Building Personal Relationships with Clients

Listen/watch podcast here

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.

Listen/watch podcast here