August 24, 2026 – Executive Career Upgrades Tim Madden and America Works Dr. Lee Bowes

00:01 INTRO 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:27 JIM BEACH: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a fantastic day being an entrepreneur, riding the roller coaster, the ups and downs. It is not easy, but it is fun. I’ve got a great show for you today. First up, we have Tim Madden. He is in the executive placement business. If you need a job. He can get you a job. If you need employees.

00:56 JIM BEACH: He can find you fantastic executives, and he is an incredible entrepreneur building his own business. So excited to learn from him. After that, we have Dr. Lee Bowes with us. 8000000 helped. I’ll just leave it right there. You know, that says everything. I can’t wait for you to meet Lee, 8 million. That is a big number. I have had a major evolution in my entrepreneurial thinking about the show in the last week.

01:26 JIM BEACH: I was getting ready to do an interview and I realized what the guy’s business was. He is in the business of cold calling. And I have been getting so many, maybe 50 a day, something like that. Um, these, uh, I have a house that is, I don’t know how it got on a list, but a house that is vacant right now, thinking about selling it. I’m getting so many calls.

01:59 JIM BEACH: And this person who I was about to interview is in that business, in the business of cold calling people. And I decided, no, I have drawn the limit. I will interview. Almost anything before you. I am so tired of what you do to society and how you interrupt me so many times today. I have drawn the limit. I don’t care if you sell. That is the limit. Telemarketing is my limit.

02:23 JIM BEACH: I’m not gonna support it anymore, put them on the show. Be nice to them. And if you’re a telemarketer listening, go away. Time to talk and no action on climate change. Introducing the real environmentalists, the bold new book by Jim Beach. It’s not about activists, politicians, or professors. It’s about the entrepreneurs, real risk takers, building cleaner, smarter solutions, not for applause, but for profit. The entrepreneurs in the book aren’t giving speeches.

02:53 JIM BEACH: They’re in labs, factories, and offices, cleaning the past, and building clean products for the future. The real environmentalists is available now, because the people saving the planet aren’t the ones you think. Go to Amazon and search for real environmentalist. Thank you. You got it. We are back and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce an amazing entrepreneur. Please welcome Tim Madden to the show.

03:25 JIM BEACH: Started off with 20 years of service in the army and became a captain, and thank you for your service. Sir. I kind of ticked off at USAA though recently. They’ve just got worse and worse and worse. Tim, though, is on the, I mean, driving great organizations, helping executives find dream jobs, and helping companies find amazing employees, and also helping companies transition talent out with dignity. He is the CEO of Executive Career Upgrades.

03:55 JIM BEACH: They have had 5000 or so placements. In other words, they’ve gotten 5000 people’s jobs, which is a huge number. They’ve been on the Inc. 5000 list twice on the Vet100 list. He is also an Amazon best-selling author. Pretty impressive. Tim, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

04:13 TIM MADDEN: Jim, thanks so much for having me. I’m doing great. The weather out here in Nashville is beautiful. And hey, if you turn enough bad days into good days, you might end up with a great life, and that’s what I try to do every day.

04:29 JIM BEACH: Very well said. I love it. Nashville is a booming city, new stadium, just booming like crazy. Lots of people with business here. Oracle just moved here. Starbucks is moving here.

04:40 TIM MADDEN: That’s one of the big reasons we relocated from Florida. Is there’s so much great talent and there’s just so much business opportunity in the city. So I’m really excited to be here.

04:57 JIM BEACH: I lived there for about 9 months in the 70s. My father got run out of Florida and then got a job in Nashville and then got run out of Tennessee, I think. So moved to Atlanta. Um, I’ve been here ever since. I think he kept losing his, not losing his license. [unclear phrase] You know what he was? He didn’t play well with others, Tim, and was destined to be an entrepreneur.

05:28 JIM BEACH: He was a doctor and ended up running a very large practice, but there’s the key word running, you know? What percent of your executives that come to you are that way? Do you ever have to give that advice?

05:40 TIM MADDEN: You know, everyone has their own leadership style, you know, and you need to figure out what works for you and you need to play to your strengths. And you’re right. Some people don’t want to be managed by other people, some people need direction. That one of the ways we kind of help people. It’s like, you have to know, right? What you’re specifically looking for in an area you can thrive in. Some people need direction.

06:07 TIM MADDEN: Some people aren’t going to be able to take it, right? I don’t think one is worse than the other. I think we all need to play with our strengths and maybe that’s why your dad was just like, this ain’t working, this ain’t working. And you know, if something’s not working, Hey, move on. It’s okay. Life is short.

06:32 JIM BEACH: And I love how you help people get their dream jobs. I grow up, as I said, in Atlanta. And so my dream job was to be the CEO of Coca-Cola.

06:46 JIM BEACH: I just wanted that so bad because also my parents knew a lot of Coca-Cola people and there was one guy who, uh, Dr. Oman, Tony Oman, who was vice president of quality control, would take us to his basement and make Coke from scratch because he was the keeper of the formula. That kind of thing.

07:04 JIM BEACH: And so I did an internship for them in Japan and saved them a $1000000000, Tim, and started coming back to Atlanta, and every one of them said the exact same thing. You don’t play well with others. You should go start your own company if you ever thought of being an entrepreneur. And I was just devastated. Devastated.

07:23 TIM MADDEN: Well, I have a similar story. That’s why I became an entrepreneur. After I transitioned from the military, I went to my 1st organization and I was like, man, no one knows what’s going on here. Let me go work at a Fortune 500 company. Surely they have some best practices in place. I went there and I’m like, man, let me go do my own thing. And that was my journey of becoming an entrepreneur.

07:54 TIM MADDEN: And hey, if you feel that you can do things better, that you can inspire people to join your mission, if you can deliver a better product, right, then you should absolutely go do that. But be careful what you wish for, right? The entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, and it’s definitely not for the weak, and, uh, you know, I use a lot of military terms, and I tell my team every single day.

08:18 TIM MADDEN: We’re going to battle in the marketplace. Because that’s what’s happening, you know, not only in business, but especially if you’re an entrepreneur, right? You got a lot of competition in the marketplace.

08:28 JIM BEACH: Yes, very true. So walk us through, Tim, uh, the typical client that comes to you, the typical placement, the cycle, what the uh, 3 to 6 months look like. Tell us a placement story.

08:40 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, so we have Yeah, I’ll start with the placement story. We had a guy who sought political asylum from Nicaragua. Now, I will tell you most of our people that we help are directors VPs in corporate America, in America. You know, they make over $200,000 a year. They come to us because they’re frustrated. They haven’t got results. They don’t have time to do their search, et cetera. And we essentially do everything for them.

09:04 TIM MADDEN: We even help generate the interviews, prep them for the interviews, negotiate the offer. But one story that sticks out is we had an individual come from Nicaragua. He lived in South Florida there in Miami, political asylum. He was a CFO, and obviously he was having lots of problems finding employment. He found us. Want to live in Raleigh, North Carolina. And jokingly, Jim. I was like, how how do you even know where that place is, right?

09:29 TIM MADDEN: You’re from Nicaragua, you know? And lo and behold, someone who spoke broken English. We got him a job at Bank of America and he relocated up there. He got $225,000, a sign-on bonus, 6 weeks of vacation, still works there to this day. And I remember the day that he signed the offer, he actually called me pretty emotional because he had a wife and he had 3 kids. He was living in Miami. He didn’t have any income.

09:55 TIM MADDEN: So that’s what really inspires me and motivates me to help those types of people. So we have many of those stories. Just one more quick, you know, my mom was a single mom when she raised me. We helped a single mom in Q4 of last year. Who, you know, was worried about if she was going to be able to afford presents for, you know, her children for Christmas.

10:18 TIM MADDEN: She worked at the same company for 20 years, got laid off, couldn’t find a job for 8 months, and we helped her in about, you know, 70 days or something. So it was just stories like this are just really inspiring.

10:34 JIM BEACH: How do you find people? Do you just pound the daylights out of LinkedIn?

10:38 TIM MADDEN: No, actually, we spend a tremendous amount of money on online, but we do everything we possibly can, Jim. We have podcasts. I’ve written books. I do speaking events, we do online trainings. We advertise on every single platform, pretty much any lead generation tool that you could possibly think of. We try to do. Or even put up billboards and, you know, stuff with the local community.

10:59 TIM MADDEN: So any way you can get in front of people, that’s absolutely what we do and LinkedIn is one of those as well.

11:05 JIM BEACH: All right. On the other side, how do you find the jobs, the openings and these companies that are so willing to, I mean they have to pay pretty aggressively to get these placements? Yeah, places that are going to cost, it’s a 3rd of the year, the salary, right? So if they get 200 you get, you know, a 3rd of that. Isn’t that right?

11:30 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, we actually, so there’s 2 types of people we deal with. We deal with number one, the executive. Executives come to us and we do this for them. We actually charge that executive anywhere from 8 to $15,000. It is a one-time fee, and we work with them until they are essentially placed. So we do everything for them. We prep them. Now, number two, a completely different business of Executive Career Upgrades is we help organizations.

11:53 TIM MADDEN: It’s very rare that I have someone at the same time for that organization. Typically when we get a corporate contract. We are directly sourcing people. While we do service probably a 100 to 150 executives per month. It’s kind of rare that they line up where someone on the B2C side is, you know what I mean? We’re able to place them on the B2B. When we do that, that’s great.

12:18 TIM MADDEN: But as we continue to grow and scale, that’s going to be a lot easier to do.

12:23 JIM BEACH: Excellent. How did you get your very, very 1st deal? Tell us about the 1st one you ever did.

12:29 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, actually, the 1st one out in the Fortune 500 company. I was selling headhunting and recruitment services. The 1st deal I ever got was I pulled up old school. I had a Microsoft Excel document. I had no technology. I was a day one entrepreneur, and I started cold calling.

12:48 TIM MADDEN: I built a list from online just by utilizing research, and maybe I was one of the lucky ones, Jim, or maybe, you know, I just, uh, what’s what I’m looking for? I just chalk it up. Yeah, chalk it up to just not quitting ever. Serendipity with sweat on top. A little bit. Yeah. Day one, call number 5 of a cold call. I call a midsize organization. I talk to the administrative assistant.

13:19 TIM MADDEN: And lo and behold, the administrative assistant had a lot of leverage, right? Because she had worked at that company and she was a trusted advisor. So I treat everyone with the utmost respect and dignity all the time, and I treat everyone the same. Hey, whether you’re the CEO or whether you’re just a normal worker at the organization, and that served me well. So I had a professional conversation. Lo and behold, that was my 1st contract.

13:53 TIM MADDEN: So cold call number five.

13:54 JIM BEACH: That’s pretty, pretty good. Pretty good. Yes. Yes. I mean, we always joke. You have to make 99 calls to get that rejection underneath you before you get that 100th good one, right?

14:06 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, definitely.

14:07 JIM BEACH: And I hate to play one up with you, Tim, but the only thing I can think of any better than that was I was trying to get my 1st book published, and we sent one letter to McGraw Hill, and a week later, we had one deal.

14:20 TIM MADDEN: Wow. Congratulations.

14:21 JIM BEACH: The example is, is that the reason is that our thesis was so damn good and so damn clear and so many people wanted to hear the, uh, you know, the defense of it, that it was a no-brainer, you know, the onstrip or the thesis is entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Well, people want to hear their defense of that, right?

14:42 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, absolutely.

14:43 JIM BEACH: So anyways. You have 2 very successful books I saw there on the Amazon place. Discipline equals dream job, what it takes to upgrade your life legacy and career. Start, then optimize, start where, or start where you are, optimize what you have, achieve what you dream. I’m really interested in this. Upgrade your life. Do most of the executives that come to you need a skill upgrade before they’re ready for the next level?

15:08 JIM BEACH: Have they maxed out on the ladder and need the upgrade?

15:11 TIM MADDEN: Typically, yes, and here’s why. Everyone thinks that they need a specific super secret plan, right? They need some secret way to do things. When in reality, we typically limit ourselves by saying, I don’t think I’m worthy of this. I don’t think this is going to happen. I think I’m too old. I knew I should have gotten that MBA, Jim. I knew I should have A, D, C, D, EFG.

15:40 TIM MADDEN: So what we really help people with on the upgrading their life is we 1st have to upgrade their mindset. Because you can have Tony Robbins as your the best coach in the world. If you don’t think it’s ever going to happen for you. It’s really difficult to even get out of bed in the morning. So the 1st thing we have to do is show people like, you know, you can really have whatever you want out of life.

16:10 TIM MADDEN: But if you don’t believe it. If you don’t think you’re worthy, how am I going to put you on an interview, Jim, with the CEO of a growing organization that’s kicking ass, that has good compensation, when you’re not showing up with energy and conviction and you think you’re the person for the job? Right? So while, you know, knowing how to convert an interview into an offer is important, right?

16:33 TIM MADDEN: We really help people in that mindset perspective, and after serving so many customers, I believe that 1000% to be true.

16:39 JIM BEACH: How long does it typically play or take to have one of those 8000 plus placements?

16:44 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, typically, our average placement rate is 108 days. So, you know, a little over a little over 3 months is the average. Yeah.

16:56 JIM BEACH: Which is less than it takes to sell a house.

17:00 TIM MADDEN: Depends on the house and the market, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:03 JIM BEACH: Definitely my house in Florida. It’s been on the market for quite some time. I just decided to keep it for a vacation home. Put it on Airbnb.

17:12 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:13 JIM BEACH: Um, Where, what city is it in, Tim?

17:15 TIM MADDEN: Oh, [unclear]. It’s in Punta Gorda, Florida. It’s in between Sarasota and Fort Myers. It’s a beautiful retirement community where our, you know, my wife’s um, parents live, bad place to grow a business and, uh, you know, try to get people to move to and have a family, but a great place to retire. Punta Gorda, right on the harbor, on the southwest side of Florida.

17:37 JIM BEACH: [unclear question] on a yearly basis until you are ready to go back?

17:41 TIM MADDEN: We haven’t yet. We’ve just decided to keep it. We’ve actually went down there a couple times and, you know, when you move out of a home that you called home for a very long time, there is something special about going back to that home and we’ve actually really enjoyed that. So actually now we’re like, you know what? We got it when it was cheap in the market.

18:07 TIM MADDEN: We got it when the rates were low before they were 3 times more expensive like they are now. So fortunately, it’s been very, you know, not too costly.

18:20 JIM BEACH: What is your process for writing a book?

18:23 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, great question. What I like to do. Is I like to have, fortunately, back in the day, it used to be so difficult to write a book. So kudos to you if you wrote a book before 5 years ago, right? Because creativity got people, you had to write it, you had to type it out. Me now, with the implementation of AI, that stops the creativity block.

18:50 TIM MADDEN: So now when I’m like, hey, you know, I want to write a chapter about these things, here’s my background. Here’s what I’m trying to say. Help me out with a couple concepts. You know, when you learn how to utilize ChatGPT and Claude. All those writer’s blocks, they essentially are removed. So it’s not like AI’s writing the book. It’s helping you, right?

19:10 TIM MADDEN: And maybe you’re you’re trying to come up with the book title and the the 3 words don’t sound right and you’re like, hey, you know, I’m trying to do this or this. So I think with the implementation of AI, kind of helping with a little bit more of the creativity, kind of like just the trusted advisor who kind of knows you, that’s been very helpful for, you know, people in today’s age, I believe.

19:33 JIM BEACH: I think very well said. All right. I come in and want a placement. What are the things you’re going to ask me and get me ready to think about. So start getting me ready, Tim, for a placement. I, uh, I’ve just been a CEO of the country’s largest, uh, gizzard company, and we just got bought out, and so apparently there’s going to be a new delicacy on all the cruise lines.

19:56 JIM BEACH: And so they wanted to go straight to vertical, you know, own the supply.

20:01 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, no problem.

20:02 JIM BEACH: My past in the gizzard industry, that’s hard to say all of a sudden, is prepared me for a great future, help me.

20:09 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, so it’s 5 steps. I tell people, you’re getting a job in Russia, Croatia, China, South America, Canada, America. There’s 5 things that you need. Number one, we need to be clear on your target. Obviously, if you’re a CEO, you can do a lot of different things. So my 1st question is, hey, do you want to be another CEO? Do you want to, you know, maybe go to a large company and be a director or a VP?

20:35 TIM MADDEN: What types of industries are you passionate about? Do you want to work remote? Are you open to relocate and more? So number one, we have to get extremely clear on a target. As you can imagine, if we don’t know what the goal line is of what we consider success, how can we ever reach it? So that clarity piece is super important.

20:56 TIM MADDEN: And most people just skip out of that when they get laid off from a job or hate their job. They’re like, I’m gonna, they go right to the job boards. And it’s confusing people. So number one, you have to be extremely clear on your target. Number two, then we take care of your branding. We optimize your resume and LinkedIn with our amazing branding team. Number three. We start generating interviews for you.

21:25 TIM MADDEN: A couple of the ways we do that. We use automated tools and we have a project manager that essentially applies for every relevant position that you may be interested in based on your targeting. We start generating the interviews. Then we have to tell you what to say on the interviews, and you need a process, just like everything in life.

21:48 TIM MADDEN: We don’t want to send you on your dream job interview when you don’t have a process to follow, you haven’t trained, you haven’t practiced, and you’re not certified. The last step, we’re going to help you negotiate your salary. Essentially, we’ve done that 1000s of times. No matter if you’re in tech, project management, you’re a CEO, those are the steps clear on a target, branded effectively.

22:10 TIM MADDEN: You got to know how to get in front of people that can hire you or hire us to do that. You got to know what to say on those interviews, to convert them into offers, and then, hey, you need to know how to negotiate your salary so that you maximize your compensation. No matter what you’re doing. You need to master those steps. And I just want to say one more thing too, Jim.

22:34 TIM MADDEN: The confusing part is we’re not talking about how great you are at your job right now. That’s what confuses a lot of people. I call it, you know, just the curse of the entrepreneur. You can be the best plumber in Nashville, Tennessee. If you don’t know how to run a business, sales marketing, get contracts, you’re going to fail. Doesn’t matter if you had the best plumber.

22:55 TIM MADDEN: So a lot of the time, what confuses these people is they’re really great at what they do, but again, we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the components I just mentioned, and that’s why most people get stuck.

23:12 JIM BEACH: So brand, for me, makes sense. You know, Jim Beach, I speak, I’m in commercials, I’ve consulted at the White House, I have radio show, I write books. So for me, it’s clear that I need a brand, right? But what about the vice president of medical manufacturing, who’s hoping to get the CEO job at a medical manufacturing company? What is his brand? How do we brand vice president of medical operation production?

23:37 TIM MADDEN: Yeah. So when I, if we’re talking about documents wise, right? Like branding his LinkedIn profile and branding him online, we need to brand him as a person that can solve that organization’s problems. So we probably need to talk about the similar challenges he solved, exactly how he solved them. The teams he’s led, the budgets, the processes he’s influenced, the cost savings initiatives, right? I meet so many people that are great at what they do.

24:02 TIM MADDEN: I met a guy who grew e-commerce to a $1000000000 and then did a private equity thing, but on his profile or his branding documents. He was like, oh, I’m in e-commerce. I do digital advertising, but he didn’t say his ad budget was $10000000 a year. So, you know, branding someone talking about, you know, how they’re great relative to what they’re targeting is super important. The same thing for you, right?

24:26 TIM MADDEN: If you’re trying to do a specific job, we might not need to bring up the radio show host, we might not need to bring up the things. So it’s confusing, a resume isn’t, let me say everything that I’ve done in my entire career, it’s, hey, what am I targeting? How can I bring up the things that actually matter most to the person who might see this? That’s what a lot of people are missing.

24:51 JIM BEACH: Help me negotiate salary. I am horrible at that. Give me some advice.

24:56 TIM MADDEN: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. First is throughout the process, hopefully the candidate has determined what the range of pay it. Then their number 2 job after they’ve determined that is how can I build the gap throughout the process, so the company knows I can solve more problems and identify more problems than what they think they need. Okay? If you want to increase your compensation, a lot of it has to do with how you position yourself in the interview, right?

25:28 TIM MADDEN: So let’s say we’re at the end of the interview now. The biggest thing you can do is having identified the biggest challenges that they have. So Jim, if I’m negotiating with you at the end, and now I’m trying to be your VP of digital marketing and you offer me $100,000 by chance a year. I could say, hey, Jim, thank you so much for this offer. I can’t wait to join the team.

25:54 TIM MADDEN: I know I can add a lot of value. Hey, Jim, would you consider increasing the base salary to this and potentially a sign-on bonus of this? As you mentioned, Jim, you told me you’re losing $50,000 a month running ineffective Facebook ads. As I told you, I used to work at this company who did this.

26:13 TIM MADDEN: So where a lot of people, you know, don’t consider is when you’re asking for more money, more benefits, more vacation, they forget to add the additional value that they’re going to bring with that. Because why would you offer someone more money to do the same job? It doesn’t make sense, right? So you have to have that value-add so that you can ask for more.

26:36 TIM MADDEN: So a lot of it has to do with the interview, identifying the challenges and the problems, and then wrapping it up during that negotiation stage, and in reality. If I feel confident that you can solve my problem and you’ve identified them, I’m probably going to be less apprehensive to offer you the extra 20 K or 30 K that you want, because at the end of the day, people want their problem solved. That’s what they truly care about.

27:10 JIM BEACH: So, 170, that’s a really nice offer. Thank you very much. I thought the range was from 190 to 160. So why didn’t I get 190. How can I get 190?

27:26 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, absolutely. Great question.

27:28 JIM BEACH: That’s my question.

27:29 TIM MADDEN: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would I would go back and say, hey, again, I would leave with the value. Jim, thank you so much for that offer. Hey, as we previously stated, you said the range would be this or this. As I’ve shared with you previously. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Here’s some of the accomplishments I’ve done. Here’s the value that I’m going to bring.

27:51 TIM MADDEN: Hey, would you consider increasing that base given my past experience and the value. I going to bring forth. And then it’s either a yes or a no. And then you need to make a decision, you know?

28:03 JIM BEACH: How long is it allowed to negotiate about salary?

28:05 TIM MADDEN: It’s it’s pretty quick. When we get an offer in, right? We, someone on our team immediately gets with them. We want to wrap that up as soon as possible because anyone who’s been in sales for any amount of time knows the number one killer of all deals is time. Every day that goes by, the CEO might want to hire his niece, they might put a hiring freeze on, right?

28:32 TIM MADDEN: So I would say if you have an offer in hand, This is urgent. Let’s try to do it as soon as possible. Okay? And what I don’t want to do. You have to be careful on how you negotiate as well. I can’t come back saying, I want 20 more K on the base, and I want a bonus, and I want that’s, that’s a lot. So I would highly encourage people doing this on their own.

28:57 TIM MADDEN: Hey, just ask for one or 2 things and try to wrap up the deal as quickly as possible. That be my advice.

29:06 JIM BEACH: Where are we on remote versus in office these days, Tim?

29:09 TIM MADDEN: 83% of our placements of directors, VPs and executives in corporate America. Work remote. So I will tell you, unless you’re in a job that requires you to be on site, like something in manufacturing or maintenance or something. A lot of the leaders are working remote these days. Now, it’s not all of them, but the ones we work with most are remote.

29:29 JIM BEACH: Interesting. Okay. What’s going to happen to downtown America? Companies will move in that do [unclear] offices. I believe. There is something special. You know, there is something special. Okay, about having people in an office. You know, I don’t agree with everything Jamie Dimon says, right? But I do think that there is more creativity when people are together, and I do think there is something special about that. Now, [unclear phrase].

29:59 TIM MADDEN: Yeah, our company is 100% remote. We try to get together as much as we can. I actually would prefer to be in the office. I know there’s people who wouldn’t. But I do think that there always is going to be a need for that. And I do think that there’s something special about that. And hey, if to each their own, right?

30:22 TIM MADDEN: If you, I know a lot of people are complaining about this nowadays, 0 my god, go to the office, et cetera. It’s just like, hey, brother, go find another job then. It’s okay, right? Like, that’s why clarity on what’s important for you is so important, right? Like if you want a remote job, then work remote. No big deal.

30:46 JIM BEACH: Tim, how do we find out more? Follow you online, apply to be part of your executives that you upgrade, et cetera. Please. Yeah, copy your books.

30:59 TIM MADDEN: You can go to all of my books are on Amazon right now. You can go to Amazon.com for discipline equals dream job or start then optimize, start then optimize is also over on Audible for information on anything that we do. You can go to execupgrades.com, and I’m available all on the internet because I’m a CEO that is a content creator, Jim. So I am on TikTok at Tim Madden. I am on Instagram, the Tim Madden.

31:26 TIM MADDEN: I am on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. You searched Tim Madden, Executive Career Upgrades. I’m going to pop up everywhere.

31:34 JIM BEACH: Very cool. I wish you had some enthusiasm for it, though.

31:38 TIM MADDEN: I’m trying. I’m trying.

31:39 JIM BEACH: Tim, great interview. Thank you so much for being with us. We’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

31:46 TIM MADDEN: Thank you so much.

31:47 JIM BEACH: And we will be right back.

31:49 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually.

31:51 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Oh, my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this.

31:54 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Thank you, Jim.

31:55 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Wow, that’s a great one.

31:56 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: You know, that is a phenomenal question.

31:58 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer.

32:02 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: It has a great question.

32:04 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Oh, that is such a loaded question.

32:06 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s actually a really good question.

32:08 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: School for startups radio.

32:10 JIM BEACH: We are backing again. Thank you so very much for being with us. You know, we hear that it’s a horrible job market out there, and people are really struggling. And it’s a situation I want to look into and learn a little bit more about, please welcome Dr. Lee Bowes to the show. She is the co-founder and CEO of America Works network of companies. She started this organization with her husband back in 2087.

32:34 JIM BEACH: I’m sorry, 2018, 1987, I think, and they have built an organization developed to helping people get long-term economic independence. They have worked with people with disabilities, welfare recipients, veterans, people experience homelessness, formerly incarcerated individuals, helping these people learn the skills that they need to get and maintain successful jobs. Dr. Bowes, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

32:57 DR. LEE BOWES: I’m doing well. Thank you for having me.

32:59 JIM BEACH: How many people have you helped, Lee?

33:01 DR. LEE BOWES: Somewhere around 8000000 people at this point.

33:04 JIM BEACH: Wow.

33:04 DR. LEE BOWES: Yes. It’s daunting, but if you go year by year. It’s like, we don’t look at it. That wasn’t set out like, we’re going to help that number of people. It’s just as it added up and we went to more and more states to do the work we did. It did add up. So I’m very pleased with that.

33:28 JIM BEACH: Well, congratulations and what a huge impact you’ve had on so many people. Before we go back in history, Tell us what you do now. What are the basket of services that we can expect now?

33:40 DR. LEE BOWES: So we, we still do kind of our mainstay. Um, when we started. We started in Boston and we were doing working with a group of people on public assistance, uh, people on welfare. And by accident, we met the man who has had a Blue Cross Blue Shield for the state of Massachusetts, and he wanted to get the Medicaid billing contract with the state. Medicaid being the primary source of healthcare for people on welfare.

34:06 DR. LEE BOWES: And when he met us, he said, if I could get people working at my company who actually were recipients of Medicaid, I bet I get the contract much easier. So that’s in fact what happened. He hired us to run a contract for temp workers, Kelly Girl, it was called. And he gave the contract to us and we brought in 20, 40 people. Every single one of them got hired in different departments.

34:30 DR. LEE BOWES: They were long term welfare recipients, had never had jobs before, but they came in on this temp contract and people would see they came to work early. They had great attitudes, and that became the model, but then we took uh, and expanded on. Working inside the companies, working with employers rather than just training in a vacuum, which was pretty much what was going on in our field back in the 80s.

34:55 DR. LEE BOWES: So, That’s, that was the initial goal, to work inside of private industry to find out what they needed and design and get people to them that they really uh, would value.

35:05 JIM BEACH: Very cool. How did you and your husband get started on this? Where was the money to do it? You were an adjunct professor, professor, I think at Columbia that time. Why you? Where were you?

35:17 DR. LEE BOWES: I, we were in Boston initially. That’s where we’re both from.

35:21 JIM BEACH: Okay.

35:21 DR. LEE BOWES: We came to New York in 87.

35:23 JIM BEACH: How did you do that?

35:25 DR. LEE BOWES: Yes. So I had been running at that point in this was in the 1970s, I was running this large government sponsored program called the CETA program out of the labor department. I was running it for a big chunk of Massachusetts for a mayor. And I met Peter Cove because he had a small nonprofit that was part of a national demonstration in Boston. And he brought me on.

35:49 DR. LEE BOWES: I was just getting my PhD at night and he said, oh, you’re going to get to run, you’re going to get to do research. Which I liked because that was in keeping with my PhD. And I was still completing that. So that’s how we started, but it was the mutual thought that we both came to from different directions. This has to be out of the government. We can’t just get people ready to go to government jobs.

36:15 DR. LEE BOWES: We have to go to the private sector. That’s where all the jobs are. And that’s how we came together and started to create the model. We had funding from a variety of things, the Ford Foundation, being one of them, to do programs in this area. But nobody had really taken it the way we did into the private sector. So we, we, double the placement rates of any of the other vendors.

36:40 DR. LEE BOWES: There were 14 agencies around the country doing this, all being evaluated by researchers. It’s probably the only a national experimental and control group. It’s called the Supported Work National Demonstration. Um, and welfare recipients were the most successful, but America Works was the most successful vendor who did it. So our placement rates and job retention rates were doubled that of all the other organizations. And when that ended, we then went out.

37:04 DR. LEE BOWES: And immediately we got a lot of interest in Washington. Um, I don’t know if this is too much detail, but.

37:11 JIM BEACH: This is what we want. We want the intricacies of how you get started. So go.

37:16 DR. LEE BOWES: So because we had this kind of, uh, Republican idea, the 1st person who got interested in us, and he used to write books all the time, was Newt Gingrich, and he was always writing on public policy issues, and he fell in love with what we did. The fact that we were pay for performance. The fact that we got people out of the dependency system. So they were taxpayers and working.

37:41 DR. LEE BOWES: All really intrigued him and he wrote about us and he promoted us. But the other piece was Bill Clinton, and he was running for president, and one of his themes was end welfare as we know it. So that was the coming together, which used to happen in Washington, where the Republican speaker of the house, and what ultimately became the Democratic president, really thought to work together to come up with a bill. The bill was passed.

38:07 DR. LEE BOWES: After many tries, and then we got a chance to work with the Clinton White House on the [unclear phrase], which were the regulations. So we encouraged things like privatization. We encouraged the fact that you pay for outcomes, you don’t pay for a lot of training, because up until then people would pay for training, training, training, and then the people would never get jobs. It’s like, uh, that was in the classroom, but it didn’t translate into the business communities.

38:36 DR. LEE BOWES: So, That led to our expanding around the country. Um, we were in New York. We had come to New York. Because of Mario Cuomo. Um, and in fact, when we, Giuliani ran for mayor, one of the things he told us was, if I get elected, I’m going to double the size of your company, and he, the Republican mayor, came together with the Democratic governor, and they did a press conference in our offices to announce that, which was amazing.

39:06 DR. LEE BOWES: And then of course, welfare reform got passed, which was even more amazing. And we’ve been doing this ever since. I mean, we continued to love the work. We love seeing people get jobs and move ahead. We went from welfare recipients to the next thing was veterans who needed jobs, and after that, we started looking at the men who were in the prison incarcerated. So we introduced that population.

39:29 DR. LEE BOWES: Um, and we have slowly taken up work with people who are homeless, people who are veterans who are homeless. We work with people who are in the disability system, social security disability. Um, we have different offices around the country and uh, we have about 300 staff.

39:44 JIM BEACH: So, That’s amazing. Congratulations.

39:46 DR. LEE BOWES: Thank you. Thank you. So that’s who we are today.

39:49 JIM BEACH: What kind of different programs do you have to have for the incarcerated or something like that?

39:54 DR. LEE BOWES: Well, it’s no, you know, what we found is everybody, geographically, people say, well, you’re in New York, you don’t understand what it’s like in the state of Washington, or you don’t understand the Midwest, and but truly, the basic premise works, no matter where we are. We have staff that go out and secure job openings. Um, we call them a sales staff. We have staff that do the counseling.

40:16 DR. LEE BOWES: In-house, once somebody comes into our office, they’re assigned someone who works with them and we look at all the things going on in their lives and try to help them with everything we can, whether it’s good childcare transportation, counseling that they have. We try to handle that upfront while they’re with us. We have a lot of trainers right now we have 200 different training modules we offer in the buildings that we’re in, but we also offer them virtually.

40:43 DR. LEE BOWES: Um, and they’re everything from how to get promoted, once you have a job, to how to use AI, to, uh, keep your job, to see new jobs, to write your resume, to write thank you notes. I mean, we have 200 different training programs. And then we look at the retention services, and that has to do with being involved with the employer and saying, how is working out?

41:06 DR. LEE BOWES: Is there anything, if they need additional help with something or the employer says, I don’t know why, they’ve been coming in late recently. We get on it right away. We’re able to intervene and we’re able to help the employees solve that problem or not. And get the employer a better person. I mean, one of my things I did getting my PhD was to interview businesses about, uh, what it is that would help them and what they didn’t like.

41:32 DR. LEE BOWES: And the one thing they all told me is they hated, what they called dump them and run programs, like someone would come in, say, you know, I have a daughter who has had polio and she’s physically handicapped and this organization has helped her. Can you give some people jobs? They would give them the job and then they never heard from the agency again or they just got people who really weren’t interested in doing the work that they had.

42:00 DR. LEE BOWES: Uh, so we take a lot of care, even to this day, in, uh, just getting the employers involved. I mean, we run an employer network in the Washington and Maryland area once a month. Where all the employees get together and our clients call in who are looking for work and they hear from the employers exactly what they’re interested in.

42:20 DR. LEE BOWES: And we do that in different markets around the country, which really give them an edge on hearing before they’ve even applied to the company, what they want to see and what they don’t want to see. And that’s important, but, you know, we all have had experiences. Where you go in and it’s true for my organization as well. It’s, you never really know the social environment, the political social environment, of an employer until you start working there.

42:51 DR. LEE BOWES: So, we also understand that not every match is going to be perfect, but we never say never to the client will say, let’s, let’s build that job with someone else and why don’t you come back and we’re going to reassess where you should go and we’re going to get you another job. So about half of our people get 2 or 3 jobs before we finish a one year period, which is good because we, we upfront.

43:17 DR. LEE BOWES: Say, we’re not going to just send you on an interview, you get hired and it’s going to be perfect. Part of it is, if we think you need to give it more time, we’ll tell them to do that, but we get them more support. But in cases where it’s not going to work out, uh, for whatever reason, we just will find someone a different job, but never leave the employer in the lurch.

43:41 DR. LEE BOWES: So we find someone else for them.

43:43 JIM BEACH: I love it. I love the philosophy and the follow up. What are the skills that people need the most? What are they the most delinquent in?

43:52 DR. LEE BOWES: Well, we used to say computer technology. Um, because no, even if you’re a security guard, you’re working with computers, you’ve got to see screens. They may have you in the back room, not just standing in front. You’re actually watching. On a retail basis. So, but a lot of that, interestingly enough, during COVID.

44:10 DR. LEE BOWES: And I really credit the, um, heads of household, mostly the mothers who had to really get up and to speed because the schools all sent out tablets, we did it to 4 schools and 4 geographic areas, laptops and tablets, so they could give their children lessons at home. And learning went through the roof.

44:28 DR. LEE BOWES: You know, I always say, for years, we would put a business lab together, get them on trip computers, have an instructor, teach people, you know, and they’d come out with like, 2 or 3% increased knowledge of how to use computers. And then COVID hit, and learning went through the roof.

44:44 DR. LEE BOWES: Uh, we’ve had like a fellows program over the years where they come in and do evaluate and when they, they evaluated learning how to use a computer before and after COVID. A lot of the low income families we work with, it was, they, you know, in necessity, you can learn anything. So it was interesting. And of course, now over the years, it’s become easier.

45:06 DR. LEE BOWES: You can talk into your phone and do a lot of, you know, how do I find this? Where do I go for this? So it’s not as daunting as it used to be. So that’s less of an issue, and then you get to the attitude. One of the things we do a tremendous amount of work on is how you present yourself. And what your attitude that you show is.

45:29 DR. LEE BOWES: So while they’re with us and maybe maybe with us 3 to 6 months before we get them a job, we’re working a lot on how they appear, what their dress looks like, how they answer when they’re spoken to, you know, big issue is eye contact, um, and not being negative and how you get to that point.

45:48 DR. LEE BOWES: And for people who have been, you know, there are always some people who will sabotage themselves, whether it’s in the job interview or on the job, and they did it in the past. So we try to find that out and we try to talk it through as a group, how you handle those things differently than you handle them now. So we we do a lot of that soft skill stuff, lots of it, but we also do hard training.

46:14 DR. LEE BOWES: So as I said, we have 200 different training modules. And they’ve been very, very helpful to people because there are ways you can show yourself to be a leader. From day one when you go in to take a job, you watch who trains you and you pick up those skills and you volunteer to train somebody when that person’s out.

46:33 DR. LEE BOWES: And suddenly you are looking at perhaps becoming the crew chief, not on this group, but maybe at a new location. So it’s all of those things that really go into showing your a really great employee. I think about the people that we get jobs for. They tend to be enormously grateful for the chance. And a lot of employers will tell you they’re just tired of people taking it, uh, uh, taking it for granted that they have a job.

46:59 DR. LEE BOWES: And if you have someone who comes in and says, I’m so happy to come to work today, I’m glad you gave me this opportunity. It really makes a big difference in how employers feel about you. So, in that you do not only by showing up on time, but what you say and how you treat the customers, you know, taking a customer who says to you that I really want to thank you for helping me today.

47:30 DR. LEE BOWES: Well, could you just put it in? Here’s something where you could write an email and that’s my boss and I’d like to hear it. Just knowing how to do that isn’t, doesn’t come naturally to everyone. So it’s, it’s very gratifying though, as you can imagine. Um, the people who work for us, get get a flower here and there, get a thank you note. And I know it keeps me going and I know it keeps them going.

47:57 DR. LEE BOWES: I mean, we’ve had people who work for us over 20 years.

48:00 JIM BEACH: Wow. An amazing story, Lee. Very, very well. That is just an amazing story. And is the funding still secure these days?

48:07 DR. LEE BOWES: Well, yeah, I always say we’re, we’re kind of the, the business that, you know, if unemployment is high, we get hired because so many people are out of work and they need ways to get them back in. Um, and what I do is, if I put more time into finding job openings at companies.

48:26 DR. LEE BOWES: And when there’s low unemployment and every employer’s got help wanted signs, then I spend more time sourcing people and going back to the government agencies that we work with and saying, send us more individuals, we have X number openings, and I don’t have enough people for them. So it’s like whatever’s going on in the economy. Although right now it’s different because you had a, you know, somewhat low, 4.2% unemployment rate, but huge amounts of people.

48:54 DR. LEE BOWES: The men, economists call them the missing men, the 25- to 55-year-old men. And it’s very hard for people to understand this, but I know your listenership does. But they’re not in the unemployment data. So if you’re not looking for work, you’re not captured in the unemployment data. And we have 1000000s of people. And this most concern right now is around men who are missing at working age, 25 to 55 years that have just dropped out.

49:20 DR. LEE BOWES: And now there’s a lot of discussion about generation Z not being in the workforce. They take a job, but they leave fairly quickly. Um, and that’s a whole other problem. But so you have lots of people who aren’t working, but they’re not counted in the unemployment data.

49:36 JIM BEACH: So my theory of, well, we need to do more looking for jobs. I mean, I was just in a staples. Do they forever have job openings? I mean, they were actually blowing up balloons now. I was trying to get a part for a computer and it’s like, the computer experts over there, we’ve got a big order for a party. I’m like what? Is this staples? It’s like they’re trying to diversify, I guess, but they have help wanted everywhere.

50:12 JIM BEACH: Something like 7000000 jobs in America open right now, right?

50:15 DR. LEE BOWES: I think that’s that sounds right if that’s the latest.

50:19 JIM BEACH: Yeah. It’s amazing, the mismatch. And how do we solve that? Are you the solution to the mismatch times, we just need to run you out, put you on turbo and make it even bigger?

50:29 DR. LEE BOWES: Well, I know I’m one of the solutions for what goes on once the mismatch has occurred. I mean, there are lots of jobs that people who have a disability or homeless or other things can do, and that’s a match we make and bring them into the employers, and once employees start to work with that population, they want additional employees like that. But a lot of this issue of the mismatch is people’s expectations.

50:54 DR. LEE BOWES: You know, when you’re just out of college. And we used to say it’s all COVID, COVID, COVID, but I think we’re a little far away from COVID to still use that as an excuse. But there are young people who, between the cost of their college loans, the fact that whatever they studied in college doesn’t seem to relate to the job openings. Um, They’re discouraged before they start. And once they start a job, they quit frequently.

51:20 DR. LEE BOWES: You know, they take the job for 4 to 6 months and then they leave. I had before when I was looking for my own staff, I used to look at people job hopping or having, you know, and I’d say, well, we can just get rid of that resume. I can’t do that anymore because they’re all everyone’s job hopping. And whether it’s to find a better job or it’s just they’re tired of what they were doing.

51:52 DR. LEE BOWES: But there’s much more of that, it’s a normal thing. Um, even in some of our financial people that we’re hiring. It’s it’s pretty chronic.

52:00 JIM BEACH: Yes. I mean, when I was that age, we were told 4 years was the, if you change job every 4 years you looked bad.

52:08 DR. LEE BOWES: Yes, yes. That was when they originally, it’s very hard to discard any resume now because everybody’s job hopping. It’s, it’s not, and I was just talking, we, we had a job open in the finance department, and, you know, it’s like, you couldn’t at all go by that rule, even with CPAs, they’re like, you know, a dime a dozen, jumping around to different jobs, and that never was like that.

52:36 DR. LEE BOWES: As you know, people used to take a job and try to take it for life. But those jobs don’t exist. The employers aren’t that committed, and the employees aren’t that committed. So it’s a 2 way street.

52:50 JIM BEACH: Goodness. Lee, though, you’re solving it, and I’m so impressed with what you have done. 8000000 helped absolutely amazing. Thank you for sharing this success with us. How do we find out more we’re getting in touch? All of that, please.

53:05 DR. LEE BOWES: Well, just go to our website, AmericaWorks.com. And there’s lots of information there and there’s points of contact, different offices, depending on where you are. Um, and just follow up, and we are always interested in people’s comments. We’re also interested in people who want to apply to jobs that we have, want to take our services in a general area. So we are open for business every day.

53:31 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. Dr. Lee Bowes, thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff, and you are an American hero.

53:37 DR. LEE BOWES: Oh, I don’t think so.

53:38 JIM BEACH: But you are. You keep doing what you’re doing. All I’m doing is telling your story. That’s what makes me look good, is you.

53:45 DR. LEE BOWES: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

53:48 JIM BEACH: Take it. Take care.

53:49 DR. LEE BOWES: Bye bye.

53:49 JIM BEACH: Well, we are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars. Bye now.