking it on the chin for a lot of things that it shouldn’t have to. So my thought was let me Let me get into understanding water, where it comes from, how it’s affected, what we can do, so that again, people can make choices.
I think we all can heal this earth, for as much as we’ve screwed it up at this point, by each taking individual steps. So my first step is to really concentrate on water, all aspects of water. Did you know that water we’re drinking today is also water that probably was millions of years ago that the dinosaurs drank?
I did not know that. It just sort of recycles. And unfortunately, we’re we’re impacting the recycle capabilities of our earth right now. So I want people just to be aware of all this stuff so that when they’re making a decision about, you know, do I plant this? Do I farm this? Do I, you know, throw this water out?
Do I take a long shower? They understand. what it’s all about. So I took a course this spring on water, water stewardship was offered by our local Penn State University. It was great course picked up a lot of information. And I know I’m doing more research continually on that because I really want to have the most up to date and with the way the environment is changing so rapidly, I need to get it out there.
Yeah. And you know, I got to ask the million dollar question here. Are you going to, is there any, no pressure, any plans on writing something on this or, or incorporating it into another edition or something else like down the line? Or I gotta ask you, you come on. Well, my, my, my working title is your journey to healing our earth and is water.
And I may then, you know, go into other segments after I finish that book. Oh wow, that’s so exciting and I cannot wait to continue to read your writing. I mean, I like what you’ve, the work that you’ve already, you’ve already created, of course. And and now that I know that this one’s coming out, I mean, my audience, myself, like we’re just going to be that much more educated on, on this.
So this is awesome to me. Well, Sally, I just want to say, you know, it’s been great having you back on the show. It’s exciting to promote these books with you. So we’re going to have for everybody watching this, we’re going to, we’ll have links to Sally’s book and then also the other one that we coauthored together in the show notes.
There we go. Come on. I just have to ask. I mean, so you’re working on the new book just in general, I mean, what’s next, what’s next for you, what’s next for you, for your, your creative expression. My creative expression. I think probably just focusing on getting that book together is what I’ve got to do now because I’ve sort of been playing with it.
That’s a big one. That’s a big one. I’m like, Ooh, we just finished this other book. I’m like, good for you. Books are hard. Well, thank you. And I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of Mission Matters and a part of your podcast. Thank you very much, Adam. We appreciate you and you being a part of our community.
That being said, if somebody wants to follow up and they want to learn more about your writing or your business or anything else, I mean, what’s the best way for our audience to connect? Well there’s basically three ways. There’s LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. My business address is Sally at H B R L L C dot com.
So that one gets through to the business part. And then my health wellness is Sally at body construction dot M E. Fantastic. And we’ll, and we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that our audience can just you know, click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters or engaging in an episode.
We’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives and having them share their mission, their reason behind their mission. You know, what gets them excited and fired up to go out into the world and make a difference day in and day out. If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit that subscribe button.
We have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Sally, as always, it’s a pleasure working with you. Thanks again for coming back on the show. Sure. Thank you so much, Adam. Really appreciate it.
