Spotlight on the 117th Congress: Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-05

QWhat skills or perspectives from your background do you apply as a public official?

ADuring my time working for President Clinton, Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Speaker Thomas Foley, I learned that it’s possible to find a bipartisan path forward without compromising your core values. I firmly believe that it doesn’t matter if an idea comes from the Democratic or Republican side of the aisle – only whether it will help my constituents in New Jersey’s fifth district.

My experiences working in the private sector, at Microsoft and Ford, taught me the importance of understanding the needs of the business community. This has been invaluable as I work with my colleagues to support local businesses and ensure our local economies can recover from the pandemic.

QYou are co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress. How do groups like this benefit the business community and the nation?

AThe Problem Solvers Caucus, which I’m proud to co-chair with my Republican colleague, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA-01), is focused every day on fixing the most pressing issues facing our country.

For instance, in late 2020, when we were negotiating the bipartisan emergency COVID-19 relief package, the Problem Solvers Caucus fought to extend the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and invest in COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution. We also helped get bipartisan legislation passed, the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act, to make PPP more accessible for more businesses looking to weather the COVID-19 economic storm.

QWhat do you see as the current biggest threat to small-business owners? What challenges have you helped small businesses in your district overcome?

ASmall businesses are the bedrock of the communities I represent in north Jersey. They’re our job creators and the backbone of our economy. I’m dedicated to working across the aisle to lower taxes, cut outdated and unnecessarily burdensome red tape, improve access to capital, unleash more economic opportunity and create jobs – to continue making my district a great place to live and do business. Right now, many businesses are facing supply chain issues, shipping delays and rising costs. I’m working in Congress and back at home in New Jersey to do everything I can to resolve our nation’s supply chain crisis – to cut costs for our families to make life more affordable and support our local businesses. Earlier this fall, I convened the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Federal Maritime Commission and shipping stakeholders at the port in Newark, New Jersey, and announced steps to combat supply chain issues, including critical congressional oversight, dedicated federal action from the Federal Maritime Commission and relevant authorities to investigate the practices of major ocean carriers for any collusion or anti-competitive practices, modernization of how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracks and clears ship traffic, and passing key bipartisan ocean shipping reform legislation – the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021.

QIn what ways are you seeking feedback from small businesses in your state/district and using that information in Washington, D.C.?

AI’m always going around my district to meet with business owners and workers to learn from the different industries that make up North Jersey’s local economies and to hear about any issues they may be facing. I take all of what I learn from my constituents back to Washington to inform what I’m doing in Congress, because it’s my job to fight for them.

QHow has your role on the House Financial Services Committee allowed you to affect legislation affecting small businesses?

AI work with my colleagues on the Financial Services Committee to help cut burdensome regulations for large and small businesses alike, to expand access to capital while protecting consumers and to help make life more affordable in north Jersey.

When legislation is moving through the Financial Services Committee and through Congress, I’m focused on ensuring small-business provisions help in the short term, especially as we continue recovering from the pandemic, and help build long-term growth.

LOOK

LISTEN READ

Look, Listen, Read is a quarterly compilation of some of the most highly rated and reviewed apps, podcasts, books, websites and other resources. FBS does not support or endorse the use of these tools, which merely serve as a guide to exploring a new level of knowledge and productivity for your business.

1Zoho Creator, a low-code app-development platform, helps you build tools to streamline and automate your business’ mundane tasks. It gives you the power to consolidate all your data management, workflow automation and business intelligence needs in one place.

2Originally published in 1983, “Guerilla Marketing” is filled with a wealth of real-world tips and tricks small-business owners can use to take their marketing game to the next level. Whereas traditional marketing wisdom used to suggest that big budgets and lots of resources are requisites for success, author Jay Conrad Levinson thinks otherwise: Every time your small business interacts with anyone outside of your company is an opportunity to market your products and services.

3With the near-constant change occurring in the startup and tech space, it can be tough to keep up. “Product Hunt Radio,” hosted by Ryan Hoover, is your answer to staying current with all things tech through interviews with world-famous investors and entrepreneurs and the reporters covering them. Whether you want to learn about tech that could affect your business, keep up with trends or apply lessons to your enterprise, this small-business podcast will be useful.

4Unifi helps you manage multiple processes, projects and client communications using an intuitive, integrated cloud-based platform. 5 Wave is one of the only truly free accounting software systems – allowing you to use its online-based platform, mobile invoicing app and mobile receipts app without paying anything for a subscription. The Wave accounting app is great for small-business owners, and it offers payments and payroll paid add-ons to give you the opportunity to extend your functionality within a single application.

6Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is a time-tested classic that’s sold more than 30 million copies since it was released in 1936 – making it one of the bestselling books of all time. Once a successful salesman, Carnegie eventually left his sales career and took up public speaking, and the advice from his seminars is compiled into this book. Learn how to get people to like you, how to convince others that your reasoning is the right way of looking at an issue and how to change folks without them hating you for it.

7Designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works in social media marketing, the “Social Media Marketing” podcast runs about an hour as Michael Stelzner interviews social media experts and explores various social media tools. Some of his best business podcasts are those featuring small-business owners sharing how they found success via social media.

8“Business Casual” is the new podcast from Morning Brew brought to listeners by host Kinsey Grant. The episodes focus on a range of topics in the news like breaking up big tech and interviewing CEOs and other executives on hot business topics. The podcast is available on Spotify as well as Apple Podcasts, and the newsletter is also free.

9With Delivrd, you can access an online-based inventory management application for free. Using Delivrd, you can create a product catalog; count, receive and issue stock; enable stock level alerts and access your inventory transaction history.

Lori & Lori & Michael Mastro Michael Mastro

The Mastro Development Group LLC

Year Became a BWW® Franchisee: 1999

Total Number of BWW Locations:

Was originally three but now one. Total Number of Employees: 74

How did you and your partner(s) meet? My wife, Lori, and I are currently the only partners.

What’s it like to work with family in your franchise business?

Working with family is truly an adventure. The dinner table is always entertaining, enlightening and informative. While business is discussed often at home, we still must take the time when we are not working to fully engage with family and friends. Time with family and friends is increasingly more valuable today than ever.

What drew you to the brand? We originally got drawn to the brand in the late 1990s when Buffalo Wild Wings® had a small but very successful group of franchise operators. In the 1980s, we had visited the original BWW at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, on the corner of Woodruff Avenue and High Street. There may have been only three to five sauces at that time, but the product tasted great, and the food cost was low. Additionally, the labor cost was low as customers ordered and picked up their orders at the counter. Low food cost and low labor cost was obviously a perfect combination because our other operations (Perkins and Michaels Steakhouses) had one or the other, but neither had both, and BWW provided the win-win that we sought. While the service model has changed, we still get a great deal of business profitability and personal satisfaction from the BWW brand due to the incredible sales volumes we experience, the team member relationships we have developed and customer loyalty that all of us as franchisees enjoy.

What is your favorite thing about the brand?

1. BWW is simply a fun place to work, a fun place to manage, a fun place to eat and a fun place to call our own. 2. The relationships we have made with fellow franchisees and BWW corporate.

What other concepts do you own?

We currently own and operate several entities: • Perkins Family Restaurant & Bakery in Marion, Ohio • SEAL Team 6 LLC – F1 firearms dealer, real estate development • Mastro Development Group – real estate development • TLM Limited – real estate development • TLM Management – accounting, payroll processing, tax compliance • A&M Mastro Trust – real estate development and management with kidney dialysis leasing, urgent care leasing and Mexican restaurant concept leasing

What are your current top three business goals?

• Provide staff and managers with a decent reliable place to earn a living. • Share the good fortune we receive with members of our communities who are less fortunate. • Make decisions that provide for the common good for all who enter the doors at BWW.

Mike and Lori Mastro stand outside their BWW location in Tiffin, Ohio.

The management team at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Tiffin, Ohio, includes, from left, Jeremy Weaver, Jessica Sell, Mike Mastro, Lori Mastro, Rachel Feick and Codie Ray.

Describe your best recent business decision: The decision to scale down operations and concentrate on making a single unit in a small but highly engaged Midwest town operate at the very highest level possible regarding brand standards, team member coaching and management mentoring. Without a doubt, this combination absolutely ensures customer satisfaction, loyalty, top-of-mind awareness and, ultimately, great profitability. It also gives us an excellent launching pad for what may come: BWW Go Units, other concepts, more real estate deals, who knows?

What is the best business advice you have received?

My mother and father always told me: • Stick to the basics. Keep it simple and don’t overcomplicate. • Respect your team, and they will respect your customers.

We also had an old friend who was very successful in business who said: “In business, if you sell to the classes, you’ll live with the masses. But if you sell to the masses, you’ll live with the classes.”

Describe the biggest industry change since you started:

• Since we started with BWW, one thing that has changed immensely is the move toward more debit and credit card payments for our products. Cash deposits are smaller today than ever, and the cost of clearing electronic payments has risen sharply simply due to the increased volume of those payments. • On another recent note, the supply chain problems and the resulting cost increases we have experienced in the past few months have been daunting. Not sure where all this will end.

Describe your current biggest challenge as a franchisee:

• Marketing: It is so difficult today to get your message noticed and then acted upon. Marketing return-on-investment numbers are often lower than expected. Due to the proliferation of cell phones, traditional forms of marketing (TV, radio, print) simply do not get the return one would expect. The huge popularity, the unpredictability and the often negativity of social media can be a double-edged sword. One mistake can kill an entire concept. • That being said, the cost of being in business today is vigilance. We eat well, but we don’t always sleep well.

What is your favorite BWW wing sauce?

• Mike: Mild • Lori: Honey Barbecue

If I weren’t a franchisee, I would be …

• Mike: Rock drummer/keyboard player/concert promoter/ music business • Lori: Stay-at-home mother. I love being a mom more than anything.

A special table has been dedicated at the Mastros’ Buffalo Wild Wings for the last two years to honor POWs/MIAs and all service members, particularly those who have been lost in service to the nation. No one is allowed to sit at the table, and it is considered a sacred space that customers are not allowed to alter.