Alex Fees: I’m Alex Fees on sbtv.com coming to you from the IFA conference at international Franchise association in Orlando, Florida and joining me here now is Lloyd Grant. Lloyd, good to meet you sir.
Lloyd Grant: Good to meet you.
Alex Fees: I appreciate you being here. Lloyd is the president of KIP communications and KIP, that’s K-I-P, all caps.
Lloyd Grant: Correct.
Alex Fees: Stands for something.
Lloyd Grant: Knowledge is power.
Alex Fees: Tell me about that. How did that title come about Lloyd?
Lloyd Grant: Well, actually do was a quote and my wife and I started the business about eight years ago and there’s a quote we like from President Madison, it said knowledge will forever govern ignorance and the people who mean to be their own governess is on themselves with the power that knowledge brings. We always like that and her mother said, you know what the essence of that is knowledge is power. Why don’t you guys call yourselves KIP and we did. We tried it. We tried it out and folks liked it to the point where sometimes people see me and they say, Hey Kip. They’re going to say my name.
Alex Fees: Yes.
Lloyd Grant: Yes. They don’t usually know my name, they know KIP.
Alex Fees: Sure, well that’s not a such a bad thing if ever that’s a name recognition.
Lloyd Grant: Sure, absolutely!
Alex Fees: and if you don’t mind people calling you by an implication.
Lloyd Grant: I don’t care.
Alex Fees: Alright, and specifically, Kip communications is a Be to Be media company that produces prints in online publications focused on the minority business community.
Lloyd Grant: Correct.
Alex Fees: Did I get that right?
Lloyd Grant: Correct.
Alex Fees: I’ve done that justice?
Lloyd Grant: Yes, absolutely!
Alex Fees: All right, big deal. Well, how did this come about?
Lloyd Grant: The KIP or the—
Alex Fees: The division of your company?
Lloyd Grant: Well, basically, when you take a look at the—around New York, New York is the business capital of the nation and there is a lot of activity and a lot of things going on but when you’re trying to identify what’s happening in the minority business community, they’re really spars information on who’s doing what? Who’s doing what deals, what initiatives may impact them. You would occasionally see things in the New York Times but you have to go through about eight sections of the times and it could wined up in the business section. It might wined up in the entertainment section. The main business weekly cranes New York business.
You know they occasional quarterly looks at small business and sometimes within that they will take a look at Minardi but there wasn’t anyone focused on the minority business community and so with just in our moving around, we knew there were a lot of people doing a lot of deals, a lot of things happened, issues that challengely faced. So we decide to produce the KIP business report, which was a Newspaper that got information out to that market and then you know from there, we went on to do other things.
Eventually, we were doing a weekly newscast segment on channel 2 CBS news that cause successes to it.
Alex Fees: So you’ve got a multi-media now?
Lloyd Grant: Well, you know now a days you have to be everywhere you know where your market may be. There’s no such thing anymore, its just a pure play media company and everyone has to be at something because your audience gets information of where are your voice. Advertisers what a variety of opportunities to get to your market so you really have to you know be flexible and that’s you know part of the reasons why we’re doing this franchising conference, the minority franchise buyer’s conference.
You know there was a dual role in there for us. Events here are important to media companies and so we were looking around for events but also the concept of franchise and we thought it was very interesting and something it got hold good potential for the minority community. When you look at you know over the past decade or so, you look at the numbers in terms of the growth of the number of minority businesses. Its really exploded in black spandex agent, its really exploded, double digits, triple digits growth grades.
But when you dig a little deeper and you look underneath the numbers and you’ll look at how many of those businesses have employees. Well that growth doesn’t match the overall number. And one of the things that you find out with franchising is just part for every nature. Its something that you know you have to have employees because there’s a system in place is operations you know it’s a lot of its retail but the service businesses gets all the types of businesses and it gives you the opportunity to have you now employees.
And also, you now it has a much higher success rate than someone it starts from scratch. So if your someone that from your community that may have challenges in terms of getting started in growing, buying into an existing brand, an existing system or the existing when your doing things if you can you know work within that, you’ve got a much better chance of having a long term successful business. Hiring people and having impact in your local communities.
Alex Fees: So Lloyd, are you here at IFA to learn more about the possibility of franchising your company or to learn more about franchising in general for your costumers and clients?
Lloyd Grant: I’m looking to learn even more about franchisee and get deeper into what we do in New York. We’ve been doing our franchising conferences now for this will be our 4th year and there are still a lot to learn, a lot that we’re learning. And so coming here to the industry show meeting really great people and just learning the ins and outs you know from the perspective of the players has really been very helpful and I think it will help us in terms of you know enhancing the conference and the services that we provide in New York.
Alex Fees: Alright, again, he is Lloyd Grant. Lloyd is the president of KIP communications, that’s K-I-P out of New York City. Lloyd, thank you very much.
Lloyd Grant: Thank you Alex.
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