Billy Stevenson III: Leading Businesses Through Digital Transformation

Black Facts.com

By Staff

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

I never really started with the goal of becoming an entrepreneur, to be honest. I started working as somewhat of an “Intrapreneur”. I’ve spent over a decade in Fortune 10 corporations, nationally ranking universities, world renowned medical centers, and the federal government and in every single position or team I have been was responsible for creating and driving something new internally. Whether it was a new product, new service, new technology, or a new process I’ve spent most of my career creating and selling, often internal to the company to frontline employees and senior executive leadership. I developed a knack and a love for introducing and driving adoption in new things that will better the people, typically a new technology or way of thinking.

When I discovered that I was good at this and really enjoyed it, I started doing it for anyone and everyone. You know what they say: If you do the thing that you would do for free for work, it will never feel like work. Well, that is what I started doing. I brought my love for digital transformation and change management to my jobs, even when they were not required, I brought it to my church home by increasing their technology use and social media strategy, I leveraged my knowledge and skills for friends running for office, and I even gave strategies to random businesses I shopped with. When people offered to pay me, I would decline because I just loved doing it and it came so easy to me it felt unfair to charge people. It is only recently that I have found the inspiration, and courage, to offer paid services to companies and people and, to my surprise, people paid! It was seeing the people and the projects being better after I was involved that made me decide to formalize my offerings. It was seeing the multi-million-dollar impact to companies and initiatives that I brought personally and uniquely when the innumerable double and tripled degreed executives could not. I was inspired to become an entrepreneur when I was able to fully see myself and learned to value what I bring to every table.

Tell us about your company and services.

I help maximize, digitize, and monetize people, projects, and passions through consulting, coaching, training, and public speaking. That sounds broad and that is because it is. Many people and many businesses are moving towards goals and results but are working too hard because they are not leveraging technology and not thinking digitally enough. Many are looking for a person to hire when their next two employees should be artificial intelligence and automation. Many businesses are not even seeing clients because when potential clients interact with their brands via their websites or social media the experience is underwhelming or non-existent. Why? Because they don’t know what to do or they don’t know how to.

We help businesses maximize their projects through enhancing projects and plans and their people through training and coaching on topics such as change management or requested topics. In addition, we offer advisor consulting services where we come and do ideation and assessment of your projects to make sure that you are making the most of every opportunity which often translates to a better product or project. We help businesses digitize by ensuring they are leveraging the best tools for their work such SMS marketing, social media, automation, mobile applications, and other applicable innovations. We help businesses monetize by creating products and offers out of their knowledge and skills in the form of training, e-course, consulting, and coaching packages.

One of the most popularly requested speaking engagements I receive today is Web 3 technologies which includes things like the Blockchain, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), Cryptocurrency and the Metaverse. I lecture at colleges, churches, and businesses about these concepts helping people understand them in basic, layman terms and get their feet wet in interacting with them.

At the end of the day, my business accelerates your arrival to the future and reduces the amount of work required to do it. My business assists you in making quantum leaps. My business oils the gears of your mind to make it easier to process the changes of the future faster and with less friction. My business assists you in stepping forward, wherever you may desire to go.

Given the competitive industry, what makes your company unique?

Our competitive edge would be our one-stop, 360-degree offerings, the wide spectrum of digital aspects we provide services in, and our personality and delivery style. Most in this particular industry, which is relatively small as is, either digitize what you bring them, or they assist you in maximizing your product or project and then send you to a digital specialist to get it in digital spaces. We however can help make your plans, products, and projects the best that they can be while simultaneously building in the digital infrastructure and change management plans necessary for the best possible outcome and return on investment. In addition, our training and public speaking uses technology like audience response software to provide real-time feedback in the form of word clouds and bar graphs to add an additional level of engagement. To drive excitement and adoption during training and public speaking engagements, we incorporate a high-energy presentation style and utilize metaphors, storytelling, and analogies to assist with understanding complex technical information. Another aspect of our competitive edge is the broad industry experience we have which include healthcare, education, religious, retail, consumer packaged goods, corporate, federal government, coaching, and more. Because user facing technology, change management, and innovation education spans many industries so do we and our services.

What advice would you give someone who seeks to become an entrepreneur?

I would share the importance of Personalization, Impression, and Collaboration. Personalization is understanding the uniqueness of you and the value that brings by itself. In the marketplace before the strong proliferation of the internet, your responsibility was to adhere to the style and expectations of the big players in your industry. You really wanted repetition in the advertisement, be all the places all the time so that you could be trusted. But in today’s world where attention spans are at an all time low and every person you interact with has the totality of human knowledge at their fingertips, your responsibility is not to compete by being better but, rather, to differentiate. Different catches our attention and clients want you to acknowledge their differences too, so the more that you personalize your approach and assets to reflect your uniqueness and respect the uniqueness of your clients the more time and attention you earn.

Along this same thought, you absolutely MUST make an impression. One of my favorite scriptures is when God says (I’m paraphrasing) that because you were neither hot nor cold but lukewarm, I will spit you out. God doesn’t like lukewarm and neither do we, if we are being honest. Your customer needs to feel. The best businesses, brands, and people are polarizing! So make an impression and one of the best ways to impress customers is through technology and digital assets because it subconsciously inspires trust. Think about it, if you walk into a hospital and don’t see any machinery and everybody is using pens, steno pads, and crank-up contraptions you wouldn’t feel safe. For those consumers who are not technologically savvy, you look impressive because you are smart enough to leverage the technology, and for those who are technologically savvy, they expect and respect that you are utilizing technology to produce the best results.

Finally, in this world so shaped by social media remember that the average person doesn’t only follow one person. No person only listens to one musical artist. No person only ever goes to one soda. No person only eats at one restaurant. This means that just because someone else is doing something, even if they are doing it objectively bigger and better than you, don’t count yourself out because today’s consumers believe in “and” more than “or”. Because of this, it is more important than ever to learn to share in this marketplace, to collaborate. In today’s market if you are selling classes and I am selling classes, we can partner together and advertise together as long as our products have some sort of synergy. I don’t expect my clients to only pay me for my services, as a matter of fact I have a list of partners that I refer for the things I don’t do or that they do better. Remember there is enough money and clients for everyone. They used to say that the town wasn’t big enough for the two of us but the internet is big enough for all of us!

How does your faith impact your business?

Of all the things the Kingdom of God and its Principles are likened to in the Bible, the most common is business and the marketplace. With that said, my faith is the core of my business because of the type of business it is. The very nature of change, creation, innovation, influence, ideas, technology, and all things digital are inherently God things. How? Because they are invisible. Value is invisible. Influence is invisible. Ideas are invisible. As a Christian, my life is built on interacting with the invisible and unseen world with an understanding that it influences the seen world. That is the same concept as my business, thus I see it as spiritual in nature.

 One of my favorite scriptures is Isaiah 43:19 “Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” The beauty is that God is doing a new thing and that includes rivers in deserts, or the most desired provision and flourishing in an otherwise barren place, and a road in the wilderness, or a path of progress in a wild and untamed place. But the most frightening part of this scripture is “…shall you not know it?” or as another translation states, “Will you not perceive it?”. That means that the very God of the Universe Himself can and will do a new thing that will give provision in the driest place and make it easy to traverse untraversable lands but that you and I could not even realize it.

Though this is a choice, since He asks the question “Will you not,” people choose not to perceive the new things God is doing every day causing them to miss rivers and roads regularly. My business helps people perceive the new things, to drink of the rivers, and to traverse the roads that have been made.

I believe that just like I hear people call God the God of the Universe, the God of Peace, or the God of Love that He is also God of The Algorithm. I believe if God can be in hospital rooms and courtrooms, in fields and in skies, then He can be in code and technology. If the believers of old prayed for Him to bless their wheat and corn crops, we 21st century believers can ask him to bless our cryptocurrency and social media endeavors. If He could send prophets to speak of the coming rain then, He can send prophets to speak of the coming digital windfalls now. I believe that I was born and created for such a time as this.

Where do you see your company in the next five years?

By 2027 I hope to see my company become a leading provider for digital transformation, change education, and innovation consultation. This includes public speaking for corporations and advising on strategy for small and medium businesses. I hope to establish a virtual conference to learn about social media and Web 3 technology along with other related topics. I would like to establish ways to educate in schools through pre-recorded and live sessions. I hope to be able to speak on panels and at events centered around business, leadership, and self-development to open minds to possibilities and opportunities in the ever-evolving digital space.

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