Best Financial Consulting Firms North Carolina


bill moyers:welcome to you and the new year. an election year for every seat in the house of representatives,one third of the senate, 36 governors, and thousands of state legislators. now, chancesare you're not hearing a lot about those races yet, but in this era of gridlock and dysfunctionin washington, the battle to determine america's agenda is being fought in state politics. so on this first weekend of the year, we'relooking at one state that embodies the conflicts roiling the whole country. on one side: agovernment controlled by the most right-wing conservatives of the republican party, whoare remaking their state in their image, fueled by the wealth and power of one very rich man.on the other side: a very vocal mix of citizens

whose resistance turned the first day of everyweek into a "moral monday." join us for "state of conflict: north carolina." announcer:funding is provided by: carnegie corporation of new york, celebrating100 years of philanthropy, and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. the kohlberg foundation. independent production fund, with supportfrom the partridge foundation, a john and polly guth charitable fund. the clements foundation.

park foundation, dedicated to heighteningpublic awareness of critical issues. the herb alpert foundation, supporting organizationswhose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. the bernard and audre rapoport foundation. the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation,committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. anne gumowitz. the betsy and jesse fink foundation. the hkh foundation.

barbara g. fleischman. and by our sole corporate sponsor, mutualof america, designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's whywe're your retirement company. bill moyers:a monday in july. raleigh, north carolina. a procession moves toward the state house. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:forward together. crowd at the nc general assembly:not one step back. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:when it comes to education what do we do? crowd at the nc general assembly:we fight, we fight, we fight.

rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:when it comes to healthcare what do we do? chief weaver at the nc general assembly:my name is chief weaver of the general assembly police. this is unlawful assembly.â  you havefive minutes to disperse and leave the property. bill moyers:once inside they block doors and passageways, knowing it will get them arrested. they arepart of a movement that's become known as moral mondays. wolf blitzer on cnn:thousands rallying, protesting at the north carolina state house for weeks. newscaster on msnbc:it's been called moral mondays, it's a protest

against the state's government. newscaster on cnn:at the moral mondays protests here in raleigh, north carolina. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:in a state like north carolina, in the south, turn to your neighbor, say, "we in the south."â  crowd at moral mondays protest:we in the south. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:tell the media, this ain't wisconsin.â  crowd at moral mondays protest:this ain't wisconsin. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:this is the south.

crowd at moral mondays protest:this is the south. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:where justice was hammered out.â  crowd at moral mondays protest:where justice was hammered out. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:where freedom was hammered out.â  crowd at moral mondays protest:where freedom was hammered out. newscaster 1 on wral:more than a dozen protesters are still in police custody, hours after taking a standwith... bill moyers:the protests began with a small gathering on a monday in april. then, their numbersstarted growing, monday after monday.

newscaster 2 on wral:each week there are more arrests than the week before. tonight there were 49. bill moyers:the rallies kept growing through the spring and the hot carolina summer. newscaster 3 on wral:the 13th wave of the moral monday protests. crowds grew so large police had to shut downa portion of lane street in downtown raleigh. bill moyers:by august, citizens were turning out in town after town across the state. newscaster on abc 13:ashville police telling us 5,000 or more gathered

here in downtown asheville. bill moyers:and the nation was taking notice. newscaster on fox:moral monday organizers say the media attention they're generating outside the general assemblymakes up for much of the political power they lack on the inside. bill moyers:the protesters are challenging a relentless right-wing crusade to remake the laws of thestate. newscaster on cbs:in north carolina, they are trying a new way to get people back to work.â  they're cuttingoff unemployment benefits.

newscaster on msnbc:north carolina passed one of the most restrictive voter suppression bills. newscaster 1 on abc 11:lawmakers in the statehouse and senate just voted to prohibit expansion of medicaid. newscaster 2 on abc 11:executions will soon resume here in north carolina. newscaster on nbc-charlotte:dropping the state income tax and adding a higher sales... bill moyersfor the first time in almost 150 years, republicans

control the governorship and both houses ofthe legislature, where they have a veto-proof majority. and they are using their monopolyof power to enact laws the "charlotte observer"â says "will touch every north carolinian'sâ pocketbook,every student'sâ classroomâ and every voter's experience at the polls." bob zellner:the extreme right-wing, they have overstepped so far. vicki ryder:they seem to be targeting those who can least afford to pay for these changes.â  woman 1 at moral mondays protest:we've just kicked 71,000 of our neighbors

off of the benefits that keep roofs over theirheads and food on their tables. man 1 at moral mondays protest:what they are doing to public education is a travesty. woman 2 at moral mondays protest:the legislature wants to lower the age that we can be tried as adults to thirteen. crowd at moral mondays protest:day or night, we stand for what is right. woman 3 at moral mondays protest:we are here to save the soul of our state. rosanell eaton at moral mondays protest:at the age of 92, i am fed up, and—and fired up. i said fed up.

crowd at moral mondays protest:fed up. rosanell eaton at moral mondays protest:fired up. crowd at moral mondays protest:fired up. rosanell eaton at moral mondays protest:fed up. rosanell eaton at moral mondays protest:thank you so very much. adam hochberg:north carolina has in some ways a bipolar political culture. bill moyers:adam hochberg teaches journalism at the university of north carolina in chapel hill.

adam hochberg:a lot of people from outside north carolina, when you say north carolina, the first thingthey think of is jesse helms who was of course a stalwart of the hard right and was our senatorhere for more than twenty years. sen. jesse helms:homosexuals, lesbians, disgusting people marching in our streets, demanding all sorts of things,including the right to marry each other. adam hochberg:on the other hand, north carolina is the home of a lot of progressive politicians. at thesame time that jesse helms was in the senate in the eighties, terry sanford was his counterpartin the senate who is one of best-known southern progressive liberals.

sen. terry sanford:we need to remind ourselves that protest, even obnoxious and blood-boiling protest,is the fundamental ingredient of a free people. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:our state constitution says ... bill moyers:today the state's progressive leader is william barber. before the right-wing takeover, hiscoalition had pushed for a string of successful reforms, including raising the minimum wageand measures increasing voter participation. rev. william barber:because this right to vote, and the fight for it, is not just political, it's personal. adam hochberg:reverend william barber is the head of the

north carolina naacp. he is a, he is a manif you're ever in the room with him, you'll know he's in the room. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:and we have come to serve notice that we will unleash every political legal and moral strategythat we can to create the new south. but we will not go back. rev. william barber:well, fundamentally america constantly finds itself in, where the question is a moral question.how are we going to live out our deepest moral principles of doing justice, loving your neighbor,and what does that mean in terms of our laws and our public policy?

bill moyers:barber was arrested on the first moral monday back in april. on the news he declared hewas protesting an avalanche of extremist policies. rev. william barber on wral:that threaten health care, that threaten education, that threaten the poor. sue sturgis:one of the things that particularly upset people is we saw cuts to long-term unemploymentassistance. bill moyers:journalist sue sturgis covers north carolina politics for the progressive institute forsouthern studies, in durham. sue sturgis:it wasn't a lot of money in the first place,

but it was a safety net. and so one of thethings we've seen as part of the agenda that's now being played out in raleigh is constantsnips and cuts and tears to that social safety net. it's no longer a priority for the peoplewho control the state. newscaster on abc 11:31 yeses and 17 nos, the vote tonight on senate bill 4 to block the expansion of medicaid. bill moyers:the republican refusal to expand medicaid meant denying health insurance to half a millionpeople. rev. william barber:how can you stand up and say i just cut 500,000 people's access to medicaid and it's the moralthing to do?

dr. charles van der horst:they decided that they're not going to expand medicaid. and this was going to do great damageto my patients. and so i take that very personally that i'm not a person who just takes careof hearts and livers, but i need to take care of their, the whole body and the whole person. bill moyers:dr. charles van der horst is an infectious disease specialist at the university of northcarolina. dr. charles van der horst:what had happened is that april 29th, reverend william barber, had had a rally against thesepolicies. so i thought, i should check this out. so on monday, may 6, i went along andended up doing civil disobedience and getting

arrested. woman in crowd at moral mondays protest:thank you dr. van der horst. dr. charles van der horst:and i deliberately made some decisions in subsequent rallies that i, i stand next tohim. i wanted there to be an old white guy in a white coat with a stethoscope standingnext to him. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:we're going to walk together. crowd at moral mondays protest:walk together. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:and go forward. crowd at moral mondays protest:and go forward.

rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:until. crowd at moral mondays protest:until. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:love is lifted. crowd at moral mondays protest:love is lifted. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:justice is realized. crowd at moral mondays protest:justice is realized. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:don't ask us... ari berman:he's trying to build a multi-issue, multi-racial coalition in north carolina.

bill moyers:ari berman has been covering the moral mondays movement. ari berman:there's this feeling that social justice is under attack and that people have to get inthe streets to make people care, to dramatize what's happening in the state. crowd at moral mondays protest:same struggle, same fight. chant leaders at moral mondays protest:gay, straight, black or white. bill moyersthe conservative ideology the moral monday protesters are fighting isn't new. what'snew is that just about everything on the right-wing

wish list for the past four decades is atlast becoming reality. just as art pope planned. bill maher on real time with bill maher:what happened in north carolina? well, his name is art pope. that's what happened. art pope:i'm art pope and i'm a job creator. crowd protesting art popehey hey, ho ho, art pope has got to go! bill moyers:in public, the man most often fingered as the mastermind of the right-wing take-overpresents himself as just a low-key member of the governor's cabinet, running the numberslike an earnest accountant: art pope on wral:this budget anticipates revenue neutral tax

reform. bill moyers:he's self-effacing. newscaster on abc 11:are you the rainmaker of the north carolina republican party? art pope on abc 11:no the voters are the rainmaker of the north carolina republican party. bill moyersbut art pope wields so much power here that he's been called everything from kingmakerto king. pope is very, very rich. and he has shelled out so many millions of dollars forconservative causes and republican candidates

that his adversaries accuse him of buyingthe state government. pope claims that's not what the money's for. art pope on wral:of course i think it has an impact. but the impact is educating the voters on the issuesso they hear both sides of the issues not just one side. jane mayer:there are wealthy individuals who have outsized influence in many states. usually there'sa handful of them. bill moyers:jane mayer, of "the new yorker," was the first national journalist to investigate pope'spower.

jane mayer:but he really dominates the landscape in north carolina in a way that nobody else does. bill moyers:that's because he practices the golden rule of modern politics: he with the gold, rules.and art pope has the money: his own, his company's money, and money from the john william popefoundation, named for his wealthy businessman father. that single foundation has spent some46 million dollars on a network of advocacy groups and think tanks bent on steering northcarolina far to the right. sound familiar? sue sturgis:when people talk about art pope, someone who's often invoked are the koch brothers, davidand charles koch, who also run a privately

held company and spend a great deal to promotetheir particular brand of libertarian politics. and he's very close to the kochs. he servedas a board member of americans for prosperity, which is a conservative policy advocacy groupthat was founded and is funded by the koch brothers. jane mayer:in some ways, art pope is sort of a, a junior-sized version of the koch brothers. he has whatsome people call kind of a factory production line for his ideology. the people that workfor his think tanks are on the radio, they have websites, they have publications thatare statewide. they get their message out all the time.

billl moyers:like this message, aimed right at the moral mondays protesters. francis de luca in money monday, not moralmonday: backed by a supportive liberal media, hundredshave been arrested for disrupting the state legislature. bill moyers:it accuses protest leaders of marching to protect access to government handouts. these organizations are fighting to keep theirspot at the public trough. welcome to money mondays.

bill moyers:francis de luca once ran the north carolina chapter of the koch brothers' americans forprosperity. he's now head of the john william pope civitas institute. francis de luca:so civitas institute is heavily funded by the pope foundation, but i can tell you havingnow worked at civitas for seven years and run it for almost six years, art pope's controlover civitas is very little. he likes policy. i always try to describe art as a policy wonk.he believes in a vigorous debate, even among his different groups. if you check, you willnotice that our groups do not always agree. the groups he's fund do not always agree onpolicy.

bill moyers:perhaps not always, but certainly often enough. for example, on cutting tax rates for corporationsand the rich, which is exactly what the state recently did. by 2015, the highest earningnorth carolinians will pay almost 26 percent less in income taxes than they did in 2013.corporations will pay over 27 percent less. there's also been a repeal of the estate tax,which applied only to people so wealthy, that just 23 families had paid it in the year 2011.when corporate and wealthy interests are at stake, art pope is right at home. where did art pope get the money -- and theideas -- that have reshaped the politics of north carolina?

the story begins when he was young man. jane mayer:he was a very intellectual kid and very early on he went to a summer program that was runby the cato institute, the libertarian think tank and he was quite swept up with libertarianideology and the ideas of ayn rand. once he was through college and he went to duke lawschool he eventually became the general counsel in the family firm, and then he rose in thefirm. bill moyers:all the way to the top, becoming ceo of that family firm. sue sturgis:it's a privately held company called variety

wholesalers. it was started by his forebears.it's a discount retail chain. adam hochberg:these are usually lower end discount stores than, than a target or even a walmart or ak-mart store. they go by a variety of different names. one of the largest chains he owns iscalled rose's. there's one called maxway. he has great personal wealth and great familywealth. jane mayer:and he had great political ambitions. sue sturgis:pope served in the legislature for several terms back in the 1980s and into the '90s. adam hochberg:art is a, he's a very bright man and he knows

the state budget and he knows numbers insideand out, but he is not what you call the stereotypic political candidate. you know the smilingtelegenic politician. and after a couple years he ran for lieutenant governor and lost, badly.and he realized he was not going to influence north carolina politics by being lieutenantgovernor or governor. he was just unlikely to get elected. bill moyers:turns out he didn't need to get elected to win elections. he just had to put his moneyin where it counted. he first set out to purge moderate republicans from the state assemblyby supporting candidates to their right in gop primaries. and then, in 20l0 he took onthe democrats, who played right into his hands.

sue sturgis:the democrats were in disarray in 2010. there had been a series of scandals in the party.corruption scandals. bill moyers:a democratic governor had pledâ guilty to a felony campaign finance charge. and thatwasn't all. adam hochberg:we had a democratic speaker of the house go to prison on a bribery scheme. i mean therewas a lot of, a lot of sleaze in the democratic party. we saw a backlash against presidentobama and obamacare, which is the same thing we saw nationally. we saw frustration overa lousy economy, which was the same thing we saw nationally.

sue sturgis:also that election was right after the citizens united supreme court decision that openedup the door to outside money. bill moyers:that citizens united decision, the handiwork of the conservative majority on the supremecourt, enabled corporations and individuals to spend unlimited amounts of often untraceablemoney—what's now called "dark money." jane mayer:he provided a perfect example of how the landscape had changed after the citizens united supremecourt ruling. art pope on c-span:well, break those numbers up. jane mayer:he saw the opportunities and he had the cash

because of his family fortune. art pope isa very smart man who is, almost thinks about the world almost like an engineer. and it'sas if somebody had looked at the map in every single district and figured out what it wouldtake to get republican control. and so he along with some of the people he was workingwith targeted legislative races to pour money into. bill moyers:one of their vessels was a front group called real jobs nc. co-founded by art pope, andbankrolled by one of his companies and a national republican group, its real job was to demolishthe other side. and in 20l0 it went on the attack.

announcer in real jobs nc campaign ad 1:putting raleigh liberals first. announcer in real jobs nc campaign ad 2:their high taxes and wasteful spending cost us jobs. announcer in real jobs nc campaign ad 3:her priorities are costing us jobs. announcer in real jobs nc campaign ad 4:real jobs nc sponsored this ad. sue sturgis:that year he and his family and also the outside spending groups that he's associated withspent 2.2 million on state legislative races. jane mayer:which in the national scheme of things is not a tremendous amount of money, but in thecontext of a state, and in the context of

state legislative races where really there'snot usually that much money spent, it—it was decisive. newscaster on wral:tonight's shift in power is historic. the republicans have taken control of both chambersfor the first... newscaster 1 on abc 11:republicans are now in control for the first time in more than a century. newscaster 2 on abc 11:so how big of a role does pope himself think he played? art pope on abc 11:i supported 19 republican legislative candidates

that i contributed to and 17 of those won. newscaster 2 on abc 11:that's a pretty good track record. art pope on abc 11:i'm glad. adam hochberg:the 2010 election, republicans got control of both houses of the state legislature, firsttime since just after the civil war. sue sturgis:and the republicans were very smart. you know they, they realized that there was an opportunitythere. whoever controlled the legislature in 2010 would control the state's politicalfuture. bill moyers:the winners would control the future because

2010 was a census year -- the first in a decade. adam hochberg:that means they get to control the redistricting process. so as you can imagine, that's anopportunity for legislators to do some pretty self-serving things, and it was the same thingwhen democrats were in charge. with computers nowadays you can get very specific about everyhouse that's included in the district, and you can know, what's a republican neighborhood,what's a democratic neighborhood, so you can look up at an individual house and say, okay,the man of the house is a republican, and the lady of the house is a democrat, and isee they have one adult son living at home and he's also a republican, i mean you cando it to that level. and you can draw districts

in such a way that pretty much foretells whichparty is going to control that district. and what the republicans did was draw districtsas best they could to elect republicans. bill moyers:they had help, according to the investigative group propublica. help in the form of darkmoney from outside sources and republican operatives down from washington to help figureout the boundaries most favorable to their party. but there was someone else in the room,too. art pope. one person present told "propublica:" "we worked together at the workstation ... hesat next to me." when the next election came around, 2012, the gerrymandering worked likea charm. adam hochberg:the 2012 election occurs and it is the best

election for republicans in modern historyin north carolina. they take not just control of both houses of the state legislature, andthey had not done that in a century, but they take overwhelming control. they take a veto-proofmajority control of both houses of the legislature. they also get the governor's mansion backfor the first time in 20 years. gov. pat mccrory in campaign ad:let's forget about politics for a while, and think about us. that's what we tried in charlottewhen i was mayor. bill moyers:as mayor of charlotte, pat mccrory was known to be a fiscal conservative, but on otherissues, fairly moderate for a southern republican. gov. pat mccrory in campaign ad:i'm pat mccrory and i'm running for governor.

adam hochberg:governor mccrory in one of the debates before the 2012 election was specifically asked bysomebody on the panel in a televised debate, would you sign any measures to further restrictabortion in north carolina, and he said flat out no. debate questioner laura leslieif you're elected governor, what further restrictions on abortion would you agree to sign? we'llstart with you, mr. mccrory. gov. pat mccrory in 2012 gubernatorial debate:none. debate questioner laura leslie:all right. bill moyers:but once in office mccrory swung hard to the

right, beginning with the casual announcementof a key appointment. gov. pat mccrory on wral:art pope has agreed to serve as my deputy budget director. bill moyers:say what? bill moyers:an innocuous title, masking a startling reality. the man who for years had poured money intothose right wing think tanks into the republican party, and into republican campaigns -- includingpat mccrory's -- would now be the governor's man overseeing the state budget. vicki ryder:his power is, is tremendous and very frightening

to me that people can buy their way into thatkind of power in what's supposed to be a people's democracy. the raging grannies at moral mondays protest:we're the raging grannies... bill moyers:vicki ryder sings at moral monday protests with a group called "the raging grannies." the raging grannies at moral mondays protest:to think that men in suits might take our voting rights away. bill moyers:several years ago she moved from new york to north carolina.

vicki ryder:after my husband and i retired, we were looking for a place to live that would be supportiveof our values. and the triangle region of north carolina seemed to be a good fit forus. so we have just been shocked by how quickly things have turned from a very progressiveatmosphere to one of extraordinary regression. bill moyers:conservatives were getting the results they had been praying for. some examples. seventyfive percent of the tax cuts went to the top 5 percent of taxpayers. anyone making morethan, say, $250,000 a year would now pay a state income tax rate at the same level asthose making $25,000. earned income tax credits for the poor were cut. budgets were cut forat-risk kids in pre-k even as vouchers were

given to private schools. unemployment insurancewas cut -- with a bill crafted by the north carolina chamber of commerce. and in art pope'sbudget, the state's higher education system took a hit of 64 million. adam hochberg:you've traditionally had a lot of support for education in north carolina, especiallyfor a southern state. and i think it's something that a lot of north carolinians take, takepride in, not just, you know, pointy-headed liberal intellectuals, but a lot of peoplein the business community too. and i don't think you'll find even among republican businessleaders this attitude of marginalizing higher education that you have seen from the statecapital. one of the first things that governor

mccrory did, one of the first controversieshe got involved with as governor is he went on a conservative radio show, a national show,and took some swipes at the university and said, there are too many degrees in liberalarts, and he said, if you want to get a degree in gender studies, go to private school anddo it, the people of north carolina don't want to pay for that. gov. pat mccrory on bill bennett's morningin america: that's a subsidized course, and frankly ifyou want to take gender studies that's fine, go to a private school and take it, but idon't want to subsidize that if that's not going to get someone a job.

molly mcdonough:and he said that if you wanted to study these things that you should go to a private collegerather than a, rather than a public one, which is not an option for so many of us. bill moyers:molly mcdonough grew up in chapel hill. she's a sophomore at north carolina state university. i'm looking at legislation right now in fact,i just instructed my staff yesterday, go ahead and develop legislation which would changethe basic formula in how education money is given out to our universities and our communitycolleges. bill bennett on bill bennett's morning inamerica:

great, great. gov. pat mccrory on bill bennett's morningin america it's not based upon how many butts in seats,but how many of those butts can get jobs. excellent. how many employable butts. okay. molly mcdonough:i can't remember the exact quote, but he said, it was something weird. it was about likeall the butts in seats need a job. molly mcdonough at moral mondaysmy name is molly mcdonough. and i am 18 years old. so when i told my friends and my familythat i was planning to get arrested, they were all very concerned about my future. andmy response to that was i am doing this so

that i can have a future. bill moyers:the budget did more than strip cash from education. among other things, it got rid of jobs forenvironmental regulators, cut funds for drug addiction treatment, even funds that helppeople with aids buy drugs -- the costly ones that would keep them alive. sean gorman isa hemophiliac, who got hiv from a blood transfusion. he's been treated by dr. charles van der horstsince 1985. dr. charles van der horst:again. and he was desperately ill very early with all sorts of horrible, horrible infections,including you had cmv retinitis. sean gorman:yeah, that's how i lost this eye. i don't

have vision in this eye. bill moyers:gorman gets his medicine through a program called "aids drug assistance program" -- "adap." dr. charles van der horst:deep breath. bill moyers:the art pope budget cuts 8 million dollars from adap. and advocates say that's enoughto prevent some 900 future aids patients from getting the life-saving drugs they need throughthe program. sean gorman:you know, people won't be able to buy their, you know, to afford to get their medications,then they'll do without, and then they'll

get some crazy opportunistic disease, go intothe hospital and have huge hospital bills which they won't be able to pay for. dr. charles van der horst:right. the average hospital admission would be something like $100,000 for an opportunisticinfection. who's going to pay for that? well you andi will pay for that. that comes out our health insurance costs. so not only is it not beinga good, moral person to take care of them, it economically makes no sense. sean gorman:alright, we'll see you in six months. dr. charles van der horst:yeah, take care.

sean gorman:all right, thank you. dr. charles van der horst:good luck. bye bye. sean gorman:yep, thank you. bye bye. bill moyers:there have been other dramatic changes. for one, the election of state judges. rep. pricey harrison:i believe we were the first state in the country to enact public financing for our appellatecourt races, the court of appeals and the supreme court. and the rationale was we didn'twant judges running who were going to be getting money from the lawyers who were going to beappearing before them to finance their campaigns.

sue sturgis:and it worked very well and it's been very popular. democrats and republicans, men andwomen, black and white, across the board it was a very popular program. bill moyers:but popular or not, the art pope network wanted it gone. and the republicans killed that cleanelections system for judges. debate questioner laura leslie:what further restrictions on abortion would you agree to sign? bill moyers:then there's abortion rights. debate questioner laura leslie:we'll start with you mr. mccrory.

gov. pat mccrory:none. bill moyers:remember that campaign promise candidate mccrory made in 2012? well in 2013, governor mccrorywas singing a different tune. newscaster on nbc-charlotte:he says he'll sign a controversial abortion bill into law. protesters tell nbc-charlottereporter rad berky that is a broken promise. rep. pricey harrison:basically the impact will be that 15 of the 16 clinics left in the state that provideabortions will have to shut down under the new standards. crowd at moral mondays protest:hey hey, ho ho, pat mccrory has got to go!

hey hey, ho ho, pat mccrory has got to go! bill moyers:moral monday protesters say they barely recognize their state under the current regime. whathas outraged them most is the state's new voting law, which cuts right to the heartof democracy. chant leaders at moral mondays protest:when voting rights are under attack, what do we do? crowd at moral mondays protest:stand up, fight back! bill moyers:to understand their outrage, you need to know a little history.

ari berman:for a long time, north carolina didn't really have a very strong voter turnout. bill moyers:journalist ari berman is writing a book about voting rights. ari berman:and then they did a number of things after the 2000 election to make it easier for peopleto vote, they, for example, expanded early voting, they allowed same day voter registrationduring that early voting period, and those kind of things started to propel north carolinaforward in terms of voter turnout. bill moyers:those voting reforms were on display during

the presidential election of 2008, when northcarolina swung toward the democrats for the first time in decades -- not least becauseearly voting brought more people to the polls. rachel maddow on msnbc:on election day itself there were actually more votes cast for john mccain than therewere for barack obama, but obama still won the state because [...] more than half ofall north carolina voters in 2008 voted early, and early voters ultimately put obama overthe top. ari berman:and so i think republicans said we need to down some of these voters. we need to makeit so that the electorate is older, whiter, more conservative, not younger and more diverse.

bill moyers:and how better to do that, than to push for strict voter id requirements? and in 2008,that's exactly what the pope network began to do. sue sturgis:there just has not been any kind of widespread voter fraud, but they repeatedly raise itas a concern in order to build a case for voter id laws. ari berman:then you had candidates who are funded by pope who said the same thing, so that therewas some perception among elected officials that voter fraud was a problem even thoughit wasn't.

rep. tom murryin order to restore confidence and accountability to our elections, we need voter id. ari berman:and pass this anti-voting legislation, essentially based on the manufactured outrage that popehad ginned up. bill moyers:in 2013 the right-wing legislature passed a new law that critics called a voter suppressionact -- in part because its requirement for id cards is most likely to affect the young,elderly, poor and minority voters. and there's more. ari berman:they cut a week off of early voting, they

eliminated same day registration during thatearly voting period, they expanded the number of poll watchers that can challenge eligiblevoters on election day. at the same time they were eliminating pre-registration for 16 and17 year-olds. francis de luca:one of the changes in the bill was this thing they called preregistration, where they registered16 and 17 year-olds using the schools to register them. you know, i like to call this the "pedophiliaenabling act." where in the world can i go on a government website and find a list of16 year-olds and their home addresses? i can go to the state board of elections. if youwalked into a school and asked for that list, not only would you not get it, you would probablybe arrested. and they would send police to

your home and say why do you want a list ofall our 16 year-olds in the school? ari berman:there is really no evidence that pre-registering 16 and 17 year-olds endangers their security,there's no evidence that it leads to voter fraud. and so to get rid of something likethat i think sends a very bad message to the young people in north carolina. rep. pricey harrison:and i think that it's unfortunate because it's, it seems to be part and parcel of patternto make it much more difficult for a particular demographic to vote. and i guess i would saythe bill is designed to make it more difficult for democrats to vote basically.

bill moyers:if you don't want to take that from a democratic legislator like pricey harrison, take it froma republican county executive, don yelton, who admitted as much in his now infamous appearanceon the daily show. don yelton on the daily show:the law is going to kick the democrats in the butt. if it hurts a bunch of college kidsthat's too lazy to get up off their bohunkus and go get a photo id, so be it. aasif mandvi on the daily show:right, right. don yelton on the daily show:if it hurts the whites so be it. if it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the governmentto give them everything, so be it.

bill moyers:almost immediately, yelton was forced to resign his position in the republican party. rosanell eaton:good evening everybody. crowd at moral mondays protest:good evening. rosanell eaton at moral mondays protest:i am rosanell eaton, 92 years old. a citizen of franklin county. i am before you todayto speak on voting rights. we need more, not less, public access to the ballot. bill moyers:her name is rosanell eaton, and she has a very long memory, including crosses burningon her lawn and jim crow laws forcing segregation

on black americans far into the 20th century. armenta eaton:my mother, rosanell, always believed that everybody should have the right to vote. she'sregistered approximately, probably over 4,000 people. she got an award for that. she wasawarded what is called the invisible giant award. she would always have her little formswith her, she even has them now when she doesn't really necessarily have to, but she wantsto make sure that everybody—if she's to see a person, she might ask them if they'reregistered to vote. bill moyers:when she first registered to vote as a young woman, she faced a group of white men whoput her to a test reserved for african americans:

she was told if she wanted to vote, she'dhave to recite the preamble to the us constitution. rosanell eaton at moral mondays protest:one of the men told me, stand up straight against that wall with your eyes looking directlytoward me, and repeat the preamble of the united states of america. without missinga word, i did it. armenta eaton:all right, ready to roll. and it really bothers her that voter suppressioncoming right back in the year 2013. she just never thought she'd have to be fighting thisbattle just on another type of turf. rev. william barber at the n.c. general assembly:bring it down, bring it down. everybody listen up.

rosanell eaton at the n.c. general assembly:so let me tell you people. rev. william barber at the n.c. general assembly:so let me tell you. rosanell eaton at the n.c. general assembly:there's nobody in here i know that's any older than i am. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:there's nobody in here any older than i am. rosanell eaton at the nc general assembly:but you need to get involved. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:get involved. rosanell eaton at the nc general assembly:when something comes up, you be involved. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:when something comes up, you be involved.

rosanell eaton at the nc general assembly:you won't have to learn— rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:you— rosanell eaton at the nc general assembly:you won't have to learn new strategy. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:you don't have to learn new strategy. rosanell eaton at the nc general assembly:be ready for them. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:just be ready for them. rosanell eaton at the nc general assembly:so you all just keep on. rev. william barber at the nc general assembly:keep on. police officer at the nc general assembly:...general assembly police. you have two minutes

to disperse or you will be arrested. two minutes. bill moyers:on june 24th, 2013, rosanell eaton was arrested at the state legislature and charged withtrespassing. vicki ryder was arrested in july. vicki ryder:i think one of the things frankly that bothers me the most about what's happening is thatwe fought that fight. you know, i was there in washington, dc 50 years ago when martinluther king delivered his "i have a dream" speech. and we thought that we were makingsome progress. bill moyers:it's a common theme among the protesters that today's battles hark back to earlier ones,in the civil rights movement.

ari berman:remember, north carolina was where the student nonviolent coordinating committee, sncc, started.those sit-ins in greensboro inspired the modern civil rights movement of the 1960s. and sothere's a long history in north carolina of civil rights activism and some of those veryactivists, people like bob zellner of sncc, have been extremely active in the moral mondaymovement today. crowd at moral mondays protest:hey hey, ho ho, pat mccrory has got to go. bob zellner:well i grew up in l.a., in lower alabama. i was the first white southern field secretaryfor sncc, the student nonviolent coordinating committee, and i was one of the first seventeenthat were arrested in moral monday.

crowd at moral mondays protest:we fight, we fight, we fight. bob zellner:our purpose in life is to work for those who are powerless. and what's happening now inthe moral monday movement is on the same moral plane as what happened in the civil rightsmovement. francis de luca:i got to say i think this is laughable. we're talking about the people in the civil rightsera, we're talking about people being beaten, we're talking about people, when they wereput in jail, they didn't get out of jail in time to go eat dinner that night. i am notquestioning the individuals, why they're doing it in their motivation, i am questioning theones who try and equate it with the '60s and

'50s and some of the great struggles in history. bill moyers:protesters, however say the pope-funded civitas institute itself has reached back to the pastand dredged up an ugly tactic used against civil rights activists. dr. charles van der horst:so what they did, they put all our names, our occupations, our age, our race, partyaffiliation, and our employer, and our salary if we were public employees. francis de luca:and we put all that up there, and we put up their party registration, which we just cross-checked,public record, to help identify what they

were. sue sturgis:it really hearkened back, and this is what really upset people a lot, it really hearkenedback to a strategy that we saw during the mid-20th century civil rights movement wherepeople protesting jim crow, who were signing petitions against segregation would have theirnames pulled off those petitions and put in the newspaper. and it was a way to encourageretaliation against them. not necessarily violent retaliation, but you know the employermight see your name there and maybe didn't want to hire a troublemaker. francis de luca:you know i just don't understand that thing

that on one hand, you're publicizing how yougot arrested but on the other hand if we say it, it's intimidation. bill moyers:there's also an interactive feature on the civitas site. molly mcdonough:like there's this game called "pick the protestor" where it has like three mug shots and it'slike, which person is retired? which person lives in chapel hill? which person has thelast name of mcdonough? and you click on the mug shot of the person you think it is. bill moyers:francis de luca says the game is a "fun" way

to get people to interact with the site, andto prove that the protesters don't really represent north carolina -- that they aredisproportionately white democrats, with more clergy and public sector workers than thestate as a whole. the protesters say they indeed represent their state's diversity.and that parts of the database are skewed. molly mcdonough:i looked myself up and they have some inaccurate information there. they, they have one sectionof the spreadsheets that are voting discrepancies, and so they say that i'm a registered democratwhich i am and then they say that i am registered to vote at the wrong address. now what theyeither didn't take into account or didn't, you know, care to think through is that i'ma student. in november i live in raleigh on

nc state campus, and my permanent addressis in chapel hill. and so when i got arrested i put down the address that they will alwaysbe able to contact me through which is my mother's address. and that's not where i registeredto vote. francis de luca:you vote where you live. if i tell you, if i registered to vote, i can tell you, if iget arrested, it's going to be the same place. my home address is the same place i vote.i mean that's how it's supposed to be that your domicile is where you vote so if i'mtelling you i get, when i get arrested i actually live somewhere else, but my registration isover here, then one of those two things is a lie.

dr. charles van der horst:i think their intention was to intimidate others from committing acts of civil disobedience.and instead it's had the reverse effect. rev. william barber at moral mondays gathering:mr. pope, it's a waste of your money. see they want us to come here today and be allupset about this site. they want to sucker us into a back and forth about people on awebsite so they can take the focus off the policies being passed and signed by them inthe general assembly and in the governor's office. but it will not work. bill moyers:but so far, what north carolina's far right government is doing is working.

man at nc general assembly:clerk will allow the machine to record the vote. 84 have voted in the affirmative, 32in the negative. the motion passes. bill moyers:protesters are powerless to stop the passage of a single law. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:not going back. bill moyers:it's true they aren't giving up. rev. william barber at moral mondays protest:and so turn to your neighbor and say, let us not despair. molly mcdonough and her sister at moral mondaysprotest:

let us not despair. bill moyers:but neither are art pope, the governor, and the veto-proof legislature. jane mayer:well, i think what's important is that what art pope has done in north carolina couldbe done pretty much in any state. he's shown that one really wealthy individual can almostrule. bill moyers:and so we enter 2014 with one more reminder that america is a country where the wealthyalmost rule. money talks. although when we offered mr. pope and governor mccrory an opportunityto be interviewed for our report, they didn't

respond. luckily, some people are much more vocal -- fightingback, saying enough is enough. and i don't just mean the moral mondays protestors. theu.s. justice department is challenging north carolina's restrictive new voting law, arguingthat it will have a disproportionate impact on minorities. and those new gerrymandereddistricts, engineered with art pope sitting in the room to ensure republican dominance,are also being challenged in north carolina's own supreme court. the charge is that they'rerace-based, and therefore unconstitutional. yet even there, in the state's highest court,money may affect the outcome. take a look. a republican political action committee inwashington sends over a million dollars to

a political action committee in north carolinacalled justice for all nc. that group then sends over a million dollars to a super paccalled north carolina judicial coalition, which spends over a million dollars supportingjustice newby's re-election. now that republican political action committeein washington where the money started is the same one north carolinian republicans workedwith to gerrymander the state. that plan is being challenged by citizen groups as race-basedand unconstitutional. so where do these citizens turn to seek justice? to the very state supremecourt, one of whose members was re-elected with money from the partisans who drew upthe redistricting in the first place. justice can't be more corrupted than that. but whenmoney rules, nothing is sacred, or cheap.

which could explain why art pope, as we reportedearlier, has waged a long crusade to kill the state's popular system of public fundingfor judicial races -- a system created to prevent rich people like pope and corporationsfrom buying justice. last summer, pope succeeded, opening northcarolina's highest court to the highest bidders. katie bar the door -- except that no matterwhich door we're talking about, art pope has the key to it. and possibly to the future. take the firepower of the rich, pour in heapsof dark money loosed by the supreme court's citizens united ruling, add generous dosesof fervent ideology, and presto: the battle for american politics and governance is joined.and every state becomes north carolina, including

yours. title card:"state of conflict" is a collaboration between okapi productions, llc, and the schumann mediacenter, inc., headed by bill moyers, which supports independent journalism.


What Do Financial Consulting Firms Do


bill moyers:welcome. lately i’ve had phaedra on my mind. not the greek myth of the tragic daughterof that name, but the retelling of the story in a 1962 movie starring tony perkins andmelina mercouri. their illicit affair over, perkins crashes his cherished roadster overa cliff. a big sendoff accompanied by none other than johann sebastian bach. tony perkins in phaedra:oh john sebastian! you’re playing your music like crazy and i’m listening to it in greece!what are you doing here? oh john! why aren’t you home minding the children? i at leasthad some business in greece! i had a father that killed every phaedra! phaedra! phaedra!

bill moyers:that scene actually keeps coming to mind as i try to follow the melodrama in washingtonthat has us heading for a cliff. a fiscal cliff. but are we? or is this, another mythin the making? for some insight, we turn to two seasoned observers both of whose booksyou’ll want to as santa to leave in your stocking. bruce bartlett was an economic adviser tothe supply-side icon jack kemp, and to two presidents-- ronald reagan and the first georgebush. he got into hot water with his conservative cohorts when he wrote a widely quoted bookcritical of the second president bush. his most recent work is “the benefit and theburden: tax reform-why we need it and what

it will take.” yves smith is the founder and editor of thepopular blog naked capitalism. after 25 years in the financial services industry, she nowheads the management consulting firm aurora advisors. she’s the author of this book:“econned: how unenlightened self interest undermined democracy and corrupted capitalism.”
welcome to you both. yves smith:
thank you.

bruce bartlett:
thankyou. bill moyers:is the fiscal cliff just a metaphor? or is it for real? yves smith:
well, the cliff is an inappropriatemetaphor. and it does conjure up images, precisely

the one you said, of cars or people or companiesfalling over and landing in a great mess at the bottom. in fact, it would be much moreaccurately described as a fiscal slope. there are certain changes that will occur on january1st if no budget deal is arrived at. but they're very gradual in their impact. in fact, manyof them could be reversed. for example, if, you know, payroll tax increases would takeplace. but if a deal were arrived at on february 15 or march 3rd, you could even put the rates,the old rates in back retroactively and have everybody get a credit. so the notion thatwe have to have a deal by december 31 or there'll be a disaster is really overstated. bruce bartlett:
i would liken the fiscalcliff to the y2k problem, remember? at the

end of 1999, there were many people who wereworried that all the computers would cease working and the planes would fall out of thesky. and, of course, none of that happened. but, of course, one of the reasons it didn'thappen is because everybody prepared for it ahead of time. and that's essentially what'shappening right now. i think the important thing to remember isthat there's no possible way of a deal before the last possible minute. and one reason forthis, is that john boehner is, the speaker of the house, is in a very precarious positionregarding his own membership. and it's article of faith among republicansthat any deal that is arrived at too soon is to their disadvantage, because they couldhave always gotten a better deal if they'd

simply held out and hung tough longer. andso boehner is in a position where even if he knew exactly what the deal would be today,he cannot deliver on it until, you know, 11:59 on december 31, or else his own members willattack him for having given away the store. bill moyers:
this is the second year ina row we've had this crisis over budget, deficits, taxes, spending cuts. is this any way to runa democracy? two years in a row? bartlett: 
well the worst part of it isthat the real fiscal cliff is something called the debt limit which was the key part of theproblem in 2011 that actually tanked the markets. and republicans understand they're going tohave to give on taxes and give on the budget. but they still think that the debt limit issomething they can use to ransom their true

agenda of slashing benefits for the poor andslashing taxes for the rich. yves smith: 
this is one place where i differwith bruce. i actually don't think the deficit is the problem that it's being portrayed tobe. and there are sort of two levels of-- bill moyers:
you mean the long-term deficit. yves smith:
the long-term deficit. i mean,there are two, you know, there's, one is the immediate issue that cutting budget, reducinggovernment spending when the economy is weak actually makes the situation worse. they'vebeen running this experiment in europe where they've implemented austerity in a numberof countries with the idea that we're going to reduce government spending in order toreduce deficits, because we want to get the

ratio of debt to g.d.p. to the size of theeconomy down. what happens when they've done that is even though they may have shrunkenthe numerical value of the debt, the economy has contracted so much more that the debtto g.d.p. ratios get worse. it actually makes the problem worse. so, austerity is bad medicinenow. bill moyers: 
i just read the other daythat this campaign “fix the debt” raised $60 million and hired and it recruited 80corporate ceos to go to washington and lobby for fixing the debt. what do they want?bruce bartlett:
i think reason why the corporate executives are so big on fixing the debt isbecause they know that if they don't-- they have some control over the political systemthrough their political action committees

and republican control of congress, they can'tcut entitlements now. they do eventually become a problem that will require some immediateaction, they know that it will involve higher revenues. and the higher revenues are goingto be on them. if you check any poll, you find overwhelming support for raising taxeson people making more than $250,000 and raising taxes on corporations. and so i think they'retrying to fend that off. bill moyers:
obama campaigned on higherrates. and he won. why can't republicans come to terms with that that's how the electioncame out? yves smith:
the republicans have becomevery dedicated to the idea that taxes in any form are bad. that when, in fact, there aretimes when taxes can fund productive investments

and actually, again, lead to more economicgrowth. but it's the republicans and ironically, wall street, have basically adopted the samestrategy of being non-negotiable. that if they have a blocking position, and they feelthat they have a blocking position by virtue of their majority in the house, that they'regoing to take advantage of it. so regardless of what the election said, if they can stymiea deal to their own advantage, they will. bill moyers:
given what both of you aresaying, why are we talking about reducing the deficit instead of creating jobs? becausewhen people have jobs, they spend money. when they spend money, businesses have customers.when they have customers, the money keeps circulating. and yet washington isn't talkingabout jobs.

bruce bartlett:
and i think one reason forthis is the decline of labor unions. it used to be that when the union movement was muchbigger and more powerful, and especially when private sector workers dominated the unionmovement, the afl-cio sort of looked out for the working class. looked out for all workers,not just union workers. they understood that a healthy working class having lots of jobswas ultimately to the benefit of their members. and i think the decline in power of the unionsand now and the fact that public sector unions now dominate the afl-cio is a key reason forthat. the other thing is kind of a dirty secret, which you may not agree with is that fundamentallybarack obama's pretty conservative. he really is. he's an eisenhower conservative.he's not a liberal. i mean, he's-- and i think

that's one of the problems with the democraticparty is they're looking for leadership to a guy on an issue like why aren't we creatingjobs? why isn't there more aggregate demand in the economy? and it's because their guydoesn't really want it. yves smith:
i agree 100 percent. i mean,obama has been-- i'm always shocked when people call obama a socialist, because he's in fact,i think you might be doing a disservice to eisenhower. and even, you know, nixon is tothe left of obama on many, on most social issues. i mean, nixon proposed a negativeincome tax, which everybody forgets about. and the other point is that this is reflectedbroadly in the democratic party, at least in the sort of elite level of democratic party.i mean, know, i've seen people like, for example,

gene sperling speak at conferences. bill moyers:
former clinton economic advisor. bruce bartlett:
right, he's now obama advisor. bill moyers:
now obama-- yves smith:
and he for example, he talkedabout middleclass jobs. and you could tell the way he used the expression middleclass,these are, like, people he didn't know personally. i mean, there's this weird-- you've got thisbig class stratification, where the people in d.c. don't see this, right? yves smith:
what's even worse is we nowhave a close-- in the democratic party it's

explicit and my understanding is in the republicanparty it's pretty close to explicit, pay to play systems. it used to be that the assignmentson the prestigious committees were based on seniority. now in the democratic party, theyhave a price tag that if you want to be on the head of an important committee, you literallyhave to kick in a certain amount to the d triple c. bill moyers:
the democratic congressionalcampaign committee yves smith:
right. and then the committeecontrols more goodies that are perceived to be essential to congressmen. for example,they do the studies. they help buy the messaging. they'll do the policy research. and they providea lot of support to the congressmen beyond

what the congressmen get for their staffers.so you know, it's not just that you need their money at election time. they give you a lotof support on an ongoing basis. and you don't want to alienate them, because you want notjust the money, you want all the other support that they provide. so they've created thisparty, this very tight system where the party exercises more control over the members thanthey used to. bruce bartlett:
but there's another importantpart of this that we saw the other week when senator jim demint announced that he was becominghead of the heritage foundation. and what you're seeing now is the permanent campaign.i mean, it used to be these political action committees would come into existence and essentiallygo out of business the day after the election.

but karl rove's operation is still out thererunning advertising. 
 crossroads gps advertisement:
the time forpolitics has ended. we need bipartisan ideas we can all support. call president obama andtell him, “it’s time to show us a balanced plan.” because every day wasted is another$4 billion we’re deeper in debt. the heritage foundation, which once was a think tank ofanalysts writing papers has now morphed into another organization called heritage action,which raises tens of thousands of, i'm sorry, millions of dollars to run campaign commercialsand do that sort of political action, which reinforces the problem of money is so, vastamounts of money are sloshing around in the system. and the members of congress are almostlike, you know, flotsam floating on a sea

of money. they're just bouncing around. bill moyers:
so, what do you both thinkthe public needs to know about this economic debate going on right now? cut through allof that. yves smith:
that what they're being toldis necessary and good for them is, in most cases, 180 degrees opposite of what needsto happen. we need as you suggested, we need more spending to promote jobs. we've got plentyof targets. we've got crumbling infrastructure. it-- bruce bartlett:
this city alone, where we'resitting, new york city, needs $50 billion to repair from the hurricane.

yves smith:
once you get it rolling, thereis plenty of stuff to do. so the notion that we don't have things that need to be donethat could employ lots of people from very low-skilled people to more middle and high-skilledpeople, that's just a myth. bruce bartlett:
there was a poll just theother day that you probably saw. something like half of all republicans believe thatthe 2012 election was stolen for obama by a group called acorn, which was-- which wentout of business several years ago. it doesn't even exist. i mean, they just believe theseconspiracy theories. and they circulate without barrier, because nobody will say anythingto disagree with it. and if you hear the same propaganda over and over and over again, eventuallyyou're going to start to believe it.

yves

smith:
's this tremendous amount of brainwashingthat goes on. and i don't understand how it happens. people convince themselves, you canunderstand it more in the public companies, because these guys have to get up and tellthings to shareholders. and if you say the same-- they've done studies of, like, defenselawyers. you say, even if you know the client is guilty, but you have to defend him, becausethat's your job. they start believing their client's innocent, if they have to defendit. and similarly ceos have to, for public reasons, you know, sell a certain story. andthey've started to-- and they honestly believe washington is the problem, as opposed to they'rea big part of the problem, if not the problem. back to our earlier discussion about capitalism.

bruce bartlett:
but they'll never admitwhat the true washington problem is. so for example, republicans and conservative economistsare absolutely convinced that the only thing that matters for the economy is tax rates.customers don't matter, sales don't matter, none of that matters at all. bill moyers:
just this week a conservativecolumnist writing in “the washington post,” marc thiessen, you may know him, said republicansin this fiscal showdown should stand and fight. he told the story from the korean war whenamerican marines were encircled by communist forces and the commander of the marines colonel"chesty" puller reportedly declared, "we're surrounded. good, now we can fire in all directions."and thiessen says this is where the republicans

are. they can surrender or stand and fight,which means standing their ground on taxes, putting a plan forward to reform the tax code,passing those plans in the house, and putting obama on the spot. yves smith:
well, this is where obama wantsto go. he just needs the republicans to make noise so he can go where he wants to go. bill moyers:
which is where? yves smith:
obama wants to cut entitlements.he said this in a famous dinner with george will. i think it was even before he was inaugurated.he went and had dinner with a group-- bruce bartlett:
that's right, a group ofconservatives.

yves smith:
he met a group of conservatives.and he made it very clear at this dinner that as soon as the economy was stabilized thathe wanted to cut social security, well "reform." but that's just code for "cut" social securityand medicare. obama really believes that this will be a signature accomplishment of his.that he will go down in history positively for. bruce bartlett:
that's right. if you goback to 2011 and look at the deal obama put on the table, he was willing to make vast,vast cuts in entitlement programs. and the republicans walked away from it, which onlygoes to prove that they don't have the courage of their own convictions. yves point is exactlycorrect. obama really is maybe to the right

of dwight eisenhower and fiscally. and it'sreally at the root of so many of our economy's problems, because he didn't ask for a bigenough stimulus. has let the housing sector, basically, fester for four years without doinganything about it. he's really, you know, focused more on cutting the deficit than peopleimagine. bill moyers:
but you will hear it said bysome democratically-inclined columnists like jonathan chait who writes that "democratsshould throw a bone to the right by raising the medicare age." he actually wrote thatthis week. "medicare has symbolic value. and raising the age qualification would send themessage that democrats take this fiscal crisis seriously."

yves smith:
all that results in is moreold people getting sick, winding up with more costly care. it's one of these sort of pennywise and pound foolish measures. you know, again, the big problem with medicare is thatwe have a health care cost problem in this country. and the health cost problem, whetherthey're in the medicare system or whether they're out of the medicare system. i mean,we have our health care costs are twice per capita-- more than twice what most countriesare in the advanced world. and we have generally speaking worse outcomes. so if we would fixhealth care, we would fix this problem. but there's just no will to fix health care, particularlyafter obama did a big health care reform and it didn't fix the problem.

bruce bartlett:
i don't really understandwhy this raising the medicare age has become a big issue. it saves very little money inthe short run. you have to go out decades and decades before it accumulates to verymuch money. i think it saves maybe $100 billion over ten years, which is really a drop inthe bucket, if you're really trying to reduce deficits. so it's the fact that obama's willingto talk about this, i think, would give me a lot of concerns if i was someone on theleft. bill moyers:
if capitalism is so great,why is it doing so poorly in this country for ordinary people and our public values? yves smith:
when i was a kid on wall street,there was a sense of propriety. there was

a sense that there was more of a sense noblesseoblige among the elites. was a sense even on wall street that you didn't take too much.that you, that, you know, the golden philosophy of long-term greedy was actually, i think,broadly shared in the industry. that you only took a little extra when your client was makingmoney, too. and now over time we've had these values set in, where people increasingly seethemselves as kind of isolated. see their success as individual, even though you grewup in a society, you got educated, you know? people didn't, you know, spring like now that,since we're using these mythological metaphors, like athena from zeus's head. people didn'tsort of pop into the world with no social benefits. but there's this tendency to seethat to see success as your own personal success

when, yes, you may have worked hard to getthere. but there are a lot of people who worked hard who didn't end up with all the cash andprizes. bruce bartlett:
i think there's two reasons.one is an unjustly obscure economist named michael jensen wrote some very important papersin the '80s explaining, basically, that the only responsibility that a corporate executivehad was to maximize profits. that anything else, any responsibility to the workers, anyresponsibility to the communities was nothing. the way he helped the nation, the way he helpedeverybody in a sort of adam smithian view was to just relentlessly raise corporate profits.and then secondly, unfortunately, i think bill clinton had something to do with this.remember, in the 1993 budget deal, he had

a provision that capped the deduction forcorporate executive pay at a million dollars. so what happened is this created new methodsof corporate, of compensation that involved stock options. because incentive-based paywas not covered by the provision. so all of a sudden these guys who used topay themselves a couple million dollars a year, they're paying themselves gazillionsof stock options. and all of a sudden, the jensen theory of maximizing corporate profitsmeant that it went directly to their bottom line, you see? then they started, then youhave the, yves probably knows more about this than i do, these compensation committees thatthe corporate executives hire to design their compensation. and they all tell the boards,"oh, you have to pay this guy 500 times what

the average worker's being paid or he mightleave. and that we can't allow that possibility." yves smith:
oh, it's marvelous, yes. nocompany wants to have their ceo be in the top-- in the bottom 50 percent of whateverthe consultant defines the relevant universe as. so you create this perpetually ratchetingsystem, right? because the consultant will do the study that somehow finds that theirceo's in the bottom half. so his pay gets moved up, which moves theaverage up. and bumps somebody else into the bottom half. and then oh my god, his pay hasto be moved up. so independent of corporate profits increasing, just the mechanism ofthe way they do these studies, keeps everybody leapfrogging--

bruce bartlett:
of course, we've had a problemwith the corporate boards that berle and means, you know, identified back in the 1930s. theboards don't look out for the shareholders the way they're supposed to. in fact, they'resimply in the pocket of senior executives. and they just rubberstamp whatever they wantand whatever is in their own personal best interest, everybody else be damned. bill moyers:
so let me close with, wherewould each of you compromise, if you were called upon to break this deadlock? yves smith:
i'm not sure that compromiseis worthwhile. if we go over the fiscal cliff or into the fiscal slope, we're going to havethe tax increases kick in. if obama were interested

in negotiating for a better deal for the ordinaryperson, he should actually go into january. but the whole fact that he wants a deal nowsays that, says that he is as conservative as bruce says he is. bill moyers:
you mean we should go over? yves smith:
we should go over. bill moyers:
and see what happens? yves smith:
we should go over just becausethen we've already had tax increases put in. republicans don't have the leverage of, youknow, "oh, these--" you know, of doing a deal without the tax increases already having takenplace. you're in a very different negotiating

position. going past january 1 would actuallybe a very good outcome for ordinary americans. bruce bartlett:
i'd go even further. i'dsay let the fiscal cliff take effect permanently. now everybody's afraid to do that. they thinkthe economy's too fragile. but if you look at what the congressional budget office hasestimated. they say, "yes, we'd lose some growth for about half a year. but the mediumand long term growth would actually be higher, because it would actually do exactly whateverybody says they want to do, which is cut a lot out of the long-term deficits. and itwould do so fairly by raising revenues a lot and cutting spending." what, how else arewe going to cut the defense budget if we don't allow the sequester to take effect? both partiesare pretty much into that. so i say let's

just let the whole thing happen. if i wasa member of the senate, i'd filibuster anything to get rid of it. bill moyers:
bruce bartlett, yves smith,i'll see you on the cliff. thank you very much. yves smith:
thank you.


3 Best Financial Advisory Firm Business Plan


(acoustic guitar melody) - [voiceover] welcometo the sbi podcast. offering ceo's, salesand marketing leaders ideas to make the number. (upbeat music) - good morning, good afternoon,good evening everybody. this is gregalexander, ceo of sbi, a b2b sales and marketingconsulting company, dedicated to helpingyou make your number.

you're listening to theweekly sbi podcast series. and today i'm joinedby jim wetekamp, who is the ceo ofbravo solution. a leading provider ofsoftware and services, that help procurementprofessionals, in the areas of spendanalysis, sourcing, supplier performance management, and a few otherprocurement-related processes. bravo is differentiated,because it has

over 65,000 procurementprofessionals in 70 differentcountries, leveraging it's technology and services. which gives the companyunmatched domain expertise. jim has over 20 yearsof business experience. all in the procurement/supplychain area, highlighted with a 15year run at vertical net, which is now a partof bravo solution. during his tenure,jim spent time leading

product management,software development, finance, and general management. he's very well-rounded. and he received his educationfrom indiana university. jim, welcome to the show. - [jim] thank you. - ok i just read thatat the end of 2014, you guys reported your14th consecutive year of revenue growth.

is that true? - had a pretty good yearof growth, year over year. a lot of that comingfrom a business that's quiteglobally diversified. so as you mentioned, it'sgot quite a large scale. about 25% of ourrevenue coming from the americas, and75% coming from europe and rest of world. - 14 years in a row of growth?

even a little bit of growthis pretty impressive. that's a consistenttrack record. what i find really fascinating, we think 14 years ago to today, it was a tough timeto make that happen. we had the dot-com crash,we had a severe recession, we went througha couple of wars, and yet you continued to grow. so, how did you do it?

- [jim] you know i thinkthat bravo solution has proven to be an organization that's been agile towhat the market needs. so one of the key strengthsof our business has been the individuals leading it inall of the different markets, and the folks on theground, operating from a commercial standpointapt to what their different marketsneeded in terms of procurement solution provider.

over that 15 yearperiod, that's been in some markets beingmore consultative, or services orientented,and in other markets, being more technology driven. and being able to adaptto the different demands in the market over that period. the one thing that'sbeen consistent through that economicperiod has been the need of the requirementfor a solution provider

that'll put savingson the table. what's changed overthat period of time has been capital budgetsversus operating budgets, the need to be morecreative around how you drive savingsand potentially tie yourself into thesuccess of that savings, or how creative you canbe with a business case to get the solutionoff the ground. - yeah. ok.

you know i wasexcited to have you on the podcast todayfor this reason. when i was looking at your bio in preparationfor the interview, i cited your historicalcareer, history. at least how youhave it represented on your linkedinprofile, and what it says on your company website. and it cites product management,software development,

finance and general management. what it didn't cite,was head of sales, vp of sales, or chiefmarketing officer. i just wanted tomake sure before i go in to my nextline of questions, because that's distinctiveand i want to probe on that. you're a ceo who put 14 yearsof revenue growth together. your company's strong. 14 years of revenuegrowth, back to back,

and yet it's led by aceo who, traditionally, didn't come up throughsales and marketing. which is very unique,and i'm curious as to how that happened. so before i leap there,is that a true statement? have you ever beenthe head of sales or the head of marketing? - [jim] i've neverbeen the head of sales. for a brief period oftime in vertical net,

i was head of marketing. when you look at thattrajectory of growth for the company andhow we moved along, and again, certainly onthe backs, for the effort of the combined teamthat's been a part of this organization since2000, when it was founded. when you look atthe timeline of that progression and whatwe're seeking to do here, bravo solutions hashistorically been a business

that when you look back in time, was isolated a little bit in its impact from focused, and additionally abusiness that has traditionally beena little bit more professional services orientedthat it had been technology. it's been a balance it's beenmaintained just above 50%. what we're seeking todo now, and where we're focusing our businessfrom a growth standpoint,

is to grow thattechnology aspect, and really look to,again, see the shift or a change in the market. it's becoming moreself-serviced. it's becoming moredemanding of easy-to-buy, easy-to-implementsolutions, and really look to now push that growthmore on the technology side. so my role cominginto ceo last year, the background that ihave on the product side.

so in the areas ofproduct management and solution strategyserved well in that aspect of the next elementof transformation. - ok, got it. you know we have a lot oflisteners to our podcast. people that consumeall our content, that are ceo's of companies of similar size asbravo solutions, especially in thetechnology industry.

and many of them,many of those ceo's are trying to grow likeyou're trying to grow. they have a very similarbackground that you have. thus they're drawn toa sales and marketing consultancy like sbi. it makes sense. they're augmenting their own expertiseand leadership skills. with some specialtyexpertise, externally. the reason why i wantto probe on this,

is because your leadership,either at the functional level, or now at the ceo level hascontributed to this growth. and without this laser focusedon sales and marketing, which means you'regrowing through an integrated strategy. there's a product strategy. there's a services strategy. there's a finance strategy. you mentioned in yourintro when i asked you

how your company wasso successful so long, you specifically said it. the team, the keyleaders, the regions. so there's obviously a wellthought out talent strategy. so this is the area ireally wanted to probe on. and i wanted to get yourperspective on this. we just did a really quickback-of-the-envelope study, and we looked at thebiographies of the ceo's and the fortune 100.

now granted, verysmall sample size, but we were just tryingto do some quick math. and only two of theceos in that sample became ceos directly fromthe the sales leaders chair. one just recently got announced. chuck robins at cisco systems. the other, mark herd at oracle. everybody else eithercame from finance, general management,or engineering.

it was surprising tome that so few ceos rose up throughsales, and even fewer have rose up through marketing. why do you think that is? - [jim] i don't knowthat i've done enough analysis on thesubject to be able to answer that from aglobal standpoint. what i can say is thatmy experience in working with sales leadersfrom different

organizations is thatyou definitely have a dna makeup thatorients a lot of those individuals towards a very focused and strategic elementof the business. and those areindividuals that are hugely goal and objectiveand number oriented. they're very verymuch about delivering to the commitment thatthey have oriented

towards the businessas far as what the expectations are for growth and how they'regoing to achieve it. and that's just a particularmakeup of somebody of commonly into thatsales/leadership standpoint. it's not always the case. i think that thosesame individuals are motivated to be ina position that requires more operationaloversight, more general

management oversight, morefinance oversight, or hr. it's better. i guess the equivalentthat i'll use for that is, folks that i've seen, thegeneral manager aspects. i think some taketo it and enjoy it, and like that increaseddiversity of experience. and others don't, and preferto be at the tip of the spear. oriented towards thegrowth of the business. interaction with the customers,

the accumulation ofthe commercial side. so i think it's lessaround the competencies and capabilitiesof those people. because when you lookat sales leaders, and many of them iknow, that ones that i've had the benefitof working with. the most senior salesleaders that i've worked with in thepast, i wouldn't see any reservation in working

in a company wherethey were ceo. i think it more hasto do with the desire of what motivates them to get up in the morning and whatthey want to do every day. so that's myobservation, but again i haven't done a lot ofanalysis on that subject so. - and that's all i wanted,was your observation. i certainly wasn'texpecting you to do any analysis, andi didn't give you

any other questionsahead of time. it's an interestingthought though. i hadn't considered that. here i am thinking that,maybe just the people that hire ceos,boards and investors, maybe they think there'ssomething lacking in the competency,but you gave me a different perspective,which is the other way. maybe sales leaders enjoybeing sales leaders,

and they don't want totake the job as ceos, so that's interesting. we're gonna take ashort break here. when we come backfrom the break, we're gonna kick aroundsome practical ways to get these two differentpeople, these ceos who didn't rise throughthe sales ranks, and classic sales leaders,to get them on the same page of what we call strategicalignment and pursuit

of this top line revenue growth. so stick around after the break. if you're enjoying this podcast, you're gonna love sbi tv. and this is our monthlytelevision program. you might not befamiliar with it, so here's someinformation on sbi tv. (rock music) - you are watching sbi tv.

this is a monthly web tv show, featuring guests just like you. executives trying togrow their revenues. each month, you canpeak behind the scenes, and watch your peersdiscuss their strategies for how they make their numbers. you are not going towant to miss this. - ok, welcome back everybody. before the break, jim and i were

discussing how the ceoand the sales leader can get on the same pageof strategic alignment. in going after topline revenue growth. and i'm gonna use asimple framework here to shape our discussion today. and the key here isgetting the ceo strategy, and the sales strategy together. so for the purposeof our very short interview today, let me justlay some things out there.

you know in a classicsense, strategic planning. and many of arelisteners are heading into the strategicplanning process right now. you have thissequential process. and i'm not suggesting thisis the right way to do it, but this is one ofthe textbooks, so tospeak, the theory. we start with some marketresearch that says: understanding of the marketsthat we're gonna compete in. that progresses to acorporate strategy,

which is a resourceallocation effort. we're gonna allocatepeople money and time in the following ways. that usually progressesto a product strategy which says: theseare our products that our customers are gonna buy, because here aretheir set of problems. that progresses to amarketing strategy. says here we're gonna drivedemand for these products,

which leads to a salesstrategy which says here's how we're gonna convertthat demand into revenue. and then of course, underlyingat that is a talent strategy, which says here's howwe're gonna build a team capable of thoseprevious five steps. so as we can see with this. granted, overlysimplified explanation. there sits a lot between theceo and the sales leader. there's marketresearch that maybe

the sales leaderisn't looking at. there's a wholecorporate strategy which is a massivething in and of itself. there's product strategy,which he might not be classically trained on, aswell as marketing strategy. so jim let me turn my attention and ask you someunfair questions. but your observationswould be very helpful. especially thinking of itfrom the ceo's perspective.

so how should a ceodrive the output of market research,specifically? and i'll get to the otheritems here in a moment. into the creationof a sales strategy? how do we make surethe sales leader is being outwardin'd, so to speak. - [jim] well i guessi'll relate it to how we do it at bravo solutions. it has a little bit froma different direction.

so certainly from my standpoint, i'm standing backwards andbehind the corporate strategy. in working acrossthe major functions of our corporatestrategy, our marketing and our salesleadership to devise and orchestrate that. and really it's the salesleader's responsibility and accountability to take that, map that against theirexperience with the market.

develop that into themarket penetration plan and the sales strategy. how that rolls out acrossour different markets. so that's reallythe sales leader, at bravo solutions anyway. the sales leader's responseto the corporate strategy, is looking at thatintegrated view of, this is the problemwe're seeking to solve. this is the solution we'veput on the table to solve it.

these are the keydifferentiated aspects of it. there was a certain evolution of a market view thatbuilt to that. now as i survey theareas of opportunity across that market,how do i segment that, attack it, and reallylook to see to get that solution outinto that market? and then it becomesa cyclical approach of re-evaluating theresponse the markets had

to the solution, howdoes that then in turn, turn around to influencecorporate strategy, product strategy, et cetera. but really, the salesleadership at bravo solution is taking that element froma strategic standpoint, versus just responding to a sheet of paperthat's been handed. - yeah, ok. well, that's encouraging.

that you encourageyour sales leader to take it from there, anddrive it into his plan. very often we see theopposite happening. the sales leadergets the corporate strategy from theceo, and his or her response is: "thenumbers you have in here "are based onfaulty assumptions, "and i can't hit this." "so next time you developa corporate strategy

"boss, make sure i'mpart of the process, "cause this thinghas no chance." so what do you say to that? - [jim] our orientationof the three year plan, that we have, and howwe keep that rolling, is something that wasbuilt collaboratively. - ok. - [jim] across corporatestrategy, sales, and marketing together.

as we orchestratedthat, there were puts and takes as we developedthat three year plan. our sales leadership issitting around the table and acknowledgingall the elements of that as we devise it. - ok, very good. so there's a longrange plan, not just the annual plan. and the sales leadersare a key member

of the team thatcreates that plan. if i heard you correctly. - [jim] yep. - ok, great. the next thing,obviously is part of that long range plan, which is great that we just stumbled into that, is the product strategy. so there's a set of assumptionsagain regarding that.

the product roadmapis the output of that. a release schedule,a launch schedule. and it's the salesleader's responsibility to drive those productsinto the market, and make sure that theassumptions in that plan, particularly marketshare, and revenue by product line,etcetera, is obtained. i'm assuming based onyour previous answer, that the salesleader is involved

in setting product strategy. is that correct? - [jim] yeah, definitely. from a strategicleader standpoint, that product strategyis put on the table for sales leadership. and open for feedbackand influence certainly around the standpoint, isthat of product strategy or product roadmapthat's going to serve

the sales plan, orthe growth plan, that the sales functionis accountable for. so there's aninfluence aspect that's quite heavy from the sales side, along with the influencethat's coming from customer market, andour corporate strategy. we're going to take aquick break right now. when we come back,we're gonna pivot a little bit towards marketing.

which will be aninteresting conversation based on how this has gone. what we're learning frombravo solution today, specifically jim, fromthe seat of the ceo, is how collaborativethe process needs to be, and how involved people arein the long range planning. which is somewhat unique. if you like hearingdirectly from ceos like jim, you may want to subscribeto the sbi magazine.

we feature articleson ceo best practices. they tell you what they're doingto try and make the number. so if this the type ofcontent that you enjoy, but you want to putsomething in your briefcase when you'regetting on a plane, subscribe to the magazine. here's some moreinformation on that. - [voiceover] makingyour number is hard. your problems are complex.

complex problems needcomplex solutions. introducing the sbi magazine. read in-depth stories writtenby award-winning journalists, about how yourpeers have overcome their problems tomake the numbers. when you need more than a tweet, social post or blog article,turn to the sbi magazine. go to salesbenchmarkindex.comto subscribe. - welcome back everybody.

before the break, jimand i were speaking about the three year,long range planning, and how the functionalgroups are integrating their activities underjim's leadership. to make sure that we'reresponding to the market in the most agile way we can. and this was a key contributor, to their long, successfultrack record here, in being responsiveto the market's needs.

and up to this point,we've been talking about the relationship between theceo and the sales leader, which was very productive. and then we just gotinto the conversation between the product leaderand the sales leader. which was really interesting. that, there's reallyno king there. it's two peopleworking together in pursuit of a common goal.

and that is very rare. we normally see an organization fall into one or two categories. one is the productleader is the king, and he tells the sales leader: "these are the greatestproducts in the world, "and if you can't sellthem, you're an idiot." and the other side of itis, the sales leader says: "i'm the greatest salesperson you've ever seen,

"and your productsaren't very good." the fact that your twoguys are working together, your team is working together,is really insightful. let's inject marketinginto the equation now. their job is to drive demand. in your market, specifically whatit is your doing, what's the relativeimportance of marketing? maybe relative toproduct and sales?

is it like what we're seeingin a lot of other b2b worlds? where it maybewasn't as relevant in comparison to aconsumer based business, but it's relevancyis on the rise today? - [jim] i woulddefinitely equate it to something that's ofgrowing importance. to put a little context, to bravo solutions from aglobal marketing standpoint, that's a relativelynew function for us.

so when i talkedabout the growth over the past 14 years,those have really been growth stories thathave been con-- basis and what you ended up withwas the bravo solutions, that wasn't one bravo solutions, but it was really twelve. from a marketingand go-to-marketpresence standpoint. over the past 10months, we've been on a journey to makethat one consistent

global brand and message. and really take the thought that we're better togetherthan we are apart. how can we takethe best elements of bravo solutions andput them on the table? consistently, globally, tohelp accelerate our growth? and the marketingfunction has been a huge enabler around that. pulling together thatmessage and that brand.

getting a concise promiseto the customer developed. and then taking thatinto an execution plan on how we can carryout that go-to-market messaging on a marketby market basis. so something thatwe weren't doing on a global basis thissame time 12 months ago, is something that we definitelyare putting a lot of now, in terms of globalmarketing, product marketing. that integration ofproduct marketing

into product strategy,r&d and sales. so it's a huge focusfor us right now. - so what drove it? a year ago you weren't doingit, now you're doing it. you realize that onebravo being driven consistently into allthese different parts of the world thatyou're competing in was an advantage for you. so what happened in the market

that made that a priority? - [jim] i thinkthat our customer is getting increasingly global. our competition is gettingincreasingly global. and we ourselves,despite ourselves, were getting more integratedon a global basis. as you start workingwhere these different markets need to startcollaborating on things like global account strategy,or playbooks against

common competitors,or a consistent brand to market analysts, and how that gets evaluated by global 1,000companies, et cetera. just kept getting tothe part where our investments in local marketing activities weren't beingleveraged on a global basis. so we had a lot of inefficiency. an additionallythat inconsistency

we thought, was slowing ourprogression in the market, and negatively impacting us. so we decided to make a change. - interesting. the way that thebuyers were engaging in the responsesthat were coming from your competitors,drove the new strategy. which is anotherprove-point that you guys are doing a great job.

listening to the market. and that's one ofthe reasons why you've done so well oversuch a long time period. some of my client base, whichmight be listening today, they're rejecting this concept. they're saying in the b2b world, marketing's reallynot that important. branding for example,is not that important. consistent messaging.

i'd rather havehighly customized regional group of people, versus consistency across geos. and they're resisting this. and they're saying that "mybuyer isn't changing as much." sometimes we getengaged to evaluate. if that's true or not. and when the findings come backthat says that's inaccurate, the buyer is changing,and you need to do

what you've already done. they're resistingbecause they don't think the organizationwill receive it well. so you're abouta year into this. how has bravo solutions receivedthe new marketing approach? - [jim] well i think we'restill quite young in the stages, but i think the reactionhas been positive. so as far as that kindof comparison you made, i think for bravo solutionsit's about achieving a balance.

already extremely strongin the individual markets, but certainly missing so acrossthat from a global basis. that this global marketing focus we think will make our message more focused andmore consistent. and add consistencyto that other element of the transformationthat i mentioned earlier on in the discussion. around a shift from to more of

a technology base inthe profile of our solution in the market. so marketing is gonna bea key element behind that. we're providing valuefrom the standpoint of the customer base. i don't think from acustomer standpoint really looks and evaluates you purely based upon the marketing, but it is certainlyan important element

around how you'redeveloping prospects and moving themalong the process. it's how you're gettingnoticed in the first place. once our folks are in the room, and once those individualmarkets are operating, with potential clients,our team and certainly what we're learning overthese past ten months is that marketingcan be a huge enabler to increasing the pipeline.

getting attention of themarket, and having them better prepared toreceive the message we want to put on the tableonce they're in the room. - yeah. and that's a greatway to summarize it. marketing can helpthem get in the room, but once their in the room,they gotta take over from there. and that's a reallyinteresting way to look at it. when your companymade a decision

to shift more towards products, and less towards services, as that balancechanged a little bit. did that cause you rethinkthe marketing strategy, or was that an eventthat was independent of what we just talkedabout, regarding marketing? - [jim] it certainlyplayed a role in it. professional servicesand consulting sale is very much, you're selling

the person on thetable in front of you. the summation oftheir experience was their role andtheir contribution in the team that you seein the room around you. and the focus that we have is certainly one that bravosolutions will continue to have. a strong differentiation,and the expertise and the people on the team. and that'll be important thing

about what we wanted to do. but we wanted toincrease in proportion the technologyaspect of what we do. that's more aroundthe positioning and robustness ofthe technology. what are it's capabilities? how does it drive valuein an organization? that's somethingthat's more consistent on a global basisthan something that is

from an impact standpoint is talking at a more senior level of the organization often times. so marketing was a hugeconsideration in that shift. to be able to drive thatconsistency of messaging, and be able to drivemarketing campaigns and programs that wouldget us in the door to the right personat the right time. so for thoselistening out there,

if you're in theprocess of shifting your balance fromservices to product, even a little or a lot. that should be themoment that you pause and say "hey, what does thisdo to my marketing strategy?" and take the lead here from jim. my compliments toyour marketing team. when i was preparingfor this interview, i went out to your websiteand some social media

websites to try and understand you guys as much as i could. and the messagingwas super crisp. i understand who youwere, what you did, who you did it for andhow you were different, in less than five minutes. so please send mycongrats to your teams that crafted that messaging. - [jim] great.

thank you, i appreciate it. - alright, we're gonnatake one more break. when we come back,i'm gonna ask jim to summarize whatwe spoke today. there's some action items youcan get working on right away. if you enjoy this interview, you should subscribeto our blog. each day we publisha best practice that can be read inunder five minutes

right off your mobile device. what we're doing todayis a 30 minute interview. it's called long form content. if you prefer yourcontent in more digestible chunks,the blog is for you. so here's how to get somemore information on the blog. - [voiceover] each day, youreceive hundreds of e-mails. tons of text messages. countless telephone calls.

and sit in too many meetings. how do you find ideasto make the number with all this noise? the sbi blog filters allthis nonsense for you, and presents only first-rateideas to make the number. simplify your life. subscribe to one blog,and read the best content. go to salesbenchmarkindex.comand subscribe today. - ok welcome back everybody,

this is gregalexander, ceo of sbi, and i'm joined todayby jim wetekamp, ceo of bravo solutions. we've been talkingabout ceo strategy and cascading andintegrating with all the differentfunctional strategies as we get right ahead into 2016. and we learned a lot. that's the problem.

we learned too much. so let's try to turn this intosome action items if we can. we're running out of time here, so jim i'm gonna ask youto bring this home for us. if you would speakdirectly to the audience and maybe give themtwo or three things that they can do immediatelyfollowing this show, from the ceo's perspective. try to set themselvesup for next year

as it relates to creatingthat annual strategic plan. what would those twoor three things be? - [jim] as we lookat the plan for us, and again it's specificin our context, a lot of our plan for thenext two or three years is oriented withthis change in focus, or a bit of this transformation. so what we did inorder to get ourselves firm on the plan and how wewere going to achieve it is

we spent some timeand established a specific function or aprogram management office. the fact that a lot ofthings we were doing were asking us to changeinternally and externally and we needed to have achange management plan oriented with how wecommunicated internally on why change and why now. so when you think about, and you've mentioned in severaltimes, 14 years of growth.

it might ask you, withinthe organization or outside, why are we doingthis and why now? to make some ofthese modifications. so that's an importantquestion that you've gotta make sure you're answering along the way to all the folksthat are with you every day. so that they're alignedand understand the strategy and why we're changing. that they're gettingcommunicated to

in the right intervals andat the right level of detail. that was a hugeaspect of what we did. and it's that samevehicle that we're using to keep strategyaligned with sales, aligned with marketing,so that we're all headed in the same direction. so for those in theaudience that might not be familiar with apmo, can you just briefly describe what that is?

- [jim] sure. it's a process wherewe've basically taken all the strategicinitiatives that we think are key to the achievementof the three year plan. and we've as a management team, assessed them from a risk, a change, and afinancial context. as far as what thebudget is gonna impact, what we think it's gonnahave on the end result.

we use that to prioritizethose activities. and then we're usingthat same vehicle to keep ourselves accountable onthe timelines to achieve it. so all these aspectsthat we're talking about. introducing globalmarketing where there wasn't global marketing before. driving a shift oran increased focus on technology whileat the same time maintaining our past successes.

all these things need to be done in a way that are clear,communicated well, and managed in atransparent way, so all the folks have a senseof what's happening and why. and that projectmanagement office is a steering commitee,and a set of activities around accountabilityand communication associated withthose initiatives. - excellent.

appreciate the definition. i'm a big believer in it myself, but i wanted them to hearthat directly from you. ok, i'm gonnadirect audiences to two helpful resources. first is sbi's annualresearch report. this is titled "how tomake your number in 2016." which just came out. and in it, you'll find waysto make your number next year,

and lots of tools and processes and exercises to putyourself through. so if you want a copy of that, go tosalesbenchmarkindex.com/2016-re. 2016-report. the next thing i wouldpoint you to is that if you read this report,and you need some help getting yourself throughit and doing the exercises and maybe gettingyour peers together

to think through these things, we've built a half-day workshop. where one of ourexperts can come on site and help you through that. so if you want toschedule a workshop with one of our strategists, salesbenchmarkindex.com/2016-workshop. so jim, in behalf ofeveryone who is listening in my firm, i want to thank you

for giving us yourtime and discussing this tricky challenge thatwe talked about today. you guys are doing alot of the right things and you're a goodmodel for us to follow so thanks for giving usunselfishly of your time. - [jim] thanks alot forhaving me, i enjoyed it. and to my audience,thanks for tuning in. i wish you muchcontinued success as you try to make your number.

take care. - [voiceover] this hasbeen the sbi podcast. for more informationon sbi services, case studies, the sbiteam and how we work, or to subscribe toour other offerings, please visit us atsalesbenchmarkindex.com.



Copyright © 2013. Consulting Firms Around The World - All Rights Reserved
Consulting Firms Around The World | Design : Indo Web Online
Proudly powered by Blogger