Tag Archives: Miami FL

WIMS Client Spotlight: MDO Partners

MDO|PARTNERS is a boutique law firm that focuses on Corporate, International and Real Estate Law as well as Global Compliance and Business Ethics. The firm is comprised of a solid team of attorneys and advisors who are committed to the business goals and best interests of their clients. They deliver value-added services of the highest caliber, and serve as a trusted advisor to their clients through their practical and business-savvy approach. MDO Partners is also a certified minority-owned business that values diversity with Hispanic, black, and women attorneys and advisors.

Before we get into the details about the firm however, we want to mention that MDO Partners is putting together a package to assist companies that are looking to pursue any of the various CARES Act/CoVid-19 financial relief options. Whether helping to put the documentation together, interfacing with potential banks/lenders, they’ve mobilized a team to help walk clients through it in order to increase their likelihood of receiving funds. If you’re interested, and need the assistance please reach out and we can facilitate an introduction.

Check out their robust and informative write up, “CARES Act: Q&A on New Loans and Forgiveness” here.

Now back to more information about MDO Partners…

The firm’s representative clients include Fortune 500, middle-market and startup companies as well as public-private partnerships in the industries listed below. They also represent financial institutions, registered investment advisers, broker-dealers and family offices in the United States and Latin America.

They have a range of specialties, but the following are their bread and butter:

Corporate Law
- Corporate Governance
- Corporate Finance
- Contracts & Agreements
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- General Counsel Services
Global Compliance
- Corporate Compliance
- Anti-Corruption (FCPA)
- Antitrust & Competition Laws
- Government Contracts & False Claims
- Broker-Dealers & Investment Advisers
- Employment Law
International Law
Real Estate Law
Business Ethics

MDO Partners has expertise with the following industries (among others):

Aerospace
Aviation
Banking
Construction
Cruise Lines
Food & Beverage
Logistics
Medical Devices
Technology
Telecommunications
Travel & Tourism

THE WIMS GUIDE COVID-19 ECONOMY EDITION AKA “THE SOUTH FLORIDA CORONACONOMY”

By now we’re well into the quarantine period and pretty deep into the business disruption that’s been the byproduct of the spread of CoVid-19/Corona Virus. At this point many of us are (at least relatively) beginning to adjust to the new normal and catch our breath in terms of what this means to our various businesses. Hopefully you’ve been able to strategize on potential pivots, are making the necessary adjustments, and are getting closer to finding a new groove for the path forward.

On the other hand, it would be naive to think that every businesses is going to make it through unfortunately. To think where we are now compared to even a month ago is pretty horrifying. But that being said, the ONLY thing to do now is continue to march onward with an unrelenting focus on doing whatever it takes (even if that means closing up shop and going in a different direction) to get through this. Looking forward is really all that matters now.

In that light I want to use my company’s (WIMS Consulting) platform, clients, partnerships, relationships, etc. to help share resources, ideas, insights, hope, strategies, etc. to help you and your business navigate these waters. I know a lot of people are doing this too and some of these things may be redundant, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t do my part and just let others do the leading during this time.

Considering the majority of our our business is based in Miami, FL and Charlotte, NC I’m going to create a page for each with specific local information in addition to the more macro/federal stuff. Further, I’ve volunteered to help lead the “South Florida Business Continuity Task Force” so will be sharing more information about that too as we launch the website later today (3.27.20). In Charlotte, we’re going to spearhead something similar via the Charlotte Business Group. Stay tuned!

In the mean time please reference the content below which I’ll be updating regularly. If you have anything else you’d like me to add please email me directly at [email protected].

It may sound insensitive right now, but as the saying goes: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” This is going to produce unprecedented opportunities if you look for them. Another extremely applicable quote: “This too shall pass!”

-Mike

Financial Support

SBA/Disaster Relief Loans:

By now just about everyone has been spreading the word on this. But this page from the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce includes specific info for Florida. “The SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loans are NOW OPEN for Florida. Small businesses & non-profits impacted by COVID-19 can apply for up to $2M in assistance.”

IRS – Federal Tax Relief protocol.

Florida Department of Economic Opportunity: Short Time Compensation Program for Employees is here. Reemployment Assistance Guidance is here.

The Miami Foundation has seeded The Community Recovery Fund with a $300,000 contribution. That number is growing with various donations from citizens and organizations alike.

The United Way and The Miami Herald have come together to activate a short term relief fund as well called Operation Helping Hands.

Miami Impact/Next Steps

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce – CoVid-19 Resource Portal is great and continues to be updated. They also have a “Members In Action” page that highlights what many of the specific businesses within the Chamber are doing to help the community.

The Beacon Council’s “Business Continuity: COVID-19 Business Resource Center” is phenomenal as well.

The Miami Foundation’s CoVid-19 Community Recovery Resources rocks, it covers organizations and funds that are helping out in the community too including many non-profits. This is one of the most well done and robust pages I’ve seen.

The South Florida Business Continuity Task Force has formed, including many of South Florida’s best and brightest minds from the legal, accounting, financial services, and entrepreneurial sectors among others to share specific insights and action items to help business owners survive the current cycle as best as they can and position themselves to try to get ready for the other side of it.

The South Florida Business Journal is offering it’s CoVid-19 related stories to be accessed for free. They also have two guides, one that’s for general South Florida businesses, and then another specific for small businesses.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce’s “Follow Facts, Not Fear” page is another solid resource.

Legal Services of Greater Miami provides free civil legal services for the low-income communities of Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties and is recognized as one of the most outstanding legal services programs.

The Miami Herald “What do you need or what can you give in this crisis? We’re connecting people with people” is beautiful and yet another great idea/program.

The Fountainhead is “working to compile an extensive list of resources for artists.”

The Miami New Times created a piece called, “Here’s How and Where Creatives Can Apply for Relief Funds” very good as well and covers a community that can be overlooked.

Business Ideas/Strategies

65 Free Tools to Help You Through the Coronavirus Pandemic (Entrepreneur Mag)

On CRM: How Companies Are Leveraging Their CRM Systems To Help Navigate Through COVID-19 (Forbes)

Coronavirus: What Every Business Owner Needs to Know (Wix) great article with a lot of sound ideas, even if some are seemingly obvious.

Email Marketing: This was a great article from Fast Company, and insightful. Just because everyone else is sending emails doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do one too. Just make sure it’s really well done if you do and that it adds value to your audience (don’t be self serving).

List Of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Small Business Relief Programs (Forbes)

COVID-19 Will Fuel the Next Wave of Innovation (Entrepreneur Mag)

How to Get Mortgage Relief (Investopedia)

MORE TO COME!!

The WIMS Guide Video Ep.11 – Cali Trip & More

The WIMS Guide Video Edition is Back! I’m in Cali for the next two weeks. We came out here to close out my wife’s maternity leave with a little business and a little pleasure spending time with family and friends.

Today’s video I mainly focus on where I’m at her in Cali with a call to action for any potential meetups, introductions, connections, etc. I’ll be in Southern California until Sunday, February 23^rd so please feel free to reach out!

The other topic is the Charlotte event I’m hosting on Thursday March 12^th. I’m putting on an event for Charlotte’s best and brightest while also celebrating 6 years in business for WIMS Consulting. The event is open so please feel free to bring a friend!

After some extended time grinding in Charlotte for about 5 weeks, I head back down to Miami for the eMerge Americas conference. If you do any business in Miami of Latin America you’ve got to make it down here for this. It’s one of my favorites and I make it down every year specifically for it. Some friends and I are also going to plan a mastermind/meet up for those in town, we’ll share the details on that soon.

Also, I’m still putting together the content plan and doing outreach for additional posts and videos, etc. so if you’re interested in spreading the word about a specific business topic, your personal/business brand, etc. let me know!

Lastly, we’re going back to some of the CRM and business development topics we’ve been working through but I’m going to start adding a lot more structure and even a curriculum as well.

Thank you for your time, attention and support as always!

-Mike

The WIMS Guide Video Edition will focus on business topics such as Entrepreneurship, CRM, Marketing, Sales, B2B, Business Development, Web Design, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and much much more. To learn more about Mike Simmons and his company WIMS Consulting, click here.

The WIMS Guide Video Ep.10 Restarting the Streak

Whelp I broke the streak! After literally 14 hours straight with a client firm there was a moment when I got back to the apartment around 10pm where I could’ve made the right decision and be Superman…but didn’t. Ugh!

Nothing like that bitter taste of blowing it to motivate you get back on track. Often it can derail someone and they spiral but I’m just going to shrug it off and get back at it. Especially considering that overall, yesterday was overwhelmingly positive and a major win. Spent the day with a law firm client talking business development and marketing strategy, doing some training, looking at the numbers, planning for the year ahead and really drilling down into the specific. Despite the unrelenting grind, the day absolutely flew by.

Now we just have to focus on making sure everyone follows up and is held accountable to the plan. Today, back to hustling in Miami. Carving out some time this am for billable work. Then have several meetings lined up and a networking event this evening as well. Onward!

The WIMS Guide Video Ep. 9 – Miami Monday

It’s Miami Monday!! Just arrived in the Magic City and I have an action packed week on deck.

Meetings with investors, clients, prospects, referral sources, friends, etc. Planning to hit a few networking events as well with the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and Miami Finance Forum among others as well. Not too mention have to keep up this routine and the gym streak. It’s going to be absolute chaos in the best way.

Industries I’m working with and targeting: Legal, Commercial Real Estate, Accounting, Finance, Tech, Health Care, and professional services are the primary on this trip.

My company is also launching a major campaign surrounding private equity, venture capital, family office, investment banking, and financial institutions who maintain equity stakes in a variety of portfolio companies. In conjunction with some key partners we’re putting together an awesome value proposition to not only help increase revenue via sales and marketing, but also streamline the accounting and finance functions as well all in a consolidated fashion. Much more to come, but this week really kicks off some of the necessary meetings needed before launch.

If you’re in town and want to try and get together definitely reach out!

-Mike

The WIMS Guide Video Ep. 8 – Call to Action Friday

Getting this in a little last minute today but keeping the streak alive nonetheless! Still in the mountains of Banner Elk, NC and wrapping up Day 14 of the fitness streak (only 90 more to go yet to meet my goal).

Again taking a bit of a detour with something that I make more of a thing going forward: Call to Action Friday. Wanted to shout out that I’ll be back down in Miami all next week. The schedule is already packed with client meetings, prospect meetings, networking events, and much more. I’ve said many times I’m ALL IN on growing the business more and more down there and this is another major step in the right direction. I still have some availability left but even if we’re not able to meet in person this trip please reach out and let’s at least set up a call and make a plan for the next time as I’ll certainly be back often!

Also, I’m still continuing to seek more and more content from entrepreneurs and professionals who are looking to create more whether written or video. If that’s a part of your strategy for the year please reach out and we’ll get something going.

Thanks for the attention while I keep getting these reps in and have a great weekend!

-Mike

The WIMS Guide Ep. 7 – CRM: Gone Mobile

Today we’ve gone mobile, shooting from the mountains of Banner Elk, NC! It’s appropriate for today’s theme (we’re still drilling deeper into CRMs) about the mobile side of CRM.

Ideally, whatever platform you decide (or chose) will have a great mobile application as well. It can truly make a major difference with not only efficiency, but also with maximizing the program’s value. My go-to’s have great mobile apps of course (Zoho, Salesforce.com, HubSpot) but plenty of others do too.

It helps to be able to add notes/updates immediately after a coffee or lunch meeting, or after discussing an actual deal. I haven’t always been great at it either, but getting all the pertinent and timely data in the system ASAP really helps to ensure you don’t forget any of the crucial, and sometimes subtle details and information gleaned from those meetings. Further, being able to pull out your phone (when appropriate) to recall a key piece of intel can be valuable as well.

Why rely on your memory when you have a supercomputer in your pocket?

The WIMS Guide Ep. 6 – CRM: The A-Team

If you’re following along (if not that’s ok too) today we’re talking about what you do as the next step in launching or redeploying your CRM. You’re going to focus solely on the A players for now. The main thing that is going to create momentum and keep you using the system is achieving ROI as quickly as possible. That’s the main benefit you want out of this and thus its the primary goal.

The quickest way to get there is prioritizing the A players first, aka your best clients and prospects. So after you’ve got the data, context, and all the other appropriate information about them in there you’re then going to focus on doing something about it.

You’re going to pick these people and go through them and schedule/pre-plan your out reach and follow up strategy. You’re going to leverage the task list, the calendar, reminders, etc. to layout the timing and content with which you’re going to conduct your outreach. And you’re going to leverage the CRM to systematize/automate it and take out the human element (somewhat, but not entirely).

By now you should have some sort of script that articulates your value proposition well along with a deck or brochure. Pre-schedule your follow up, and do between 3-7 touch points to make sure you see it through. Once you close the deal you can eliminate the subsequent steps as they’re convert. Put the email script in there, add some customized talking points, context, recall a funny joke or something they care about and set the entire campaign up in one shot.

The feeling you’ll get knowing this has been accomplished is going to propel you forward and create an invaluable supplement to your day to day activities. Give it a shot and let me know if you need any assistance.

-Mike

The WIMS Guide Ep. 5 (CRM ABC’s) – For Entrepreneurs and Professionals Focused on the Journey

Wow! You’d be surprised how fast you can get a solid streak going. Seems like just yesterday I started on this (ok so it wasn’t THAT long ago but still) and already we’re on the 5th video. I also completed day 11 of my fitness streak today too. There’s definitely something to be said for just starting where you are, and taking massive action. Before you know it you’ll have some serious momentum to continue building off of.

Today we talk about the CRM ABC’s. This is the next step you want to take whether you’re just starting out or have an existing database. It can be overwhelming trying to clean up a massive database of thousands of contact records. So we’re going to start with your A players. As they say 80% of your business is generated from 20% of your clients (I’m paraphrasing to make a point). Rather than trying to maintain the whole database right off the bat we’re going to focus on your top clients and prospects and making sure that their records are dialed in, up to date, accurate, and that all appropriate context is in the system.

The number of A’s is going to vary based on your situation. It could be 10, 25, 50, 100, etc. It’s mostly arbitrary but you want it to be the people who really matter. Whether they’re existing clients, or companies on your “wish/hit list” that’s up to you to decide.

After you make that decision, get to work making sure the necessary and relevant data is in the system. This will include contact information for the specific people/decision makers you want to track, prior communications (if applicable), potential referral sources or champions who can help, insight into their problems/needs that you can help solve, etc. Anything that might be helpful with continuing to serve them well, or to help you close the deal should be included.

Once you get these done you’ll have some serious momentum to continue charging through the rest. But no matter what, these should always remain your priority.

The WIMS Guide Ep. 4 (Intro to CRM) – For Entrepreneurs and Professionals Focused on the Journey

Today we’re going to cover a brief intro to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for those who don’t know what it is, and for those that do, I just go into some quick initial steps to consider taking if you’ve been apprehensive thus far. I know it can be tedious to set up and maintain but the ROI is incredible if deployed correctly.

It’s really mind blowing to me how much resistance there still is out there. Frankly, it’s like turning down a superpower. If you want a little help or guidance please reach out! Whether you’re starting from scratch, converting an Excel File/Google Sheet, or you’ve been using a CRM for a while but are stuck in a rut, WIMS Consulting can help you take it to the next level.

In summary, my favorite/recommended platforms are:

Zoho (https://one.zoho.com)
Salesforce.com

Track your leads and prospects from website/marketing, intros from referral sources, lead generation, sales cycle, your existing customers and deal flow, etc.

Sync email, whether Outlook/Gmail
Sync Email Marketing: MailChimp/Constant Contact
Sync Social Media Accounts
Card Scanner app to streamline uploading business cards and converting them directly into contacts.

I’ll make sure to keep adding more and more value on how to continue leveling up your CRM and sales game throughout the year. Much more to come!

-Mike