Good News York by Growth Mode Content - Good News York - Episode with Sean Kelsey & Rick Nuzzo: Highlighting Community and Charity Work | GNY E05

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Good News York - Episode with Sean Kelsey & Rick Nuzzo: Highlighting Community and Charity WorkIn this episode of Good News York, hosts Mike Brindisi and his co-host cheerfully kick off the week discussing viral internet moments and weekend activities before diving into the unique services offered by their company, Growth Mode Technologies and Growth Mode Content. They then welcome guests Sean Kelsey from Nave Law Firm and Rick Nuzzo, a marketing expert and St. Jude supporter, who share inspiring stories about their work with various non-profits, notably St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Rick discusses the upcoming Syracuse for St. Jude Gala and his personal journey with the organization, while Sean talks about the importance of businesses giving back to the community. The episode ends with light-hearted banter and a sense of fulfillment from contributing to meaningful causes. Join them every day at 5 PM EST for more good news!00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter00:42 Weekend Recap and DJ Stories01:31 Oscars Talk and Award Shows04:05 Growth Mode Content and Technologies05:04 Organic Content Strategy12:40 Podcasting for Businesses24:02 St. Jude Gala and Charity Work29:18 The Impact of St. Jude's Research29:48 Personal Stories and Experiences30:38 Supporting Non-Profits: A Business Perspective33:09 Upcoming St. Jude's Gala Event33:38 Officer Colin Hayward Tooling Award36:30 St. Jude's Global Reach and Community Impact44:31 Rick's Professional Journey and COVID-19 Pivot49:11 The Importance of Giving Back52:27 Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts

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Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. What's up? Happy Monday. It's Monday. Good News York. Mike Rendisi.

I didn't know we were going to get a singing intro. It's just a thing I do. Yeah. Excited. Do you ever eat something and it's so good? You go. That video, you saw that video, the chick, right? She's sitting there.

People get mad at her because she's so excited because she's doing like a happy dance. You know what I'm talking about? I actually did see that. I don't remember it to the T. But yeah, I remember, and I remember thinking like, dude, leave her alone. She's loving what she's eating. Right. Let the girl live. People are weird.

Anyway. Speaking of weird people, what'd you do this weekend, buddy? Dude, listen, it's good news, York, so I'm going to try to be positive. I didn't really have a weekend because I have two children. Yeah. And let's see, Friday, I DJed an elementary school dance. Nice. I used to work at this elementary school, and I love those kids so much and they needed a DJ.

So gave me an excuse to see them. Saturday. Like, Nikki Minaj and stuff? I played a ton of a lot of it. M&M and honestly what went over was wet-ass pussy. Oh, yeah. Kids loved it. And then Saturday, my wife had a, that's a song, my wife had a cheerleading competition. She's a cheerleading coach. She's badass. And that was an all-day event. And then Sunday, a volleyball competition or a volleyball tournament. My daughter was in, that was all day.

So it was a lot of waiting around with zero cell service. Do you watch the Oscars? Here's the thing I got to get into the swing of things Being on a daily show I should be watching it so that we can stay up I have it set to watch tonight Because I had too much going on as I just explained That's the long way of seeing it

You're gonna watch it after it's like watching the Super Bowl the next day You're already known who wins You're right I've purposely stayed away from Seeing as much as I could What about you? No I don't Does anybody care

No there are people that care There are people that care mostly industry folk. There used to be all of these award shows, and they were cool when we only had two channels on the TV. It's like we need awards season because we need to fill five hours of something when Friends isn't on. But I don't know, man.

It just always seems. And then they added, I feel like there was like a heyday where they added everybody and their brother had some kind of award show for every thing. And I still miss the Nickelodeon. Remember when we were kids, the Nickelodeon? The Slime Award or the...

Yeah, they got a... They got the orange Zeppelin thing. What was that thing? That was like a Nickelodeon. It's like a Nickelodeon Zeppelin with slime on it. Remember the MTV movie awards with the astronaut? Yeah, see, those were entertaining. But these other ones are just like, I don't know.

It's like a fashion thing. Especially, I guess if you're into fashion, that's really where it's at. You get that red carpet. The red carpet is a big experience. I don't know. They love the pre-show even more than the actual Oscars. See, I could see that then. That almost makes sense.

One thing I did here is that they, you know how they do the in-memorium, and they always leave people out? And they, so they had the in-memorium for their A-listers. And then the people that are still just as important, but of course, Hollywood doesn't care that much about. Ran out of time. You could scan a QR code and see a separate in-memorium, which. Wow. Yeah. Which I haven't fully processed yet.

Wow. I don't know if that's tasteless, genius. On the one hand, they took the time to make another video for those people. I mean, that's what I mean. It's like, is it a nice gesture or is it like, really? Probably better than the millions of people who passed away and don't get any recognition. Maybe? Maybe.

I don't know. It's good news, York. It's a positive spin. I like that. Yeah, we'll take it. Wow. Oscars. Yeah.

I don't know. Did you hear anything about if it got real speechy, like, protesting? I don't hear anything. Or if they just stuck in. I don't know. I feel to us for the Oscar review. Yeah, no, this is not. No idea.

We don't give a shit. This isn't the Oscars. This is not the Oscars. No. By any means, would you do this with that? I did a lot of work. Yeah. We got a number of new clients that I've been trying to onboard and get taken care of.

Yes, here at Growth Mode content. That is the other part of this gig. Not even that. Growth Mode technologies are our tech company. Yeah. So it's been a busy weekend on top all the family stuff. I feel that. Let's talk about growth mode content and growth mode technologies.

little bit. Clearly everybody knows what this is. It's good news York. This is our show. But the rest of our days are filled with you dealing mostly with the IT company and all of us collectively dealing with our channel partners or clients, as we call them, to record their podcasts, which has been going phenomenal. By the way, we got some rock stars. We really do. And I'm not just saying that. Man, the fun part of this is we meet these people and we learn the most interesting thing. about him. Yeah. Which is the whole point of organic content, right? It's the, and for a lot of folks that don't understand the strategy behind growth mode content, the thing that literally no one else in the market is doing in a focused manner like this is to deliver that human experience,

that organic, or really, what the hell's what's organic, just more expensive at the grocery store, no. Free range podcast. It means it's not scripted. I don't have a script in front of us right now. We're just a couple of dudes talking. We do not. And that is the strategy for our content creators, our clients. Yeah. To build their brand, we're not making commercials, right? No. Lots of people that do that.

And that's great. There's a place for that and incredibly talented people all over town that we will send you to who could do that for you. That's not us. Yeah. What we're trying to do is that real human interaction, the same type of interaction that you would get that say you walked into somebody's store and said, hey, I want to do business with you and you have a conversation with the person that works there, we don't do that

anymore, right? And in a lot of businesses, there isn't a store, right? It was never that sort of thing. But people do business with people. And what we've figured out is if we can present folks in a way where you learn about them and back to where we started was how many interesting things there are, the things you learn about your fellow humans. It's unbelievable. A, make you just admire them, right? Right. And be impressed. them, but also you get to learn about their actual credibility and their business. And you realize that they're not just somebody who signed up and put a sticker on their car, but they actually know what the hell they're talking about.

Yeah, it's almost like a reversal, right? In traditional advertising, you watch or listen to something and you learn about the business. And maybe they'll sprinkle in a little bit about the owners or the ownership. What's great about what we do is it's almost as if their service or their business is second. You're getting to know them first. And the reason why I think that's important is how many times have you thought about using a service or a business, maybe the way they do business or who they are rubs you the wrong way? And you don't feel comfortable moving forward. Here it's like you get to meet them first and then you're like, I love this person.

And what do they do? Yeah, I want that, you know? And the value of that really comes into play when you have things where there is a ton of competition, right? So coffee cup, maybe 20 companies in town make a coffee cup that looks just like this. It has the same function. The pricing might even be about the same price. So why would I buy from one company versus another? Then you go to find out that this particular company actually gives a percentage of all their sales to the local community.

And they also pay their employees more. And they're also somebody who makes it super easy for you to place your order for that cup, where everybody else in town makes you jump through the hoops. That's a perfect example. Or let's say like we had our buddy Abel on him, right? Sure. You meet a guy whose story like his. Maybe the owner of the coffee cup company migrated here and built his business from the ground up, faced adversity.

And just that story alone, you're like, how can I not support that? You learn that these are people first and foremost in organizations that you want to support. Yeah. And that's what is so powerful in this organic. content game. And our strategy for delivering that is pretty unique as well. We have folks come in once a month. They record these podcasts. We invite them in guests on Good News York as well. But the idea is you come in and you record that once a month. And then we take that and slice that up into a month's worth of social media posts across all the platforms. Yeah, we run the show for you.

So yeah. And I think we've made it super easy. And the biggest challenge in this, because we've done this before, before we had this whole team. To do it consistently is incredibly difficult, and we've made it super easy for folks, so they can get that consistent branding effort out into the community and not taking a second job. Right. And consistency is everything with organic content. 100% in general. And the biggest barrier for people being consistent is time.

Right. And I think that's our, I don't even want to say selling point, because we're not really trying to sell you anything. This is what it is. And the bread and butter isn't, the podcast is great. You get a podcast once a month, people who can go to it. It's in its own spot out there in the interweb. But I think the real benefit you're seeing is what you talked about, how we have a team that chops up these clips and these videos and puts them across all the platforms.

We gain access to those platforms. Obviously, you're welcome to do it as well. It's yours. But we will run that show for you. I think that's something that we haven't talked about a little bit. actually, and we should mention more and highlight more as we build out our marketing materials for growth mode content. One of the tools that we use is a social media management platform that all of our creators have access to. So it's the tool that we use to schedule your posts and blast them out.

But you as a creator have access to it. So you can go in and see what's going on. We got a beautiful email from Christine O'Connell last night. Oh, really? Yeah. You got to check it out. If you haven't checked your email yet, I replied. she's blown away.

I can't believe it. The results I'm seeing already. She's getting people emailing and calling her that saw the clips and they want to do business. And that's all we could ask for. That makes me smile. It does. It made me smile and you'll see my reply.

I said, you know, we are genuinely so happy for you because the thing is, this isn't like where it ends when we say cut and it's, hey, good luck. Yeah. We're on this journey with our channel partners,

our clients. And we're there 24-7. This isn't like we shoot it. It's done. here you go. We're monitoring the analytics and we're posting throughout the month. We're staying in contact with you. So we want to see that success. As we're doing more and more of this, I'm seeing other similar services that have been around for a long time, right? Folks that make, in general, they make social media videos. And I've seen a couple different scenarios.

The most common one is you work with a professional videographer and you pay them often more than folks are paying for our service. And they put together, Two or three, maybe four, maybe one a week. Really nice, high-end, scripted, produced videos. And they look great. Sure. But that's one post. And I'm being generous going one.

Most of them are a couple a month. There's other services that we've seen that one that I just, I sent you over the weekend that we just organically showed up in my feed. $3,500 a month. And they help you do this. But you shoot your own content, which is wild to me. They help you develop the plan and everything, but they leave it to you to shoot it all. It's like, what do you pay?

And then you send it to them to edit and post and whatever. Which there's definitely value in that, sure. And I'm not saying there's not value in it, but it's just very interesting. And as we look at what we're offering as such a complete turnkey solution to do this organic thing specifically, not make that commercial where you're awkward and you're trying to read a script and you're not an actor. And as much as we love the funny local commercials, there's a lot of, There's a lot of brilliant business people that are not great. Just reading that script, doing that sort of thing. And it's unnatural.

And you're not getting the personality of that person in those, which is the key. One of the main questions I had when we started talking about this and a lot of the questions that people who are thinking about signing on is I own a plumbing company. How can I make a podcast out of plumbing? What are you? people are realizing that you can make a podcast out of anything. Yeah. And you can make it interesting. And the way that we have it set up here is you're set up for success.

We're going to help you with that. But I want to talk about that because I think that's important. So let's say Joe the Plummer comes to you and says, yeah, I'm thinking about this podcast deal. So how does it work? What are we going to talk about? What are the things we're going to do? Yeah, that's the thing that's very interesting is, as you mentioned before, as we've been talking about here for the last couple minutes. It's about the people, right? So you say, I'm going to have a plumbing podcast. You're listening to a

podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. upload an episode, and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this. even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.

You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more.

Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. No, you're not actually going to have a plumbing podcast. You're going to have a podcast about a guy who owns a plumbing company or the people that work at a plumbing company,

but it really is more about them. And sometimes we aren't even talking about plumbing. We're talking about what you did with the family or how great the fishing was at the lake this weekend and things of that nature, especially in a business. like a plumber or a tradesperson that is keep in mind what they do is these are folks that come in your home. That's right. And again, just like the coffee cup, there's 20 companies in town that are

competent plumbers and they can unclog a drain and fix a toilet with the best of them, right? But are they all people that you want in your home? Are they all people you want around your children? You don't know. And they're probably all great. And they're all professionals and they've been doing this for years. But you just, you don't know. No. And so having the opportunity for folks to connect with the people is just, it's the next level. And that's an important part too is when you talk about search engine optimization, our channel partners, our clients, they come on, they do this podcast. We have it set up where it's coming from an organic actual site. So what this gives our channel partners is, let's say someone's looking for a plumber.

Okay. And they see a list of great plumbers. But wow, look at Joe the plumber. He's got his own. podcast and look at all these video clips on Instagram and TikTok where he's talking about, I love this guy. Yeah. And that's where I think that that's where you see the results. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the funny part about this whole thing is this was started as a internal marketing effort.

I know. I love that. And it's bloomed into this whole massive business. But the wild part is I started this because when I started growth mode technologies and focused on IT. services, I grew that business by making organic podcasts. Didn't have time to do it by myself and run the business. So we added this team, but it's worked for us immensely. It's continued to add business. And we've been adding more and more IT clients lately like it's going out

of style. And that's been a wonderful thing. It's very exciting to see people realize the value that we bring. There's so many different options, different ways to go. about managing your IT and your cybersecurity for your companies, that when folks take the time to hear why our solution is the best on the market, and I truly believe that we offer more value than anybody in town, they jump on board. And it's great to see. It's very exciting to be able to help those people. And that kind of goes to a lot of the things that we believe in is to make things better. And that's always been my motto in the IT business is it's not just tech support. And of course we do that. We got great people. We have in-person techs who show up and work with you one-on-one,

which is something that you don't find too much anymore. But our goal is not to just keep that old thing working. It's to move your business forward. And we're making partnerships with AI. I learned a lot about that and we're going to be talking more and more about folks that are specifically using AI to automate your business and automate your marketing processes, but just be more efficient and know how to use the technology, the tools that you have. For instance, Microsoft Office training is something that we offer all of our clients for no extra cost. Something overlooked. Yeah, and a lot of people are like, why do you do that? A couple of reasons. One, the more somebody knows about the tools they're using, the less they have problems, they less they call

the IT department, right? But also for them, the more they can do themselves and the more comfortable they feel, the more they can do a better job at their job, uninterrupted with greater efficiency. And with Microsoft specifically, what we've found is everybody's got this Microsoft 365 subscription and it's got this wide variety of products. Most people think it's like Excel and Word and Outlook. Yes. And just exposing people to the tools. that are in that suite that they're already paying for is huge. And we spend a lot of our time doing that. And like I said, really demonstrating the value,

getting the most out of what we can. And then we've got our work phone, which is our business phone solution. And that is just so much fun to me because it is the most powerful phone system solution. I've supported and built, I don't know how many different models in manufacturers in the last 20 years, but this one has every feature and capability you could

ever imagine in many that you haven't. And we're able to offer it to folks for less than the cost of any other solution that they have right now. And the bigger the company and the older, the phone service they have. So if they've been with one of the traditional phone companies for many years, as a lot of these long-standing companies have, they don't think about it, you just pay your phone bill every year. Chances are you're using older technology that is drastically more expensive. But even if you're using some of the more modern IP phone systems, ours is drastically more cost effective.

And it's just, it's an awesome tool for business to save money and get more done. It is. And that's one of those things, too, where it's, you get set up with your phone software. Great. It's working. I don't ever think about it again. You never think about, hey, I should check if there's a cheaper, updated, better version. And I think that's where growth mode technologies plays a big role, too, is in not only the installation

and the IT and the cybersecurity, but you're also providing the most modern version of what you're using, the most efficient and probably more affordable. We try to give people the absolute most value, because at the end of the day, these services aren't cheap from anybody, right? It's a significant, important investment in any business, but I don't want it to just be a bill. I don't want it to just be an expense. I want to do everything I can to use technology to move your business forward. That's why I've been in this business for since I was a teenager.

That's what gets me excited is moving a company forward. It's great that I fix your printer jam for the third time. Sure. But that's not why I get excited about this business. You know what I mean? When we take companies and we make people's jobs easier and we see that companies reach their goals quicker and surpass and do it by saving money in the process? Like, how awesome is that? In summation of that conversation, you have growth mode technologies.

That's what we've been talking about, the IT side of this business. And then we were dabbling about growth mode content, which is our side of this, creating content, organic content for people and business. is I just want to quickly peel the curtain back. Yeah. Our channel partner client, I'm not sure what we're calling them. Creators. Creators. Our creators come to us.

They sign on. I want to just talk about what they can expect when they're coming in for their first podcast shoot. How the process works a little bit. Yeah, I think that's a great question. We've put together, I think, a pretty decent process. And I don't want to pat us on the back because it is brand new and there will be lots of room for improvement, but we've tried to sketch this out in such a way that we're really being

methodical about it. So when folks first sign up, the first thing they do is there's this detailed questionnaire that asks about your business, but then also about your goals and the type of things that you've seen out in the world that you'd like to mimic, you think that might work for you. We really like to know where you're coming from to set your expectations the best. And then we take that form and then we get together and have an in-person meeting and kind of I think we're calling it content consultation. And that's something that we do initially, but also on a regular ongoing basis. Initially, we'll come in and we'll go over that form and we'll really, we do a lot of brainstorming. There is nothing that is templated. What are you picturing for your

podcast or some of your influences, those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. And then we get down into the real specific details of what do you want it to look like? What do you want a background? Do you want logos? You're going to have guests. Do you want to just be interviewed for each podcast? Do you want to take the reins? And then we carry that over too.

So now we're into our second month of production. And so we're starting to schedule clients for their second episode. And we've fallen into this process where Danny and I, sometimes Matt, will sit in. So if they're going to shoot on a Wednesday, usually Monday, we get to go with them on a quick 15 minute teams meeting or in person and just say, all right, this episode, anything different from the last as far as the set goes? Do you have a guest? And it doesn't stop at the initial consultation.

We are constantly making sure episode by episode you are getting what you want. And at the end of the day, they're the boss. We're working with them, not, we're not, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. And we're not taking the reins. This is what they want and we're just going to make it better. It is. And at the same time, though, it's mixed in with our expertise and a lot of data.

There's a lot of data-driven things that happen when it comes to your content. And what we're trying to do then again is a very organic conversations. We want it to be completely real. But we also want to look at the things we should focus on. If in your industry, there's something that's a real hot topic, we want to make sure that you're talking about that. And then we're going to make specific clips that are going to actually get extra views because that's a hot topic. As much as we talk about how it's unscripted and off-the-cuff, we use a lot of tools to craft it So it's a way that organic natural conversation gets a ton of use.

It can still be organic while being organized. Exactly. And that's something we focused on. It's a good word. Yeah. And that's something that we do focus on. And part of that deal too is, and you may have seen, as soon as you sign on as a content creator with us, channel partner client, again, I don't know.

You can come on Good News York anytime. And we've already been doing that with some of our channel partners. It's been great. Yeah. You can come on anytime you want. This is all part of it. Awesome. Listen, man, we can go on and on about our own business all day long.

But the point of Good News, York, is to spread the good news. And I see in the wings that we've got a couple of gentlemen waiting to join us on the show. I'm excited. Our buddy, Sean Kelsey is here. And he's got a friend. I don't know who this fella is. I don't know. I haven't met him.

I met him. I looked up some of the things he's doing. He's doing some amazing things, heartwarming things. life-changing things like real deal important shit to be honest with you it's uh real life stuff and this guy's amazing so I'm excited to talk to them I'm excited too let's let's get him on here with a further ado maniac in here Sean wow joining us today on good news York we've got a couple of incredible guests uh Sean you probably have seen everywhere we know we've seen his billboards because he's one of the most creative marketers in central New York but go ahead

introduce yourself and then introduce your guest here, buddy. My name's Sean Palsam, the CEO of Nave Loffer, and I brought with me a great friend of my twin. Rick Nuzzo of New Business. He does some marketing with us, and he's got a big deal to talk about. Awesome. Yeah, so this weekend coming up at the A-Senter,

is the Syracuse for St. Jude Gallo. It's going to be 6 o'clock, and I don't know how much everyone knows about St. Jude other than the commercial's anti-me, but St. Jude is a research hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. And I stress the word research because although it's located in Tennessee, the work that they do is stout all over the world. Even in upstate New York, they share that research with Galasano's. Sometimes they get a patient through St. Jude, but even if there isn't a patient there, the work is still being felt here as they are talking to the doctors at Galasano and sharing all that research.

Wow. That's awesome. That's incredible. How did you get hooked up with this organization? I was working with Cumulus Media. Cumulus Media is the radio group that owns 93Q and 95X. And they are the radio partner for St. Jude, where they do a radioathon once a year. Literally, it was like my first week as the sales manager over at Cumulus, and my boss said, hey, we're going to send you to Memphis, Tennessee to visit St. Jude. I said, okay. She said, yep, we partner with them once a year.

And I just want to show you the importance of why we do the Radiothon and come back and and let me hear your feedback. I went to Memphis, and I will say that my expectation was like, I was going to go visit St. Joseph's Hospital. Sure. Yeah. And then you... It's like any hospital, right?

Yeah, you pull up, and this is like a campus. They have housing for patients. Wow. They have schools. They have research centers after research centers. Hospital was just a small portion of what's there. After I was done with that, I just, I felt love with everything there is no about St. Jude. You can't go.

there, learn about St. Jude, and not come back and want to just do anything in your pop. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this. Even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com. Our for St. Jude and it's awesome. I was all in when I got back. I literally called up and I said,

I want to do more. I just don't want to do the radiosthine. What more can I do? And Elise, who is the regional contact for St. Jude here, said we have a, we have a gala committee. We put on a gala once a year. We're looking for new members. Do you want to come join our committee? And I did. And that was six years ago. Wow. That's great. So when you talk about a gala, that sounds like a fancy thing. You got to put on your cleanest jeans. It's a cocktail attire.

It's like anything out. It's like a wedding. You'll have the people who are going to go full-blown, all-out suits. You'll have some other people who are going to tow it down. Yeah, I think two years ago, Sean wore tucks. Wow. We'll wear tux this time, too. I don't believe it.

Do you own a tux, Sean, or do you rent them? I own it. Really? I could see that. Non-for-profit events. That's just better to own it. We even have orange shoes to go orange tuck shoes because I used to go to the Behan ball a lot. Okay.

Nice. They were a huge hit. I could imagine. You should have went all orange like the dumb and dumber. Oh, that's a great idea. That is a great idea. The two of you. Rick.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Just throwing it out there. We don't kill any owls. That will be okay. No owls will be harmed at the gala. Absolutely not. So, Rick, you said you got involved.

What is your role? So what exactly do you do with the gala? Basically, from everything from trying to find sponsors, such as Navajo, who has been a generous supporter of St. Jude and the gala for many years, that's her biggest thing is to raise money. Because of businesses like Navay law and our sponsors, literally every family of a St. Jude patient does not receive one single bill. That's awesome. Housing, food, everything is included.

Literally because they're big on, if your child is battling cancer, the last thing you want to think about is, How am I going to pay for this? Yeah. And that was, P-th and I didn't really believe it until, like, I got involved in, I'm like, they really don't see a bill for anything.

It's amazing. I have a question for you, Reg, somebody, a little one gets, and I know you may not know the answer to this, a little one gets diagnosed with cancer. It's obviously devastating for the family. How do you have to qualify to go to St. Jude? Like, how does that process work?

Yeah, it's definitely need to be qualified. You can't just show up to St. Jude and walk in the front door. Okay. I'm sure people have tried. Cross that off my list. I would assume that you'd have to go through proper protocols because they're a research hospital. They're literally the most dire of situations.

St. Jude is the same of loss causes. Got it. You basically, it's your last resort is St. Jude. But I will say before St. Jude, 60 years ago, if you were a child diagnosed with any type of cancer, your survival rate was 20%. Wow. Because of the research St. Jude has been doing, it's now 80%. And going on less. That's pretty great.

I mean, it's unfortunately great. Yeah. This hits home with me. I know it's good news, York, but it's very relevant. I actually have experienced this firsthand. I lost my brother to leukemia. He was three years old, and I was six. And I did the bone marrow transplant.

And we actually went out to Minnesota and stayed at the Ronald McDonald House. And this was late 80s. Sure. It really hits home to hear how much has changed since then. Because you could sit here and do the what ifs, right? But I'd like to believe. that if, God forbid, it happened nowadays, he would have had a better chance. Yeah, I'm just going to say that back then.

It really means a lot what you're doing to me personally. So thank you. Yeah, leukemia, back in the early 70s and 80s was literally a death sentence, sadly. Yeah. But now I believe it's like survivalids in the 90s for leukemia. Wow. That's amazing. That is, I had no idea.

That really makes me happy, man. That's incredible. Sean, what was it that made you and your firm want to get involved in support in something like this? Yeah. One, it's easy, right? Two, my great relationship with Rick makes it even more easier. But we support a lot of non-for-profits, and I think that it's very important to do that. It's our rule in the community need to do that.

But I also believe that everybody wants to give back. Yeah. I just don't know what. My intention is support whatever I can. I can't support everything. I would love to be able to do that. But support whatever we can. And then when we can do things like this,

to introduce people to what it actually is. Yeah. So that they know it's St. Jude's, they know what they do. Whether it's 65 fibrosis, they know what cystic fibrosis is. Rick also worked with me with cystic fibrosis. So there's a lot of different non-for-profits out there that really need exposure, right? They need the money so that they can make things like leukemia go from a death sentence to 90% survival rate. So that's why the money is so important.

There's so many non-for-profits out there. Yeah. And a lot of non-for-profits start for really great reasons. Sure. They really truly do. But unfortunately, it becomes this competitiveness that I have seen in working with all of these non-for-profits. And I would really like to create a business that goes out of its way to support non-for-profits from a business standpoint, marketing standpoint, from a sales standpoint, from a fundraising standpoint, from a board development standpoint. and really provides all these resources to these non-for-profits that many times are volunteer-led, right?

Yeah. Volunteers that also are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, and it takes a real toll on these people. That's where my longer game is to create a business that helps support all of these non-for-profits similar to what the United Way does, but in a little bit different type of way. That's awesome. That's incredible. Yeah. I don't know how you find time to do anything, but I think I'm busy and then I hear all the things that you're involved in, Sean, and it blows my mind.

But I'm glad because, like you said, it's so critical. And I think I completely agree with you. As just anybody who has a business in the community, I think it's our duty to support our community. And it's nice to see that you're out there doing that personally and as a firm. Rick, tell us, again, I know you mentioned the events coming up this weekend, but. specifically what time, where to folks find the information, that sort of thing? If you go to St. Jude.org slash Syracuse Scala, it will have all the information you need. Awesome.

Saturday, 6 p.m. on Center, Bowro. It's going to be a sold-all event with approximately 500 people. Wow. Awesome. They're going to have a silent auction. They'll do a give to live. They have patient speakers, which are phenomenal. They'll give out the Officer Colin Hayward Tooling Award. Which.

I'd remember that story. Let's hear. Well, let's talk about that. Yeah, what is that? Tell us about Dr. West Lee. You aren't familiar with Officer Colin. I encourage you to Google him. His stories are great.

He was a 10-year-old boy. At the age of two, he was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. He started treatment at St. Jude, and he lasted another eight years. Wow. His family had him for another eight years. And over that time, his dream was to give back to the community, and he wanted to be a police officer. I believe it was 2016. He was sworn in with the Ethica Police Department.

Oh, wow. And that's where I live. And I know all the guys that were involved with him directly. They're a couple of them are friends of mine. It was absolutely amazing. Wow. What they did for him. It wasn't just, here's a badge, buddy.

You're a deputy. I mean, they rolled out the carpet. This was going on for, I don't know, was it years? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a one-time deal. They welcomed him with open arms. His funeral was amazing, too.

He had the whole old heroes send off with all the day. It was very awesome. It was special. Sadly, he died in 2017, but it was, he's a, He was a great human and the St. Judean named an award in his honor. And this year, they decided to give it to me, which was not expected. Usually, I like to be the one honoring somebody. So this is a totally different feel for me.

And so obviously we know what we're honoring, but what is the award? So we were about the same size of an officer. It's all right, buddy. I'm the size of an eight-year-old. So you beat by two years. Who are the types of folks that this award is given to? So what is it for at these days? Not you.

Just individuals who just want to give back to the community. It's tough for me to say, I don't want to be like, just great. We're asking you. Why are you great? No, just don't go ahead. He's a super homo guy. He always has been. Why did they give it to the recipient last year?

There you go. Perfect. So the recipient last year, she actually is, her name was Wendy. She does all the photos for St. Jude and literally free of charge every year she shows up and she does every single photo in the place. And she's been doing it for decades. That's the- That's a huge champion for the cost.

Yeah. Yeah. And my hat's off to the organization for taking the time to recognize folks. Because you mentioned earlier, so much of this is volunteers and selfless folks that are there just to do good to take a minute and thank them for their efforts is definitely, as we know, even in business, that's the best way to keep people engaged and keep the organization. going and that's great. I'm very appreciative. And it allows people like Rick to really go out there in a community and more so talk about St. Jude's and all of that because obviously part of honoring him is also getting friends, family businesses involved in the same. Sure. Right? So that's why it's super powerful for me. So along those lines, Rick, of getting people involved. You mentioned in one region,

obviously St. Jude's is a national thing. How big is the region? What is the area we're working in here? It's huge. It's all over. It's not even this country. It's in other countries, too. Oh, wow. Name them. What's saying? Give me a man. Give me a man. Then we're going to throw their flags up there and you have to be able to identify those flags. So it's crazy. One of the rooms at St. Jude, they have flags, all different countries. There's hundreds of flags and it's what are these flags represent? Yeah. They're actually employees of St. Jude. Oh, wow. Which is very cool. Yeah. So St. Jude does this is really cool from two sides. From a committee side, once a year they will bring all the committees all over the country to Memphis and they do workshops and they talk to patient speakers and just reassures why we're doing it. Sure. So when you go to that, thousands of people attend to that from the radio partner side and I've been lucky to do both. I've been to Memphis three times. One time as a radio partner for, they call it country cares where they bring all the radio partners from all over

the country down there. They put them up in in the hotels, food, everything, you just got to get down there. Whether you want to drive or five, you get down there, they take care of everything else. So huge, huge. I always say,

it's the best place in the world you never want to end. Wow. Yeah. And in terms of your local team, as you're going out and getting sponsors, how far are you going

here in central New York? So there's actually, there's another committee in Albany. Okay. They do their gala in, I think May. Okay. So a little warmer weather.

So we, we, We stay right in the central New York area. Gotcha. Basically just the heart of Syracuse. They used to have one in Utica and Buffalo, but I think right now and then there's just Syracuse and Albany and their separate committees. I see.

That's incredible. That's incredible. If folks want to get involved, they want to be like Sean. They want to be a sponsor. Don't be like Sean. They're not even necessarily just for this particular event, but they just want to contribute. What's the best way to?

Yeah. It's literally www. St. Jude slash Syracuse gala. Everything is on there. You can't go to the gala and you want to donate. There's options just to donate on there. Great. We're going to have a sound auction.

You don't have to be present at the gala to participate in the sound auction. So you could sign up for the sound auction and bid on some prizes and all that money goes directly to St. Jude as well. You got food at the gala. Yeah. So here's the thing. Here's the challenge with that because I love these things. You get dressed up and it's awesome.

And then they have the best food in the world. And I just know the first bite and I'm just. Yeah, it's all over. I'm that slob again. It doesn't matter how nice the suit is. I got a little. It's just I miss my mouth every time with the messiest thing in the building. I might not eat till after my speech because I spill something on it.

I know one person who would point it out. Back of the crowd. Hey, what's on your shirt? Exactly. You know, it's high stick? This just in. They found out Sean's going to be there. It's not a silent auction anymore.

It's going to be a very loud auction. Oh, man. Well, Rick, I have a question. Is there, does St. Jude's do events beyond the gala here in Central New York. No. Okay. We could.

We should. Yeah. We need more help. Yeah. It's even more important, then, I guess, that this, the gala being the one-time event that they have there is so well attended. Every time I've gone, it's well-intended. It's a ton of fun.

But yeah, to that point, we, you guys can use more volunteers. Yes. Oh, for sure. For that. And just to put in perspective for just this year, just in sponsorship, money alone, our goal was $112,000, and we raised over $115,000. Oh, that's awesome. That's just a sponsorship.

So since Syracuse, the Syracuse for St. Jude Gale has been on, we hit the million dollar mark two years ago. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's so cool. And other places they do, they do golf events, golf islands. You're listening to a podcast right now.

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Do galas and golf, but it's just, yeah, it would be just more work for me. I'm going to recruit you to do the golf. There you go. You already do one. What's one more? I do multiple golf. Yeah. What's one more?

And maybe I should know this. And if I should, we'll edit it out. But can you just talk about what's the main mission of St. Jude's? Is it more about comfort care or is it more about really trying to, oh, it's 100% more about finding a cure and keeping them alive? Yeah, this is not comfort care. This is, no, we are going to, we're going to help keep you alive. You're going to beat this. what I thought, but and the reason I asked, I just, for the casual viewer, listener, I just think

they might not know that, and that's a question. It's morbid, but yes, great question. Do they get down into real specific niches? We just talking about cancers in general. Obviously, there's so many different types. Is there anything that they really focus on or they are to address all these different things? Anything that they, that's hard to be. I see. A lot of times, for instance, like leukemia, they don't need to go to St. Jude anymore for that. Sure. They already pretty much perfected. I to handle that. That's amazing. It's the ones that, wow, we don't know what this is.

We don't know how to treat it. Yeah. And those are the people who go to St. Jude and they learn. And what's great about St. Jude as well is we've probably been in the hospital before. We can't wait to get the heck out of the hospital. Sure. Most of the children who go through St. Jude, they end up staying there. Really?

When you go, they get jobs there. Wow. Like they have so much, they're so much indebted in the St. Jude and they have so much respect to love for it that they don't ever. leave. And a lot of the people were doing tours around Campman, they were telling their story. Oh, yeah, I was diagnosed with cancer when I was nine years old, and I wasn't expected to live, and here I am 30 years old. And I'm the head of research now over it. It's amazing. That's incredible. To have a hospital that is meant for something like this as someone who

experienced it firsthand is so special. Because we know you get diagnosed with cancer. They say, go right to Sloan Kettering. It's like the best in the world. And what's the benefit of going to St. judes over some of the best cancer hospitals. It's because of the care you're going to get, the way they treat you, the way, because the worst thing you could ever hear is that your child is sick, especially with something like cancer. To give them the

absolute best environment and experience that you possibly could while you're going through something like that is so detrimental. Even in the way that the doctors and nurses, their positive attitudes, just to get your mind off things on a daily basis. So it's absolutely incredible what you do, man. And if you think about

what they're doing, doing from a research standpoint, it's super important, right, that if they can find cures, because we all know somebody that has had cancer or has passed away from cancer. Of course. And usually, it's when they're old or really young, right? But my brother-in-law's brother passed away like a year ago, 31 years old. Wow. And they were going through a bunch of different treatments.

They went down to New York City. and they said it's grown. It's gotten too big. We're going to set you up with care at home. And I couldn't imagine that four or five hours drive, three hours of I'm driving, ride back home knowing that you're going to die. And what do you do? Do you shut down?

Do you call everybody? Right. Go, what do you do? I'm so overwhelmed at the thought of it that I couldn't imagine what they had to go through. And thankfully, my brother-in-law and his family, Joe, well, they went, they're actually huge Eagles fans. They went to the Super Bowl this year, to really honor Mike because they had gone, Mike had gone to the Super Bowl a few years back. So they went to honor him. But, yeah, what they're doing at a young age really can impact cancer in general.

Sure. Like, we all hear the hashtags, F cancer, all this thing. But it's so true. So, like, say Jude's and the research and everything that they're doing is helping all aspects of it, from. that's incredible. Rick, what's your day job when you're not supporting this incredible organization? A little bit of backstory. I've been in the radio and TV world for over 20 years. I started my career at News Channel 9 doing advertising and marketing from there, switched over to radio for a couple years. Then after 17 years, I said, I want to do this by myself. One of the good things that came out of

COVID, and I'm sure you heard good stories of things that happened from COVID was I decided to start my own business. So, awesome for you. I had great client relationships. So I just said, hey, I'm going to start my own marketing agency. If I do, I'm going to handle all your advertising. And I kept getting yes. And I'm in my third year of doing it and haven't looked back and things are going great. That's incredible, man. And you have a killer only fans, if you guys want to check that.

No, you hear about all the horrible things about the pandemic, clearly. And you're one of the ones that are on the other side of there. There were a lot of positive things that came out of COVID. 100%. And those are the kinds of things. Just gave you a chance to reset and go, wow, now I have time. to actually formulate and come up with an idea for something that I really love. So you're doing amazing things, man.

It's really hard to open up a business, too. Sure. You know, you have to worry about the overhead. How's the business going to come in? Am I going to survive? And then what if it doesn't? I have to go eat salt and go from there. So I'm proud of where you're going to be.

Yeah, it should be. Yeah. That's awesome. I was going to commend your employer for letting you have so much time for this charitable work. Here I am. commend yourself good job man you're looking for a plug for those things website anything like that folks want any of that sort of business new business and you business marketing dot com all my

info's on there contact me if you need help with any kind of advertising marketing radio and tv is my specialty okay that's my bread and butter but i can do everything from build websites to buy billboards and that's any sector of of business right any sort of types of businesses it doesn't have to be local I actually, I deal with a couple, there's a sit-me-sit-sit in Syracuse. I have a couple sit-means sits. I have one in Montana that I want to have a marketing for. I have another one in New Hampshire that I do his marketing for. He doesn't work with any other DWI firms, though.

That's it. There's only one. There really is only one, my friend. Hey, that's all right. You don't want to spread your talents to others. If I may, we should, let's plug Sean's podcast right here at the growth mode content. Phoenix Rising podcast, which you can catch. Right here, we go to Good News York for all the links to all our things and stuff,

but also the podcast that we do produce here at Growth Mode content. Fantastic podcast. I think we got it out there now. Are we getting close? And close. Yeah. It's going to be fire. It is.

Literally. His intro. It's super cool. We're making so many cool things and learning about so many different things. That's why we're doing this. Yeah. It's cool. It's a blast.

I'm really glad, Sean, that you were able to bring Rick today. Absolutely. It was great to meet you. And I left to me, you guys. I really appreciate what you're doing, man. It's really special. For the record, Rick is standing up right now. So am I. I'm actually on my tip-y-toe.

We designed this so that. Yeah. Level. That's why this chair goes up and down. Feeder dangling. Oh, man. Sean, before we go, anything else that we should mention, and then where can folks learn more about what you do?

Yeah. You can learn what I do is you can go to Navakaris. all of the non-for-profits that we're on there. Take a look. If you don't see a non-for-profit that's on there, reach out. My email's on there. Reach out. I'll be more than happy to get your non-for-profit involved.

There's usually a waiting list, but I'll be more than happy to get on there, promote it, and I make that work. You really, this isn't one of those gimmicks where your company throws something at a couple of these charities to get your name on the banner. You're going really, you've got a website, you've got a whole program, I think. think. Yeah. And that's really impressive, man, honestly. It's intentional. Our core values and our vision and mission is all based around prioritizing our people, our community, and our clients in that order. And it's super important because if you take care of your people, they'll take care of the community and then you take care of your clients. Sure. And I think that it, like I said earlier, that it's a business's responsibility to give back to the community, right? It's not fair.

for us to not get back to the community, yeah, have the community want to support us. Sure. It has to be a two-way street. And secondary, working in a law firm can be stressful. It can be stressful. It can be overwhelming, all of those things. And if we can take those moments

to really do not-for-profit work this Christmas, and rather than getting our employees' Christmas gifts, we built beds for sleep and havingly peace. And the employees came back, said, this was the best Christmas gift. And it was so much fun. Yeah. But when you hear about,

things like young adults not being able to sleep because they don't have a bed. Right. That's insane. Like how are they going to learn in school? How are they going to have those opportunities that we've all had when they don't have a bed to sleep it? Yeah. Good night's sleep.

It's crazy. And the fact that Syracuse is one of the largest areas for bed belts is very concerning. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think when we did it, I don't know the number. I'm going to make it up.

But I think we would did that millions of bed for Central New York. But, I mean, it's not uncommon to hear that Syracuse's poverty rate is extremely low. Yeah. And the lowest in, or one of the highest in the United States. There's some good news. And we forget that, right? Yeah. Because we get to go home and we get to have a nice meal.

We get to go to our beds. Yeah. We get to have our blankets on us. So I think it's really important to do those things because it humbles your employees. Yeah. I, when I talk to people when they're wanting to become employees, I have the conversation, because obviously you get to the point where you have the conversation about money, right? Sure.

And for me, it's more than just money. Somebody's coming to work for us because they're a good human. They want to get back to the community and all the other benefits that we have that go along with that. Sure. So usually that's what creates our competitive advantage. But yeah, I think that everybody wants to give back. They just don't know where. Yeah.

And help them find that place and to win. And there's no great. Fulfillment, and you know this too, you do a lot of charitable things, then giving something to somebody. I don't mean like the fart machine megaphone if you want to, right? I can give that to Sean and he'll be here all the thing playing with it. Please do. But when you truly give something to somebody who needs it, like a bed,

something to live, there's no greater fulfillment. There's no better feeling. I believe that you can achieve whatever you want in life. but you have to first be willing to give with receiving nothing. That's exactly it. You know, that good feeling that speaks to what Sean said is on top of everything that it does for the community. It's a positive for the organization as well and for your team. For sure.

And that's at our company, we started a little over a year ago offering what we call charity days, which is basically one day a quarter where folks can go and just give their time to an organization that they're passionate about. Cool. And we as a company, we've got a lot of nonprofit clients and we got a lot of organizations that we support and we do that sort of as part of our workday. But the idea here is if someone is just really passionate about a particular thing, they can go and jump in and basically give a few days of their time to folks.

And that's sort of interaction that keeps people connected. And I love to see other folks do that. Connected in a genuine, loving, approachable way. You're not loving in a, you're giving me a picture. Right. It's doing it for the sake of doing it. Yep. That's the way to do it.

Now, Rick and I have to go to a chocolate factory that we have to run. Mupa Lumpa is over here, so if we could wrap this up. We got our buddy, Sean, from a Navajo law firm and DWI team. You'll catch him, like Mike said, ridiculous amounts of wisdom. GrowthMod Content.com for his podcast, Rising, Phoenix Rising. Our man, Rick, St. Jude's. Thank you guys very much. Come to the event this weekend.

And even if you can't, you can support, I'm sure, any day of the week, we got, I'm sure, options for folks to help out this great cause, right? It was a pleasure having you both on here, seriously. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks, fellas. Damn, dude. What a incredible Monday, huh? Yeah.

I wasn't expecting to go through all those emotions. Listen, when Sean Kelsey shows up, you never know what to expect. You can expect this. Which, by the way, Matt hates it. But I brought this when I don't like something. My daughter bought that. Oh, when you don't like something? I thought that's how we were applauding things.

Oh, we could do that too. I love that. We promise you, folks, this won't be just fart jokes. No. We got fart megaphomes. Come on. We're well-versed. We don't just do fart jokes.

We have fart megaphones. All right, we're professional. We should probably go home before we quit while we're ahead. It sounds like we need to. Yeah. But yeah, thanks for joining us for Good News York. And you'll see us again tomorrow 5 p.m. Eastern Time. Peace out.

Peace.