Teri: We have big, huge machines that are run by people who are blind. We have packing jobs, we have kitting jobs. So we have the whole gamut now from hand assembly through being a leader at a non-profit organization. All those things are available here at CABVI for people who are visually impaired. And we want to make sure that we continue to generate jobs at all levels and meet people who are visually impaired where they are.

Welcome to the Heard and Empowered podcast presented by the National Industries for the Blind. You’re not just a listener here, you’re a catalyst for change. Whether you’re blind, visually impaired or an ally, this is your ultimate resource for building a fulfilling career and an enriching life. We’re on a mission to shift perceptions, open hearts and minds and unlock unparalleled job opportunities for the BVI community. Ready to be heard and empowered? Let’s welcome our host, Dr. Hoby Wedler.

Hoby: Hello and welcome back to the Heard and Empowered podcast. Today, we’re so lucky and I’m so honored to have another conversation, a follow-up conversation with Teri Shirk, who’s the CEO of the Cincinnati Association for the Blind. Teri, welcome.

Teri: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Hoby: Glad to be back together.

Teri: Yeah, no doubt. It was such a great first conversation.

Hoby: Oh, so much fun. Teri and I first talked about Cincinnati Association for the Blind, all the great work they do from a training aspect and then on into manufacturing as well. But Teri’s organization is one of a few of the nonprofit agencies supported in the NIB network. And there’s a really interesting ability and opportunity that can happen within these nonprofit agencies that offer manufacturing services and plenty of other services as well, which employ blind folks and do what we’re here to do, which is reduce the unemployment rate, which currently sits right around 70% of the blind and visually impaired community.

And there’s a great ability to diversify sources of revenue within the nonprofit agencies. And we’re going to talk about how a nonprofit model can actually own and support a for-profit business model as well. And we’ll get into a few other sort of conversations and topics related to the diversification of revenue for these nonprofit agencies from the perspective and from the lens of Cincinnati Association for the Blind.

So, Teri, you guys recently, just, I guess about two years ago, acquired a freight company?

Teri: Yeah, about a year and a half ago we purchased Route Transportation and Logistics, which is out of Bradenton, Florida. And it’s been a really interesting ride with that, but it came out of our strategic plan and some very specific goals that we had about diversification.

Hoby: Interesting, diversification and basically employing more folks who are BVI, right?

Teri: Correct. What we looked at with our strategic plan, we’d always had a goal for a couple of years to diversify our revenue streams. We were 88% dependent on the AbilityOne® Program, so manufacturing, essentially manufacturing products for the government, although we do have some service contracts.

Hoby: And just so people know, sorry to interrupt, but just so people know, the AbilityOne Program is really the program run by NIB, which is a centralized nonprofit agency or a central nonprofit agency that works with associated nonprofit agencies like Cincinnati Association for the Blind to manufacture products for the federal government. And that came to be in 1938, essentially when FDR signed it into law with the Wagner-O’Day Act, which we talked a little bit about on previous episodes.

Anyway, I just wanted to help our listeners fully understand what AbilityOne is. And you said you were 88% dependent on AbilityOne funding.

Teri: Right, and that was presenting two problems for us. One is that it was our primary revenue stream, right? So 88% of our revenue. And we were very, at the time, very heavy into commodities, right? So we make mostly tape is our big thing, right? So there has been leakage in the AbilityOne program in terms of buying from Amazon is quick and easy, right? So we had seen our commodity sales within the program decreasing. So our revenue begins to decrease. And that then decreased our ability to employ people who are visually impaired.

And then the other thing is we were very, again, very heavy into this manufacturing, which meant that most of the jobs that we could offer people who are visually impaired were in a manufacturing setting. And we’d had this goal to diversify, and so we wanted to take a new spin at that.

So the strategic plan that we created in 2021, right after I joined the agency, talked about finding a new business opportunity that would allow us to employ more people who are visually impaired, specifically in knowledge-based jobs, and to generate revenue to support our vision services side of the agency.

So those were sort of the two sides, more employment and more funding, but the employment focused on those digital knowledge-based jobs.

Hoby: Interesting.

Teri: And we – Go ahead.

Hoby: And when you say vision-service part of your organization, you mean the training services?

Teri: Yes, rehabilitation. So orientation, mobility, travel training, independent living skills, adaptive technology, those sorts of things. So we have lots of community partners that support that. We only generate about half of the revenue we need to support all of the things we do. And so the other half of that, for us, we have a fairly large rehabilitation services, vision services division with around 30 staff. And we also have our information audio services, which this podcast will be part of, where we provide radio reading services and volunteer services to people in the community.

So both of those endeavors are supported by our business lines. And so it’s important for us financially to have those business lines be successful so that we can fulfill the mission. I always say the mission is without bounds. The only thing that keeps us from doing more is how much financial support we have to do that.

Hoby: Isn’t that the truth? The other thing this makes me think of is, you know how a lot of people think of nonprofits as these give-back organizations that don’t necessarily run themselves as businesses. And as a businessman myself, and talking to you who’s a business person yourself, I mean, nonprofits are businesses. And if there’s revenue that’s needed to get the work done, we need to think about how to earn that revenue.

Teri: Right. Nonprofit is a tax status, right? So it’s two sides of it, right? It’s a tax status, but the other piece is that we have the onus of two bottom lines. I heard years ago, and I wish I knew where I heard it because I can’t claim it for myself, but nonprofits work on two bottom lines. A financial bottom line like any other company, but we also have a bottom line, which is sustaining the mission.

So we are purpose-driven and everything we do really goes back to that mission of supporting quality of life for people who are visually impaired, either through services or employment. And we have that kind of qualifier all the time in every decision we make, along with what’s our financial bottom line. So we’re balancing those things.

It actually makes it a more complicated business, right? Because you don’t just have one parameter with which you’re making your decisions.

Hoby: Right. And it really makes something that’s quite precarious, quite frankly.

Teri: Yeah, correct. So we had been working on building two businesses organically. One was a commercial sign business and the other one is an office supply business. And at the time, we were about five years into the signage business and about 10 years into the office supply business.

And for any entrepreneurs out there, we know that building a new business takes a very, very long time unless you hit something lucky, right? So at the time, we were a number of years into organically growing business. And what we discussed with the board is that that just really wasn’t going to get us to the place we wanted to be fast enough.

What’s great about being part of a network and a collaboration of agencies is that you can learn from each other. And so we were able to start talking with our peers out there within the NIB network and saying, hey, what are you doing? And several of them had been using a broker out of Kansas, the DVS group, to look at bringing in new, primarily manufacturing, small manufacturers and bringing their product lines in and just incorporating that into their current business lines.

I do think there were some call center operations also, but more along the lines of, all right, we do this, let’s go find some business that multiplies our current capacities. And we set out to sort of mimic that model. And fairly quickly, though, DVS was able to bring us an opportunity with this freight company that they’d been working with, which was interesting because what these brokers did, they just made cold calls, right? And this happened to be a call they made to the owner at the time, and he bought the mission. He said, I love that. And it allows an owner to step away and leave a legacy, right?

Hoby: Yes.

Teri: So the owner was able to say, look, I can move what I’ve built over the last 20 years into a nonprofit, purpose-driven, right? So they stayed a corporation, but they could adapt a purpose-driven legacy, right? And I think that that appealed to him and the way he functioned as he wanted to move on in his career.

Hoby: So he was ready to sell anyway.

Teri: He didn’t know he was ready until he got that call.

Hoby: Interesting.

Teri: And then he was like, I want to think about that. And so we had some conversations and just clicked really well, I think, culturally in terms of what we both wanted to achieve. And I think it felt good to him to put this baby of his into the hands of a nonprofit and for it to become purpose-driven. So in May of ’22 is when we finalized that purchase.

And I will say it is not for the light at heart. You know, I learned a lot.

Hoby: Mergers and acquisitions are tough.

Teri: Yes, and it is something I had not gone through in the past. But, boy, you learn just by being thrown right into the fire of it. And you learn really quickly to rely on your accountants and your lawyers and to work really closely with them. Again, so in May of ’22 we were able to close that.

I do want to say that going into that, we had a good idea of what we wanted and then we had to establish what’s that criteria, right? So we had those minimal criteria of creating jobs, knowledge-based jobs and creating revenue. But as we went into it, we said, okay, what’s attractive about this particular company?

And the first thing we had to do is make sure that they were going to have accessible software, because we’ve all experienced a company coming to us and saying, hey, we would love to work with you, we need employees. Do you have employees? And then we go and look at their software and it’s just not accessible, right? And they’re not in a place to put in hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it accessible or tens of thousands.

So first thing is we went to another sister agency, so Bosma over in Indianapolis does a lot with Salesforce, and Route has a Salesforce platform. So they were able to say, yep, this is very accessible for somebody who’s visually impaired or blind. So that was one thing that was like we’ve got to have that ticked off.

And the other piece that, you know, obviously all the financial that you would do in any acquisition. But the other thing is that during Covid, Route went completely remote. And so all of their employees who, over the two years in between when Covid started and when we purchased, they had moved completely remote and their staff were in Michigan and Atlanta, and Kansas. And so it allowed us to say, wow, we can hire people who are visually impaired and eliminate the transportation barrier.

Hoby: And anywhere in the country.

Teri: That’s right, anywhere in the country. So we could find the best candidates anywhere in the country and they could work from their homes. That was already well established. They already had a culture that supported that. They already had the systems that supported that. And we know in terms of employment for people who are visually impaired, transportation is one of –

Hoby: It’s the biggest barrier.

Teri: Oh, it’s huge. We just finished a community needs assessment, and as with every time we do one, transportation is the number one concern for people who are blind and visually impaired. And so these jobs, digital-knowledge-based, completely accessible in a Salesforce platform, which we love, and totally remote.

Hoby: I love that.

Teri: And a growing company that could support revenue back to support our mission.

Hoby: Totally. And it’s interesting when we think about the due diligence that any company would have to do with a merger and acquisition, and of course the financial stuff comes to mind. But here, the last thing you want to do is buy a company and then realize that part of the mainstay of how it runs is inaccessible.

Now, I want to go back to these brokers, someone like DVS. Are they specifically brokering for blindness agencies?

Teri: No. And in fact, it’s interesting, like with DVS that, you know, they had their whole business, but they started working with one NIB agency. And what’s great about working with a broker that’s worked with our sister agencies is that they start to understand all those parameters we were just talking about and they buy into the mission, right?

Hoby: Right.

Teri: So when they’re talking, when they’re just cold calling, now they understand how to present that mission and to find companies that can morph into being a purpose-driven company as opposed to a bottom line, simply a bottom line driven.

Hoby: And the owner of the of the business, literally when he was called, decided that in return for real market value for the company, he was excited. Not only willing, but eager to basically hold this in his legacy that he is helping essentially decrease the unemployment rate of the blind and visually impaired community.

Teri: Correct. And I think that’s essential to making these kinds of acquisitions work, is that particularly here the owner, Craig Cappello, stayed involved for about a year after the acquisition and helped transition the culture of the company. So they’ve got to go back, they’ve got long-term employees. It was never, you know, with some of the acquisitions that have happened with NIB, they’re just bringing in the product line, right? They’re not bringing in all the employees.

Hoby: Correct. Yes.

Teri: So we brought in, at the time I think it was about 36 employees. We had no intention of saying, okay, we’re going to let all these employees go and backfill with people who are blind.

Hoby: Yeah.

Teri: So it was a growth industry, a growth company. And we agreed that growth and natural attrition would be how we would begin to introduce people who are visually impaired. And I would say for the first 9, 10 months, that it went very well. We got our training programs together. We worked with NSITE, and I know you’ve talked with Jonathan Lucus.

Hoby: Absolutely. NSITE is amazing.

Teri: Those of you who listen to this podcast routinely will know that NSITE is a great training program for helping people who are visually impaired through NIB.

Hoby: Sure.

Teri: And they worked with us on building out a curriculum for training. And we hired an individual, Porsha, who is wonderful. She works for the company. She has very low vision, works from her home here in Cincinnati and is a very successful load coordinator for Route.

Hoby: Incredible.

Teri: So her job is to track from the time the load is assigned to a carrier, so a truck. We’re a freight broker, right? So we’re kind of the middleman.

Hoby: Route doesn’t have their own fleet of trucks.

Teri: Right. We are not asset-based. So her job is just to make sure that driver gets where he’s supposed to go, picks up the load and then gets to where… So she may talk to him 10 different times, or her, in between getting the assignment and delivering the load. And she’s just making sure our customers are satisfied and that the carrier gets a service.

Hoby: That’s incredible.

Teri: So she’s doing an amazing job. I would love to be able to tell you that we have six or eight people, but unfortunately all of us, and this is where diversification is essential for nonprofits, this past year, as we all know, the environment we’re all working in economically has been a struggle. Oh, it’s not been easy at all. And the freight business has really suffered in that because people are using inventory that they already have. And so there’s a lot of empty trucks out there.

So these are the risks, right? You go out there and you make these decisions. We are still in a very good place with this acquisition in terms of we’re fine financially, but we haven’t been able to expand our workforce over the last year because of that.

Hoby: But that comes with time.

Teri: That will come. You’ve got to remember these kinds of decisions are big decisions and they’re long-term. Again, we’re looking for dividends. This is a for-profit company, so they pay dividends to the nonprofit. I want to be clear though, because anybody looking at this, if you are a nonprofit and you’re going to own a for-profit, there’s a lot to be learned about. We don’t pay taxes, right? So nonprofits don’t pay taxes, for-profits do. So we have a tax obligation.

Hoby: Absolutely.

Teri: And even those dividends that you receive, there’s a lot of complications with that because those can be considered unearned revenue, so we decided it was an all-cash deal. And we did that because… and I know this is probably too much to tell.

Hoby: No, no, no, this is great.

Teri: But if a nonprofit buys a for-profit and accepts dividends, whatever level of debt you’ve used to buy that company, that level is then your dividends are taxable. So if we had done 50% debt, then 50% of our dividends would have been taxable. And that’s something we learned in the 11th hour. So when I talk to my peers I’m like, remember that.

Hoby: Yeah. Oh my gosh, yeah.

Teri: Because it’s a small detail that has big, long-term consequences, right?

Hoby: And if you pay that debt off, of course, that percentage of taxable revenue goes down. But this is the other crazy thing, right, Teri, is how I feel like we can learn a lot in college, I feel like we can learn a lot in school, but whether you’re a blind or visually impaired person on the job, or you’re a company like Cincinnati Association of the Blind, buying another company, acquiring another company, you learn so much by doing.

Teri: Right.

Hoby: It’s just amazing how much comes out that way.

Teri: Yeah. The great thing about being in the freight business too, and being in this network, is that our network of agencies has come to the table with us. So we are actually moving freight for 22 other NIB agencies now. So it’s great. So like VisionCorps over in Pennsylvania, we move all of their rice, they put rice packets together for FEMA. So we move all their rice from Arkansas. We are moving a lot of AbilityOne products in terms of taking things that we make to the end vendors, like Ascendant Office Supplies. So if somebody makes calendars or blotters, we pick those up and deliver those to the end user.

So again, 22 out of the 50 or so NIB agencies right now are already using us to the tune of around a couple million dollars in revenue to Route. And what we’re doing now is, you know, the goal was, I will say, for Route to become a nonprofit at some time. And that is a steep goal, especially when you have that many individuals who are not disabled and not blind already employed.

Hoby: What is the reasoning behind that goal? Taxation?

Teri: Well, one, taxes, yeah. Yeah, that’s a big piece. We’re at 21 or 24%, you know, 21% corporate tax.

Hoby: That adds up.

Teri: So, obviously, being able to use that revenue back into the mission would be fantastic. And the other thing is just to solidify that mission and make it very clear. I believe, and I’ve read before, and again, I wish I had the reference for it, but I have read that people and companies are willing to switch brands in order to support purpose-driven organizations.

Hoby: Absolutely. More and more in this day and age, too.

Teri: Correct. Right. And companies have social responsibility. DEIA goes far beyond just minority-owned businesses now. It’s that whole social responsibility. And what we want to be able to say is the freight is being moved by a nonprofit, right? And you’re supporting that nonprofit.

So, CABVI has its own brokerage now, which is CABVI Logistics. And we have what’s called a co-broker agreement with Route. And our goal, in time, is to actually continue to build the CABVI Logistics brand with employees and use the Route organization as it exists today with their traditional shipping, but to lean into the systems.

They have amazing, again, Salesforce systems. They have a great executive and leadership team there. And folks that know this business all the way through. From whether it’s accounting or load coordination or carrier reps, they know this business. And so to use that business to support the growth of the nonprofit side, rather than trying to convert a nonprofit into a for-profit, which is, one, it’s nebulous.

Hoby: A tall order.

Teri: Yes. And it’s nebulous. There aren’t any IRS guidelines that tell you how to do that. So we’re sort of pursuing this other path. And what that is allowing us to do, it also opens us to things like the State of Ohio freight contract.

Hoby: Yeah, fantastic.

Teri: So we can move freight for the State of Ohio. So, for example, the Department of Health, if there was an emergency in the state of Ohio right now, like a tornado, we would be their call for moving all of their supplies, right? We are now their first call.

Hoby: Officially you are, that is a contract that you have.

Teri: Correct, that is our contract.

Hoby: So the reason, I just want to make sure I understand and listeners understand the reason for the middleman, if you will, of CABVI logistics. So that effectively is a nonprofit because it’s under the umbrella of CABVI, and that company manages the for-profit. But how is that any different than just having CABVI the umbrella nonprofit –

Teri: So CABVI will actually – So Route remains a subsidiary of CABVI. CABVI Logistics is sort of a DBA. It’s just a DBA. But the difference is that converting a for-profit to a nonprofit, you have to show that the total existence really is about that mission, right? That the propensity of what they’re doing is about the mission.

By starting the CABVI Logistics, we’re starting as a nonprofit already. We don’t have to justify to the IRS, right, that we’re doing a purpose-driven. So we can start there by hiring our direct labor, being carrier reps and load coordinators, as being people who are visually impaired, our leadership team there would be people who are visually impaired. So very much mimicking, we have an office supply company.

Hoby: But essentially this is, I don’t mean to interrupt, but essentially this is a way to sell Route, which is the freight company as a nonprofit.

Teri: Right, it allows us to do our logistics work as a nonprofit.

Hoby: Okay. Now, you were talking about the office supply company, which is also fascinating to me.

Teri: Yeah, so it’s sort of mirroring that. We started that about 11 years ago now. And for the first nine and a half years, we still had not achieved a million dollars’ worth of business. Again, entrepreneurs out there understand it takes a very long time.

Hoby: It does. We’re in the marathon game, not the sprint game.

Teri: Right. But because of our nonprofit status, we were able to enter into a contract with the State of Ohio to deliver office supplies. So we are now the office supply contractor for the State of Ohio. That happened about a year and a half ago as well, two years ago.

Hoby: Congratulations.

Teri: And we have added that now, last year we added furniture to that. So VIE Ability office supplies will be about a $10 million business this year.

Hoby: Wow.

Teri: Yeah. And that is because of our nonprofit status, but you also have to remember that eight out of the 10 employees that work for VIE Ability, including our director, one of our managers, all of our operations support, and all of our customer service reps are people who are visually impaired or blind. Yeah.

Hoby: And that’s totally mission positive.

Teri: Totally, right. And that’s where CABVI Logistics will mirror that in terms of, I hope, growth, right? And where the concentration on making sure that our leadership and all of our support are, as often as possible, people who are visually impaired.

So within VIE Ability we have a delivery driver, obviously, that is not somebody who’s visually impaired at this point. But other than that, we put our time and energy into making sure that those are highly accessible jobs and that we recruit and hire people who are visually impaired.

So we talked about 70% of people who are visually impaired are unemployed or underemployed. We have a past elementary school teacher who is our manager. We have a past warehouse manager who is our director. We have a past nurse who is an account manager. These are folks who lost their jobs because they’re visually impaired and they didn’t want to go into a manufacturing job. They wanted to stay in that kind of skilled work, and VIE Ability has been able to offer them that. So that’s the direction.

Hoby: Talk about living the mission.

Teri: Yeah, right. And that’s the direction we want to go with CABVI Logistics. So for-profit acquisition that becomes a nonprofit endeavor whose primary focus is to employ people who are visually impaired in professional, knowledge-based jobs. That was quintessentially the objective, and I feel like that’s where we’re going to land over the next few years.

Hoby: And what a visionary strategy and aligning so well with the mission of the organization. I really, I commend the strategic planning team, I’m sure which you were a part of, to design that visionary approach.

Let me take a step back here. So VIE Ability, the office supplies company, started itself as a nonprofit because it was a subsidiary of CABVI. So it doesn’t need any sort of DBA or anything like that because it is a nonprofit in and of itself.

Teri: VIE Ability is a DBA of CABVI, so they are part of CABVI. So I want to kind of circle back, we talked about diversification at the beginning. So again, before we bought Route, before VIE Ability really got a hold of growth, we were 88% dependent, as we said. We were 63% dependent this year on AbilityOne and expect that as Route and the transportation business comes back over this year, by mid-year we expect this economy to sort of start to change, that we will fall below 50% dependent within the next two years.

Hoby: Teri, that is incredible. And you were 88% just two years ago. And that’s something, as an entrepreneur myself, I think is absolutely mind-boggling. Being able to go from 88 to 63, that’s 25 percent less reliant on one thing.

Teri: Yeah, it’s been a great ride. And I’m just so looking forward to 2024 being a better, stronger year for everybody. Nonprofits, just everybody suffered in ’23, I think. And it still continues. And nonprofits, it’s a hard business to be in. And especially having gone through Covid and you want to be serving people and then the economy, there’s a lot of stress to it. And I’m looking forward to what we’re anticipating. You know, they’ve already lowered the interest rate once this year, let’s hope that continues.

Hoby: May 2024 be an even better year for all of us and all the nonprofit agencies supported by the NIB. Really by NIB and the AbilityOne program. But seriously, with any – Just back to the diversification conversation, I mean, this is something that every business, whether it’s a mission-driven nonprofit or a for-profit, you want to have a wide umbrella and a fairly diverse income stream so that if one thing fails, you have others to fall back on.

And the other thing that’s interesting about the employment of the blind and visually impaired community that is offered by agencies like yours is that, I know you’re not there yet, but there’s a dream of not needing that earned revenue anymore, of being totally self-sufficient.

Teri: Yeah, sure. And I know that there are probably NIB agencies out there that are doing that. We’re committed to our rehabilitation services that we talked about and to having those be a significant part of what we do every day, along with employment of people who are visually impaired. And that commitment will probably require long-term support from our business lines.

But with the addition of Route and dividends there, it makes it a whole lot easier. So one of the first things we did after we bought Route was that we were able to employ a full-time doctor on staff, an ophthalmologist, and we had not been able to do that in the past. So those kinds of immediate changes can happen when you change your revenue stream.

Hoby: Well, and they drive the mission of helping people figure out how to deal with blindness so much more real.

One more question about VIE Ability just while I have you, which is I know that you sell, through the AbilityOne program, office supplies into the federal government and that sort of thing. That is a different line of business than VIE Ability, right?

Teri: Right. I think that’s the other point I want to make sure that I make is that you diversify, but you still have to be looking at all your business lines all the time for growth opportunities, right?

So I think we originally had a strategy of we’re going to reduce our dependency on AbilityOne by not taking any more AbilityOne and just growing the commercial or the state side. I disagreed with that strategy. I think you grow your AbilityOne, but you grow other things a little faster, right?

Hoby: Absolutely.

Teri: So we continue to look for avenues. There’s a whole process by which you work with the government to add new product lines, right? So we do, for instance, 65 different tapes. We’ve done those same 65 different, you know, duct tape, packaging tape, filament tape for the government for a very long time. And we just introduced 32 new tapes and we are adding stretch wrap and pallet wrap.

So we’re going to continue to grow AbilityOne and our manufacturing because the people with visual impairments mirror everybody in the community, right? So their needs, wants, desires in terms of jobs. So we have very skilled jobs in manufacturing. We have big, huge machines that are run by people who are blind. We have packing jobs, we have kitting jobs. So we have the whole gamut now from hand assembly through being a leader at a nonprofit organization.

All those things are available here at CABVI for people who are visually impaired. And we want to make sure that we continue to generate jobs at all levels and meet people who are visually impaired where they are.

Hoby: That’s so important and so beautiful. Is some of the tape that’s made in the office supplies division sold into VIE Ability?

Teri: Through the state, yes. But in general we have about 80,000 products that we sell through VIE Ability, it’s a full complement of office supplies. Whereas with AbilityOne, we sell very specific tape to the government and paper products to the government.

Hoby: And I love this idea. You know, it’s so common for people in high-level business to say, okay, we want to reduce our reliance on this income, this revenue stream. Let’s just stop growing it, right? But that’s such a mistake. If it’s there and it’s out there, don’t hesitate to grow it, but grow other things faster. I love what you said there, Teri.

Teri: We’ve changed our mindset the last few years to be very innovation-focused and focused on opportunities. And so I think that’s culturally been a big shift for us. So we’re always working. You got to work 10 or 12 opportunities or 20 so that one of them comes to fruition, right?

Hoby: That’s the entrepreneurial spirit. Well, this has been so incredibly insightful. I think anyone interested in business, anyone interested in the work of blindness agencies like Cincinnati Association for the Blind, is going to find this conversation absolutely fascinating. So I just want to say thank you so much for your expertise.

Teri: Well, thank you. I appreciate talking to you. I appreciated the first time and this has been great. So thanks for the chance to talk with you.

Hoby: And as usual, if you don’t mind if we put your email address in the show notes in case people want to learn more about this, I’d love to be able to do that.

Teri: Absolutely. All right.

Hoby: Teri, thank you so much.

Teri: Thank you, sir.

Hoby: It’s been a pleasure, talk soon.

Teri: All right, bye bye.

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