Nerds On Tap

German Perspective, American Dream: Harald Lavric's Business Odyssey

• Nerds On Tap • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Get ready to be captivated by the entrepreneurial journey of Harald Lavric, a business consultant who crossed seas from Germany to the U.S. to establish his own venture. Harald's stories of triumph and lessons learned from the challenging yet rewarding path of business ownership will provide you with practical tools and insights. We also get a taste of his German roots as we sample traditional Hofbräuhaus beer and share laughs over memorable stories from our Munich experiences.

The journey doesn't stop there. How do you find your niche? How do you identify your target clients? What's the secret to success through setting clear goals and implementing process management? Harald, with his areas of expertise in organizational change, strategic planning, and personal growth, answers these questions and more. His hands-on experience and knowledge of the Pensacola market provide invaluable advice to entrepreneurs and small business owners. 

Finally, we circle back to Pensacola, Florida and immerse ourselves in Harald's local experiences. From his favorite hats and his contributions to the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce to his son's passion for soccer, Harald gives us a unique glimpse into his life. We further dissect the complexities of product management, the importance of focusing on profitable products, and how soccer positions can be an analogy for roles in business. Tune in for an engaging conversation that promises to leave you with new perspectives, tools, and a few laughs.

Sponsor of this episode:  Digital Boardwalk
Digital Boardwalk is one of the top 10 Managed IT Service Providers in the United States.  If you are seeking to outsource your IT Management, or if your IT Team could use some help with projects or asset management, give Digital Boardwalk a call today!  They offer a FREE IT Maturity Assessment on their website.  If you want to see how your business's IT scores against industry standards, go to GoModernOffice.com now.

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Tim Shoop:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Nerds on Tap. Today's guest on the show is Harald Lavric. Harald is a distinguished business consultant with an extensive background as a director, sea level manager across various business sectors like operations, marketing and sales, organizational development process and product management, auditing and compliance. As the founder of Griffox Consulting, Harald specializes in business growth, strategic planning and organizational change management. He holds advanced degrees in business coaching and organizational change management, as well as economics, with professional certifications in change and project management and data privacy management Fluent in English and German. As a track record of leading significant organizational transformations and providing strategic advice at the highest levels, his proactive, people first approach ensures project success, efficiency and alignment with overarching business objectives To. Today's episode is titled from Germany to Pensacola Harald Laverick's business transformation Odyssey. So welcome to the show, harold. Thank you so much, tim, or should I say Will Cummins, by Nerds vom Fass.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, that's fun.

Tim Shoop:

Does that work, or did I say it wrong?

Harald Lavric:

No, it's correct, it's Nerds vom Fass.

Tim Shoop:

Okay, so this was the English variation of it, the very strong English variation of it. Made a note here my grandma, when I was a little myoma, because I have German heritage, my mom was German, my myoma From that side. We would go to a beer garden and you're on the right show here, but she, she would have loved to come on the show because she would always order a gross beer.

Harald Lavric:

Good Right.

Tim Shoop:

So for Oma bestelt the immer I'm grosses beer.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, that's right, oma bestelte ein großes Bier.

Tim Shoop:

Okay, I tried to do my research.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, sounds great.

Tim Shoop:

So that's a good segue to our first beer tasting before we get into Harold's background. I was told you like German beer, scotch and Irish ales, so I'm hoping we hit a home run with today's lineup. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nerds on TAC. I'm your host, tim Schu, and I couldn't be more excited to embark on this nerdy adventure with all of you. So grab your favorite brew, because things are about to get exciting. Three, two, one go.

Tim Schaffer:

Today our first brew is half brew from Munich, Germany.

Tim Shoop:

I feel like we're supposed to be doing the how does it?

Harald Lavric:

what does that call in German? It's called Schunkeln.

Tim Shoop:

Schunkeln, schunkeln. I just remember going to the big beer tents at Oktoberfest and my parents would be doing the whole back and forth.

Harald Lavric:

I didn't really understand. Do you remember? Here you're only allowed to drink a beer if you have a seat.

Tim Shoop:

And they would come out with five on a hand. Yeah, at least five.

Tim Schaffer:

Now this brewin tradition, an archetype of the Munich beer. It was long before wheat beers and Yeagers wetted the throats of the Germans, the bottom fermented dark beer was quenching the thirst of Munich residents, the first beer which was served in the yeah, sure it's, it's Hofbräuhaus.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, it's the Hofbräuhaus in.

Harald Lavric:

Brunei.

Tim Shoop:

Hofbräuhaus.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, been there a few times, Still satisfies to this day with its roasted hoppy taste and subtle multi finish. So what do you think of?

Tim Shoop:

that one.

Harald Lavric:

I love it. It's awesome. Really reminds me of the Munich beer. Yeah, you know, and my times in Munich and I like it. It's really a good one.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, hanging out. I took my wife across Germany for the first time in 2009. She had never been out of the States and I took her to the Hofbräuhaus in München and showed her the Gluckenspiel and hung out at the Marine Plots and did all that and she was blown away, middle of winter, mind you. I took her to the Chris Kindle Marts, so she liked sampling. She, she, she was more at the time of wine drinkers, so she was really into the Gliwine.

Harald Lavric:

Okay, got you. Yeah, but Munich at this time of the year, like in the Christmas season, is so beautiful All the snow and all those little tiny houses where they still here sell the local stuff. It's always beautiful.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, and I just I can't wait to go back. We're we're trying to plan a trip with our kids so they can see our side of their heritage, so really looking forward to it. So let's get into you this show. Even though it's a beer show, it is a nerd show. We're going to talk business and we're going to talk technology to a degree. So you moved to Pensacola a year ago, right? And so what brought you to paradise? First of all, let's, let's, just, let's just ease into the show that way.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, sure, my wife was an exchange student in 1992, 1000 with the host family in Alabama and stayed in Pretville Alabama for a year, went to high school, fell in love with the culture, the people, the whole states and when we first met we came over several times for vocations, stayed with the host family, drove a lot, a lot time around and, yeah, I felt in love with the states too.

Harald Lavric:

And then we started discussing might have been option for us to move over. Then we won the green card in 2019. But due to the COVID, we were never able to receive it in the physical form. But we already discussed moving over in that deep that we thought, okay, what are our options then? Receiving green card? So we invested in our own company and founded it over here and, yeah, moved over finally last year in October and, yeah, love to be in the Florida pen handle.

Tim Shoop:

So investing in your own company and starting your own company. How does that tie into the green to the green card part of it?

Harald Lavric:

It doesn't. It is at the moment of working visa, which we have been doing for five years, and I'm allowed to work for my own company and that's good for me when I can do whatever she wants to do here, can work as an employee for all kinds of businesses, you know, and for me it gives me the opportunity to build up my own company and get in touch with business people over here and doing services for them.

Tim Shoop:

Awesome, and we're going to talk about what you do here in a little bit. Did you have any other businesses prior to Griffiths consult things?

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, I founded it originally in 2016 in Germany due to the fact that I really worked a long time and internal auditing organizational development and had to take care of all processes and projects which were not running good, and, additionally, I did external auditing for bigger German billing centers and the pharmacy industry and when I wrote these audit reports for them, it was always going like, okay, now we have an audit report, what's next? Who is carrying out this project, you know? And so I ended up building or founding my, my company and Griffiths, consulting over there back in Germany and start carrying out projects for you already started doing this, and what?

Tim Shoop:

what timeframe was that?

Harald Lavric:

In 2016. Okay, so it was additionally to my regular job here with the with the health insurance companies, was in Germany more in addition to my regular job here, but became a main job over here.

Tim Shoop:

Gotcha. So, so, very exciting, because you do a lot of things, a lot of things, and you know from one entrepreneur to another, there's a lot of hats we wear as an entrepreneur and you're helping others with not just those hats but all the little intricate details that a lot of entrepreneurs don't think about, like change management and process management, right and and privacy management. We're going to get into that later in the show, unless you want to embellish on any of it right now before we get into a little bit more of that.

Harald Lavric:

No, no, that's, that's good here. Let's do this way. Sounds good to me. Sounds good, good to me.

Tim Shoop:

So Tell me about? I want to talk about the challenges of starting your own business. I mean, I can talk for days about when I started my first business and what all I did not know, because there was more that I didn't know than what I did know and I had to learn things over time. Now I'm a seasoned vet. I've been running businesses for almost 30 years. This is my fourth one and I feel like I have a lot of knowledge to give younger entrepreneurs, which I do. Tell me what your challenges were in transitioning over to your own business.

Harald Lavric:

Sure, first it was really thinking about what is really my product? What do I sell exactly? Is it organizational change management, is it project management, process management, risk management? My problem was in the beginning I did a lot of different jobs here over my career, over the last 30 years of my career, and so I became kind of a jack of all trades. The only department I've never worked in was finance, so I did all the rest.

Harald Lavric:

That's good on the one side because you can do a lot of different stuff here, but it's hard on the other side because you have to focus on some stuff here and to sell it. And this became a challenge because if you have to focus on a specific product, that additionally means you have to focus on a specific client. So who is your client? Is it a small client? Is it a medium-sized or large client? Where do I find those clients? So this combination of product management, client development, who is my client?

Harald Lavric:

And my personal transition due to the culture change and due to moving over to the states here was really challenging for me here and one short challenge here just to mention here when I was first on the networking event here and it really happened like this year it was from the minority chamber of commerce. I never heard in Germany about the minority chamber of commerce and from my point of view I thought it's a minority, it's a smaller chamber of commerce, but I didn't know. Here it's every American people, hispanic people here and all those guys here, those great guys in this community, which I really like.

Tim Shoop:

It's a pretty big community, isn't it?

Harald Lavric:

It really is here, but I didn't have any idea. So I attended this networking event here and so all the African-American people talking and discussing stuff here and I really thought here wow, that's overwhelming for me because my English wasn't that good here at this time here it was a year ago and I really thought here oh man, what did you do to yourself?

Tim Shoop:

So that was a challenge for me. I couldn't even imagine going into another country and using a second language and trying to communicate my expertise to a prospect. I mean, I can see where the challenges are and it's mainly a communication challenge, right, because they might struggle with your accent or trying to hear you, but it's also and you brought up a good point networking. So that seems to be a key, a common element among all my shows when I talk to my guests networking, networking, networking. So before we get into your expertise and we start talking about what you do, tell the audience the importance of networking, especially as a new business, and how willing people are willing to help you.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, I can do that First. I think what really is important is if you want to do network, you must have an overview of what kind of network events are happening. So I did a lot of research and was really kind of overwhelmed what is happening and the whole Pensacola area because it was that much here. I did a list on this year and I think here I've still got like 40 networking events which are happening, sometimes weekly, B-weekly, one-to-month whatever. So it is not that easy to find the right networking events and to go over there because you don't know, here is my client in the networking event or is it just here to meet good people and start talking, which I like, but it's not business.

Harald Lavric:

And so from my point of view, there are three challenges First, find the right network and find the networking events in your area. Second, you have to have the right mindset to do networking and really to want to connect to other businesses. And third, transform those networking contacts into contracts and really get money out of it.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, one of the networking groups that I've always been tied to through the years probably since probably for the last 20 years was B&I Business Networking International, and they promote givers. Gain you give, you will receive, you give, you will receive, and always ask for specific asks, such as John Doe at ABC Company. That's who I want to meet. You'd be surprised who knows John Doe or who knows someone that knows John Doe? But anyway, let's get into you. Let's get into you, let's dive into your areas of expertise. We're going to include organizational change, we're going to strategic planning and personal growth. So, before I ask some specific questions I have here, tell me who your, who your clients are. I mean, we were talking earlier about the, the, the, what, what is my product? Who is my client? Tell me who your client is. I mean, I hear businesses, businesses obviously need a coach. What about individuals? Are you? Are you only focused on businesses or does it go beyond that?

Harald Lavric:

I think it's you have to really to focus on the, on your area of expertise, but also on the area where you are living in. And then Pensacola from my point of view here and I'm still quite new to the whole area it's just in year In Pensacola really a lot of small businesses and only some big businesses. It's what I see. So you can't ignore the small businesses and I'm not doing this year. So, due to the fact that I'm offering really different kinds of services for the small business owners, I can offer services and personal growth and leadership development, but also with specific challenges.

Harald Lavric:

You know, some guys contact me due to opening new locations and I help them with that, carrying out this as a project for them, seeing what might be really a good area for them here, not only due to oh, that location looks nice, but more like from a strategic point of view okay, where are your clients? How often do you have to drive to your clients? How do you make marketing? Is this a good location to advertise your business, and so on. So I think it is really always a mixture of strategic planning process here, with the products of the client and the customers of the client come in, and additionally finding good locations, for example, for them and carrying out projects like this.

Tim Shoop:

But it's all about asking those right questions to drive it per se down the rabbit hole to get to that strategic planning piece. Once you collect all that data by asking those questions, you have a unique structure built specifically for that individual business right.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, that's right, it's always about the questions and getting. For me it's really, really important to get an understanding of the problem what is the problem of the client and what solution is he's looking for? And the way in between I always develop from. I would say, here it's always different. It's always a different starting point, it's always a different endpoint. You can use, surely, strategies which you use here to achieve those objectives, but the way in between here and I think you know this TV is always a little different.

Tim Shoop:

Oh yeah, having run four businesses, I've had a couple that ended up in absolute failure and a couple that were absolute successes, and you know, it all comes, though, from making the right decisions, talking to the right people and getting the right mentorship, and I would suggest that you would be one of those mentors that could help a business owner if they're trying to get from point A to point B a little faster, right.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, that's right. That's right. I talked, for example, to the guys here from SBDC and SCORE and I like both organizations here, but I think what the clients sometimes is really looking for is specific advice on a specific problem, to find a solution for a problem they face here. Coming to my business helped me carry out this project so that I can focus on my main business, and you put down the foundations here for the additional stuff so that I can move on. And SBDC and SCORE I like both of them here, but they are not doing this. They are giving you advice and you have to carry out this by yourself, but as you have to run your business here from nine to five, so what is the timeframe? You focus on this stuff.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, so let's get a little deeper into that so we know what the objective is right To help a business owner get from point A to B through strategic planning of whatever unique situation they have. Do you have a case study that you I'm putting you on the spot here, harold do you have a case study that you could share with the audience, without naming names or anything that could explain maybe something that you helped somebody with and the outcome of that, and maybe some feedback from the person that was involved that hired you to do that? Is that possible? Can we get that on the show?

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, sure, I have some case studies here on my website, as well as a lot of blog articles that I wrote and focused on specific situations and how you can solve this and overcome those situations and be successful.

Tim Schaffer:

Could you shout out that blog?

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, can you name that blog? Well, it's Gryphix, right? G-r-i-f-f-o-x dot com. Yeah, that's right. Okay, and we'll throw that on the screen during the show. Do you have a specific case study that you can remember that maybe you can share with our audio audience on all of our podcast platforms that you wouldn't mind sharing?

Harald Lavric:

We can talk about a specific blog article which I will like, and which is a good one here for drinking beer. Yeah.

Tim Shoop:

I already drank my first.

Harald Lavric:

Just a minute.

Tim Schaffer:

Finish that one up.

Harald Lavric:

So I wrote a blog article about buying bacon. But it's not about buying bacon and in the end it is here like how you get to your objective and to understand what is your objective. The main focus is here about losing weight and from my point of view, you must know here I never do specific diets. I want to quit drinking beer or stuff like this here. I love to eat bacon. I love American food here. I love all this stuff here, and if I ever see here my weight is going up, then I'm doing more sports. I'm not stop eating.

Harald Lavric:

I don't do this here because I like to eat here. And so that is, I think, here really a main focus. You have to understand here how your mind is working, what is really important for you. It is here about changing the way of eating or doing different stuff, and sometimes here we get told here from the outside you're not loving healthy. You have to eat here more vegetables. Don't stop eating bacon. For real. If I eat here some bacon once a week, nobody cares about it's not that bad.

Tim Shoop:

Harold, I like bacon on my bacon.

Harald Lavric:

Sounds great.

Tim Shoop:

I mean, who doesn't like bacon? You can't cut that out of your diet, right?

Harald Lavric:

It's exactly like this here and that's what I was writing about here and focusing on here. But most people don't understand what is really your goal, and that, I think, is important here. Before starting to find a solution, you have to understand here what is your goal. It is a little bit here like walking into a super store, or like we walk into a big supermarket here and wanna buy some stuff here and you don't write a list here. You just walk through the lines here, buy some stuff here, go pay it here, and then you're at home and think, oh man, what do I buy here? I want you to make this and that here, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

I've done that.

Harald Lavric:

But totally the wrong stuff for this year. Yeah, you didn't write a list, you didn't focus on your goal and your objective here, and that's your problem. So first focus on your objective and understand what you're looking for and then go in the right direction and not, here, move in the wrong direction and then wonder why it's turning out really bad.

Tim Shoop:

So I'm here in the what and the why again.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Shoop:

So translating that over to business objectives for what you do for customers. It's not just about looking at a diet and going well, I'm just not gonna eat lunch, right, because that's not healthy either. It's actually better, from what I've been told, to eat more small meals throughout the day, actually more than three throughout the day, because your body will consume, will store the fat. If you're trying to lose weight, you don't wanna end, and muscle weighs more than fat or weighs as much as fat. So, working out, you can actually translate fat into muscle. So in business terms, let's see if you can take that analogy and translate it into business terms. Yeah sure.

Harald Lavric:

I think the question sometimes is if you make a specific profit, you are you satisfied with the profit and do you understand why the profit isn't exactly on this high? And if you wanna raise your profit, how do you do it? Is it by selling more stuff, is it by changing the way or by reducing your expenses, or is it by changing your processes? Just to mention, we're doing different approaches here and I think here most of the time here people say, oh, that sounds good, I make a mixture, then it will work here, yeah, but still, if your process is running in a bad way, then change your process and you can double it easily.

Harald Lavric:

But if you don't focus here on really on the problems and understand those processes, then you might lose profit over the way here. That's what I think here is really really important here Understand how your business is working and understand what is needed to improve. And that is, I think, here this translation maybe from is it more here like focusing on protein? Is it more focusing on other stuff in your meal, on fat and yeah Sounds to me like.

Tim Schaffer:

as long as there's a balance of it all, that's what we're really trying to achieve. If you focus on one thing. There's where the problem lies. You need balance.

Tim Shoop:

Having a balance of a lot of different things. So two of the things that come to mind Suds or Tim, sorry is, process management is one thing, but in order to achieve processes and have that translate into scale, we have to be looking at standard operating procedures right, or SOPs if you will for an acronym, but I mean digital boardwalk. We're very focused on automation, process and SOPs because we have to be able to scale, to bring in more talents, to be able to achieve those goals for our customers In the IT industry. The more talent we have right, the more brains we can tap into for those different unique challenges that our customers have. So to do that, we focus on automation, process management and process change. I can't tell you, harold, how many times we have changed the process because it just didn't work that great right, and I'm sure you've experienced that with some of your customers.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, absolutely I did. And I think from my point of experience most of the time the process in the most ways was really written quite well here and it should work in that way how it was described here. But then comes in the human side of business. I would say it's all in their head, right, and that is sometimes where the problems start, you know, and I think that is where organizational change management has to come in here and transition here this process into the human brain and to the human habits and how it is working all together, you know, in a good way and so that is really a good process.

Tim Shoop:

When, in the early days of digital boardwalk, we had and when I say the early days, there was maybe four or five of us and our engineer at the time I kept telling him hey, man, you got to document that one day we're going to be adding other engineers. That can't all be in your head. He's going to listen to the show he listens to our show, by the way and he's going to call me and go dude, you called me out, I won't call your. I won't call out your name, though, james. Oh, did I just do it? But anyway, it was all in his head and I kept telling him and telling him, and then, when it was came time for me to start hiring and we were in a hiring frenzy he was under the gun and I told him, I told you so, I told you. So now you've got a lot of work to do. Now we have over 10,000 pieces of documentation, and one of our KPIs is documentation across the board.

Tim Shoop:

At digital boardwalk, we're all constantly writing SOPs, because it's the only way. It's the only way you can scale. So before we get into our next beer, I've got another question to ask you. So, out of all the hats you've worn as an entrepreneur, as a business coach and with helping your customers. What's your favorite hat Other than that one on your head? Right now, he's wearing a nerd's on tap hat.

Harald Lavric:

Ladies, I really like that. So thanks for that. My favorite hat I think it's really the head of the strategic business facilitator. I love to just moderate those meetings and see here how those ideas of all the individuals pop out and how you have to align all of that here to make it a bigger plan and to produce a big picture and to get an overview of what is really needed to make a company great. And I did that here a lot of times here back in Germany. So I really love to do this here and help companies to get overviews of what they are really in need of and this prioritization plan here, which is then important building up an action plan, seeing what next steps here should be carried out here, doing those time frames, transferring this year into project management here I love to do this.

Tim Shoop:

You know that's awesome and a little bit nerdy.

Harald Lavric:

Yes, sorry about that.

Tim Shoop:

No, you're on the nerd's on tap. You're on the right show. My favorite hat, of course, is marketing. I love to market. I love the creative prospect behind marketing, but I also like all the things that go into scaling a business, and those are all the things that you can help with. Ladies and gentlemen, you can find out more about Harold and what he does at Griffox G-R-I-F-F-O-X dot com. Again, that's G-R-I-F-F-O-X dot com, and Tim's gonna take us into our next beer because we're empty.

Tim Schaffer:

All right, the next beer do-claw bourbon company from Baltimore, Maryland. It's a mad Bishop, german styled Octoberfest. The mad Bishop faithfully delivers a sermon of rich hosted malt flavor that goes down easy with the Crest's clean finish. What do you think?

Tim Shoop:

of that one.

Harald Lavric:

Oh, that one is good too. Yeah, a little bit more sour than the first one.

Tim Shoop:

I think here. It's very similar, though similar tones, but sour at the end.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, so it is a good one too here. I think the first one was better for me. I like those dark stuff, you know, but anyways it's a good one.

Tim Shoop:

Well, I think three and four we're gonna be getting into red, so we'll see where this goes. So we're gonna discuss Harold's experiences next. I'd like to start the next segment by talking about your experiences here in Pensacola. Now, we touched on it a little bit earlier in the show Some lessons learned. We'll stay off the networking side because we already covered that and some unique aspects of the local business environment. So we talked about minority chamber, we talked about networking.

Tim Shoop:

We haven't touched on your involvement with. Aren't you involved with? Is it the Gulf Breeze or Santa Rosa chamber? Yeah, so we'll touch on that. We'll talk about what you think about the landscape as a whole, not just from a business perspective and how we you know what we're doing to attract more businesses in the area, but also soccer. I'll. You know. Little birdie told me you know my son. He wears his messy shirt all over. Yeah, he's got his messy shirt. He's a big, big in a soccer. He plays, he lives in Breeze soccer and unfortunately I don't coach because I grew up playing baseball. But I love that. He's really taken it to that degree.

Tim Shoop:

Let's start with that let's talk about what you're doing in the local community.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, sure, I became ambassador with the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce due to the fact that I live in the Milton area, so it's close to me and I think that is a. It's a great way to get in touch here with the community and give back here some stuff here on a volunteer basis, you know and do yeah, just get connected here and see what is what is really needed in the community.

Tim Schaffer:

My kid plays soccer in Santa Rosa at the Gospel Projects and they've got first place. Go Renegades last season. Go Renegades.

Tim Shoop:

Yes, All right, Caleb was the. My son's team was the digital boardwalk dragons. We sponsored their team this year and they did pretty good. They made it to the playoffs, but they didn't. They lost their first game in the playoffs, but man, he's coming along great. So so you grew up playing soccer, or?

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, yeah, I played soccer my whole life, so it's for 45 year. Started age five, now I'm 50. So played soccer 45 years in Germany.

Tim Shoop:

Who's your favorite soccer player?

Harald Lavric:

That's always a good question. I don't have really really a favorite one here. I love I and Robin.

Tim Shoop:

Okay.

Harald Lavric:

And I really liked Ronaldinho. He was always here, unbelievable for me to see what he's doing with the ball. You know I was never a great mess. You know, christiane, about your Naldofen. Sorry about that, but perfectly, all right.

Tim Shoop:

I just know kids nowadays are influenced by some big names. And that's a big name, I know. When I was a kid I was a baseball player, so I didn't know a lot about soccer. But when I was introduced to soccer it was Pele.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, just because he was all over the place, so yeah, he was incredible.

Tim Shoop:

What was it? What was that called? The scissor scissor kick or the yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's switch back over to business, because this shows not really about sports, but I did want to hear your side of things on that, so we talked about a lot of different things you do, so I'm going to name several of them and then I want you to pick one and really hone in on it for the show and tell me more about it and how that particular segment of business can help a business either grow or scale or achieve their goals a lot quicker.

Tim Shoop:

So let me name a few Marketing and sales, organizational development, process and product management, auditing and compliance, change management and privacy management. Now, I know privacy management alone. It's a great topic for a tech show because it's not just. A lot of people think it's just about the collection of data, but it's more so about how you store your data, and that's where we help a lot of our clients maintain compliance, definitely with CMMC and cybersecurity for manufacturing companies trying to do business with the government. So, out of all those things, tell me what you want to talk about.

Harald Lavric:

Let us talk about process and product management. Okay, that's a good one. Yeah, I think that's really a good one, and all companies need that one, so it is good one, I think.

Tim Shoop:

All right let's dive into it. So first tell our audience what it is.

Harald Lavric:

Okay, let's just start with product management and real easy example. Let's imagine you are the owner of a little cafe and you're selling all stuff of beverages black coffee, latte, macchiato, espresso, hot chocolate, whatever comes to your mind here you sell this stuff. If I ask you what is a beverage you make the most money with, can you answer this in a second. If not, you don't know your numbers. So first you have to do here an analysation of your products and see, okay, what is my best seller? What is really the product here I should focus on? Is it cafe? Or should I do here a hot one or an iced one, whatever? There are so many options here nowadays here due to Starbucks.

Tim Shoop:

sorry about that, but anyways here I think they brought it up here from my point of view here, I heard recently not to cut you off, but I heard McDonald's is going after that market segment now with something called MC something or other. They're actually launching a Starbucks competition.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, that really might be a good idea. So anyways, here, if you have your, like those different products here, it is really important for you to understand what is your client looking for here, which clients do you have in your location and what is really the product you make the most money with. But you also have to understand here where come which product has what level of expenses. So what is really good for you, what is easy to make here, what is fast here? Can you sell here really often a day here and use that to make money and to scale your business? So in the end that's product management. We have to dig a little bit deeper into this here. If we analyze your business here and realize and not here on this show, but that's what really is essential, I think so.

Tim Shoop:

A small business might be using QuickBooks and they might dive in, as long as they have it set up properly and all of their chart of accounts associated with the different categories of coffees or drinks that they sell, and then that helps them break down the products a little better. As far as you know, let's profiting a little more. But just to go a little deeper into that without getting too much into it, because what you really wanna do is call Harold and have him help you with that but dashboards, data dashboards it's a big tool for us at Digital Boardwalk. I probably have 15 or 16 dashboards that we have built and you can buy. You can go online. You can find companies that have dashboard systems for a few hundred dollars a month and then you can leverage those dashboard systems. You just wanna make sure that they tie in to your software through API, and what that means is data exchange between the two pieces of software and then assign KPIs or key performance indicators to those different things so you can identify where your best sellers are coming from, what time of day maybe that they're buying them, which ones are the better sellers.

Tim Shoop:

Is it a caramel macchiato or a cold Christmas Rappuccino? I don't know, yeah, I don't know my daughter. She's just about to turn 11. I don't know what the craze is, but these young girls, they're all in a Starbucks. Yeah, can we get a Starbucks? I'm like Starbucks, I can make you a coffee.

Tim Schaffer:

And you don't need to be drinking caffeine anyway You're only allowed.

Tim Shoop:

But does any of that resonate what I just said to you about KPIs, key performance indicators and dashboards? Is that something that you get involved with your customers?

Harald Lavric:

We hear help with. Yeah, sure, I think that is really important here.

Harald Lavric:

I'm not the producer of dashboards here, I'm more focused here on partnering with companies here, like they could just both walk here and using those dashboards. But I think they are really highly important here for all kind of businesses because they are giving you a quick overview and you see what kind of expenses do I have here, what kind of profit do I make here? Is it time consuming, is it not here? And you can really focus on the right profit, on the right products. I really often think here when I go into cafes is it really a good idea to offer, kind of a frozen latte macchiato with 50 different flavors? Is it really a good idea?

Tim Shoop:

So from an inventory management. So and that's something that we don't do, trust me, I used to be in retail, I used to manage inventory. Never again, folks, not for me, not for yours truly, but a lot of companies, especially in retail, deal with inventory management. So when you're dealing with 50 flavors of one coffee, that means that you have to stock all those flavors, right, and it can be a pain, right. The more is not always better, is what I'm hearing.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, yeah, that's right here. One point is you have to store them. More is not always better. And what is the expiring thing date here of the product If you open up here and you keep it open in your store? So when do you have to throw it away? And how many of that flavor do you throw Are you throwing away at that point? So and I think here that is really really important to keep in mind here it is sometimes really better to focus here on the best selling products here and if your customer is not liking it here, how many customers are you really losing due to some flavors?

Harald Lavric:

It's really that much yeah.

Tim Schaffer:

I don't think so.

Tim Shoop:

Well, those are all good points. So let's, I'll tell you what. Let's go ahead and get into the next beer, because we have two more beers. We're driving this home. We're starting to drive the show home, so we're gonna do the next beer, then we're gonna get into some, we're gonna have some questions about coaching, some more questions about coaching, we're gonna talk about some special offers that you might have for our audience, and then we'll close out the show by summarizing and hitting a final beer and celebrating today's episode. So how's that sound? That sounds perfect to me. All right, tim, take it away.

Tim Schaffer:

The next beer comes from Propsbury at 2011, from Fort Walton Beach. It's the AJ's Sunset Red Ale in Easy Drinking Malt for Traditional Red with Notes of Toffee and Caramel. Has a sweet finish and clean aftertaste after a well-balanced brew. 5.8 ABV.

Tim Shoop:

Awesome. Okay, so this is a change from what we've been drinking.

Tim Schaffer:

Oh that's very different.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's really different to you after hitting the duncle and in the last two beers and then segueing over into this. This is a little bit of a I don't know a little bit of a surprise or a shock by taste buds.

Harald Lavric:

How would?

Tim Shoop:

you describe that beer.

Harald Lavric:

Harold, I think. I think the beginning of the beer is quite good, yeah, and then the end is missing somehow.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, it's like wait, where's the rest of it? Yeah, like that, and it just never comes. So yeah, that's a little bit of a miss for me.

Tim Schaffer:

I definitely taste the toffee and caramel and I would say, pick one or the other, you know. Yeah, both of it is weird.

Tim Shoop:

It was a little. I guess the word I would use would be vague as far as the latter part of the latter part of the consumption. So challenges. So I do want to talk about challenges and I think we might have gotten into this a little bit earlier, maybe too early in the show but the challenges of the challenges of coaching and finding that unique perspective for each customer. So we talked about the what and the why, but we never really got into the challenges you face as a coach, not the challenges the customer faces, but the challenges you face with each unique customer. So maybe, maybe talk about I don't know, maybe it could be lack of so when you're dealing with an entrepreneur.

Tim Shoop:

I'm an entrepreneur, I know how I am, I know what, I know what some of the wrong side of or the wrong characteristics are, and they're not wrong. It's just who we are. As entrepreneurs. We're always doing something, finding solution, moving on to the next thing, moving on to the next thing, moving on to the next thing. So focus becomes a problem for a lot of us if it takes too long. Sometimes strategic planning can drag out, so is focus and communication from a customer Does it? Does it present a unique problem for you as a coach. Is that a good example? Or maybe use another example if that doesn't resonate.

Harald Lavric:

No, we can. We can definitely use this, this example. I think focusing is is always, from my point of view, a problem, because the challenge becomes from from here. As a coach, always here. First, you have always to understand the problem and what the client is looking for. Right, that is that is always always important here.

Harald Lavric:

But the but, the thing that is really important in in coaching is to understand the way, how, how a client is changing and why he's changing. What really drives him, what is, what is his kind of motivation? You know, is it, is it money? Is it success? Is it being a good leader? Is it being a friend for employees? Here it's really, it's really diverse. What clients are telling about here. Is it here making really big efforts here for, for community? So if I talk with clients here in coaching, it's always here to understand them, their motivation. And if you understand the motivation, then you still have to see or to find what kind of tool do I use to get the client on the, on the next level, on the level where he wants to be, and that is from time to time really really a challenge to see.

Harald Lavric:

Okay, what's working with this client here. If you know, here like metaphoric work is really helpful for for some clients here, as we earlier mentioned, soccer. So using the soccer methodology, you know on the on the field here, what is your position? I playing defense, midfield offense, I on the left side, right side at the goalie, and if I, if I ask this year clients here sometimes this I don't like soccer, can we use another one? So but if you're in soccer, what is your position Me?

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, sure, I would say I'm mostly on offense if I were to play soccer, but I'm also playing a little bit of defense when it comes to making sure I understand what others are doing in our space, meaning you know other other managed services providers. I have to know what's going on in the industry, but I also have to know what our competitors are doing. But I don't focus on the competitors as much as I focus on the offense. I focus on the us, not the them, because I feel like too many companies focus on the them and they don't get anywhere with the us. So I kind of somebody taught me that once they said quit focusing on the others, don't worry about what they're doing, focus on the you. So I'm offense.

Tim Shoop:

Now my son in real soccer. He wants to be total offense, but they've got him playing what did you call it? Midfield. See, I'm a baseball player and he does a great job at it, but he wants to be on offense and the one time they put him on offense you're in right down score to goal. So I don't understand. So I don't understand what the thought process was behind it. But translating that over to business, same thing. Maybe he's not meant to play midfield, maybe he is that the right term, am I?

Tim Shoop:

Yes yes, okay, maybe he's meant to be on offense. Maybe the coach just in the early stages of developing him didn't see it, but maybe he over time developed it while he was playing, but now he stuck on midfield. Maybe next year he'll be an off now one quick question.

Tim Schaffer:

So midfield, the biggest thing you need, more than anything else, is Stanama. So what he may have saw is that he has a lot of stana because midfield is what you run the most if you play that position. Yeah, and he runs a lot, so that could be the reason.

Harald Lavric:

And translating this to coaching. Then you see, offense is the player who makes a goal, defense is the player who to put, who protects that you don't get a goal and midfield makes the game. So if you are not into midfield, you're not making any efforts. So sometimes it's really here from my point of view, here to seeing here where's the gap. And if you find the gap and focus here on the gap, that's mostly the area where people don't want to go, but what helps them most to grow.

Harald Lavric:

So if I bring you into midfield, then you are available to be on all the different positions on the field here and that might keep you more versatile and, to be here, more flexible in your whole gameplay, you know, for example, yeah, and I understand that in business terms.

Tim Shoop:

So, on the soccer field, what you're saying is maybe he is in the right position, maybe where the coach has him is because of his ability to stop the ball or get the ball before it gets too far down the field and then go, go back to get it to the offensive players.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. I think here it is really always good to understand here. Where's your position on the field here, what, whatever kind of fields you can translate this year to American football, to baseball, to basketball yeah, it works is all kind of sports here, because it's only understanding. Here. What is your position? Are you more in the offense? I'm more on the defense here. Maybe you are in the audience here and you're not part of the gameplay. Maybe you're standing outside and you are the security, whatever, for real, I don't care, it's your decision.

Harald Lavric:

You know and I have to understand as a coach here. Where are you in this, in the sports methodology here? What is your position on a specific area of a field here and where do we want to be? If you are, for example, the security guy here but you want to be the striker, okay, that might be here a long journey. If you are also, at the moment here, the offensive midfield player and you want to transition to a striker, that's really close. So it's always understanding here. Where are you at the moment here? What are the next steps here? How can I, can I help you to grow as a person here, as a business owner, whatever here, and then doing those next steps?

Tim Shoop:

So, out of all the questions you get from a prospective customer, have you ever heard any of them say I want to make less profit.

Harald Lavric:

No, I don't think so. It's in the end here. It's always about profit here. And when can I retire? Yeah?

Tim Shoop:

when can I retire?

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, it's working at 45, or have I to work until 50?

Tim Schaffer:

for real. Yeah, some time.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, but you know, I had that conversation with someone recently and they're like so yeah, you know when are you going to retire? And I said well, and this is a joke, ladies and gentlemen, but I always tell everybody, you know, I don't. I have an 11 and a 13 year old at home and I don't really want them coming home every day from school and going look, look dead's out by the pool drunk again. What are you going to do? I'm not going to do that. I've been running businesses for so long I don't know how to lay by the pool and be drunk, and that's just not my thing.

Tim Shoop:

Yes, it's nice to take a break and do that, but what's the point? We've been put on this earth to do things, I think to help mankind or help drive. You know, when you're running a business, you're changing the course of history for not just yourself, but everybody involved in that business and all your customers, because you're helping every single one of them along their own personal journeys. So, in my opinion, laying down and waiting to die is not the answer. Is that a bad? And that's probably a bad way to say it, but in a way I'd rather be helping or doing something, and I'm sure you feel the same way because you're a business coach.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, absolutely. I really feel the same way here. Thinking about retiring is really not not working for me, and my wife is always going mad here when she's saying, okay, he's, he hasn't anything to do here. Oh no, he's driving me mad, you know. So I really can't imagine doing this here, picking, picking the right stuff here to work, you know, and only doing specific work here. That's a different thing and I can think about that, but I can't, can't imagine to stop working and don't do anything. It's impossible.

Tim Shoop:

No, I agree. So, Harold, you have some special deals for at least one lucky listener today, so we're going to share a link for this special. I'm gonna let you talk about the special, but we're going to be sharing a link on this show. We'll edit it into the show For details on how you can either enter the giveaway or what the giveaway is. The link will be shared on all our social media posts regarding this episode, so be sure to find us there and follow us. Or you can watch this episode on YouTube, where we'll provide a link in the episode, or you can just contact Harold directly at his website at Griffox. com. .

Tim Shoop:

I've said it earlier in the show grifoxcom. Excuse me, the beer's starting to hit me. I almost burped on air. G-r-i-f-f-o-x. com. That's Harold Lavric, be sure to mention that you saw it on Nerds on Tap. So, Harold, you can look into this camera on the left here. That's the one focused on you. I'm gonna let Tim focus on you for a minute. Talk to the audience about some special deals that you can give at least one lucky listener.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, sure, the first one, the first lucky listener who contacts me gets a free hour of coaching with me and just send me a message to contact at grifoxcomcom. So this lucky person gets a free coaching hour with me. For all the other listeners who like to contact me and like what I do, just message me here and offer a 20% discount of all the contracts here mentioning Nerds on Tap. And yeah, that's it.

Tim Shoop:

Well, we really appreciate you being on the show. We're not done yet. We're gonna recap the show. We got one more beer to drink and we're empty, so we'll go ahead and down this last beer. Tim, go ahead and tell us about the last beer on the show.

Tim Schaffer:

The last beer here is from 81 Bay Brewing Company in Tampa Florida is the real slow Irish Red and Irish Ale with subtle flavors. It is slightly malty with soft sweetness along a beautiful roasted dryness in the finish.

Harald Lavric:

Sounds great.

Tim Shoop:

Okay, I enjoy that one. It's got a little bit of a.

Tim Schaffer:

I like it a lot, actually very flavorable.

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, that's really a good one here. Reminds me a little bit of German malt beer. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it's really sweet.

Tim Shoop:

And tasty. It's funny when you travel across Germany me and my wife traveled across Germany and we'd stop at pubs along the way. It was always vice beer. Every pub on tap has vice beer. Is that the go-to for most local patrons over there Depends really on the area where you are, the vice beer.

Harald Lavric:

It's more in Bavaria, so that is their own, so that is their stuff here. The west of the country is more Pilsner, so Pilsner is like a lager. It's the same in the end here, or nearly the same here. I don't want to drive anybody mad here, but for me a lager and Pilsner it's really close. And then you have specific regions which have their own beer here, like in the Cologne area where I grew up.

Harald Lavric:

Here you have the Kölsch, so it's a little bit different here and in this area you also have called Alt beer. It's a dark beer here, like this one here, and you have a lot of them here. So you have those specific areas where you have different sorts of beer.

Tim Schaffer:

Do you have a personal favorite? Just gotta ask, you know.

Harald Lavric:

I really like beer, like the first one we had here, like those dark Bavarian beer here I think they are really good for me here because they have a lot of taste in it. Here it's like bread. Yeah, it's really. Wow, I like that here. I never liked really here the Pilsner and Lager style. Here I love more those dark beers, but not really a specific brand.

Tim Shoop:

So, just to recap today's show, we talked about a lot of things, folks. We touched on everything that you do, from strategic planning to change management to privacy management a little bit. We touched on that to your favorite, which was product and process management. And we talked about entrepreneurship. We talked about your struggles making that transition from Germany to the States and, on top of it, starting your business. And we talked about the minority chamber definitely something to check out I don't know if you want to touch on that one more time, but definitely something to check out and we talked a little bit about soccer and some analogies on how you can take sports and contribute the same dynamic principles to business. So I want to thank you for being on the show. Do you have any last comments for the audience or for myself? Did you enjoy yourself?

Harald Lavric:

Yeah, it was really awesome. When we met here some weeks ago here and started talking about Nero Nurtz on Tapia, I didn't imagine that it's so much fun. So I really thank you and really appreciate being on the show. It was awesome for me and, yes, looking forward to staying in touch with you.

Tim Shoop:

Well, thank you for sharing your valuable insights with our audience. You can learn more again at Griffoxcom G-R-I-F-F-O-Xcom. Next episode we'll be filming next week should come out. In the episode following you, we will have a gentleman named Gio from Taco's El Fluffy coming in. And I heard he's going to be bringing some delicious tacos with him.

Harald Lavric:

Let's go.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, tacos and beer. So we're going to have a good one there and he's going to talk about how he leverages tech to scale their family run taco business. So stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen, and we will toast to end the show. Here's to Nero Nurtz on Tap. Here's to Harold Lavric and his wonderful consulting business at Griffoxcom, Thank you. Thank you for being on the show. We really appreciate you. Thank you, Cheers my fellow nerds and beer lovers. Stay tuned for more Nerds on Tap. Oh, and one more thing Help us spread the nerdy love and the love for grape roots by sharing this podcast with your friends, colleagues and fellow beer enthusiasts. Let's build a community that embraces curiosity, innovation and the enjoyment of a cold one.

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