- PNC is proud to support "Business Forward", where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Business Forward", I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Brian Wipperman.

Brian is the CEO at MarcFirst in Bloomington, Illinois.

Welcome Brian.

- Thanks, Matt, how are you?

- I'm good, hanging in there.

A lot of stuff going on but I want to talk about MarcFirst.

But before we get there, let's talk about you, Brian.

Are you from this area or where are you from?

- I'm not, my friend.

I am from New York, native new Yorker.

I moved here just a little over four years ago.

And it was just because of you actually, my friend, We go back a little bit.

- [Matt] We do go back and I'm proud of you.

What I like and I've talked to a lot of people that have moved to Central Illinois.

What I love is hearing people from Chicago, New York, Florida move to middle Illinois because we need people here.

- Yeah, we do.

- We need employees here, we need people here.

- We do and the challenge is getting bigger right about specifically for employees in getting people to come to Central Illinois.

- COVID did one thing and I thought it was pretty interesting.

It made bigger cities to me seem like, you know what?

Let's have a gut check.

You have kids, you have family.

Do I want to live in a smaller area and not maybe downtown Chicago or maybe not New York or whatever it is.

And you come in and you've made Central Illinois, you made Bloomington your home.

- I have, yeah.

It's an amazing place to live.

Last time I went back to New York, it almost looked like tumbleweeds, going down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

It's empty because people did realize, do I really want that lifestyle?

Do I want the lots of noise, lots of traffic?

- And I don't think this is going to be the tone of the rest of the show, but that net migration out of these big cities, Central Illinois is the prime spot to financially and really good culture, good climate to raise a family.

- It really is a great place to raise a family.

It's unbelievable.

Our schools are good, they're strong.

Our communities are safe, they're well run, they're in good shape.

We've got great restaurants, entertainment.

And we do really have a great place to live.

- Bloomington-Normal is a unique place.

It's like Champagne or Band.

There's great restaurants in both little towns and fun things to do but all in Central Illinois, one of the things that I've noticed in this past 10 years is there is something to do at all times within 60 miles.

And it used to be, I grew up in Central Illinois, it used to be Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis.

Now it's Bloomington-Normal, Peoria, Galesburg, all of these places, there's a lot to do.

- There is and growing.

We're constantly getting some new, great things coming in.

- You started with an education background, tell me a little bit about that.

Did you want to be a teacher or principal?

- I wanted to be a special ed teacher, partly because school was hard for me.

And I had this one great teacher who taught me how I learned and it changed the way school went for me for the rest of my life.

And so I became a special ed teacher.

And as you know, being the dad of three beautiful kids and two beautiful step kids, my son was born with some challenges.

And when he was diagnosed, I made the decision that I wanted to go from being that teacher to a school administrator.

And it was because I really didn't want families to feel that struggle, that burden.

Because after someone says, "There's something wrong with your kid, there's something going on," you don't really hear anything else, Matt.

You kind of hear that Charlie Brown "wah, wah, wah" teacher thing.

And that's when I became a school administrator and before I started working for you, I had spent four years as a school district administrator back in New York before I moved here.

- You were at children's home but now you're at a different place.

We're going to talk about MarcFirst here in a second, but it's interesting.

So let me ask you this and I'm kind of reading into this, I don't know this answer.

Are you saying because of your kid, now it's my time to fight so I can make better change by going into a higher leadership?

- 100%, it was spot on that.

One was how do I help parents navigate this world?

You know this as well as I do that that just becomes such a daunting task to try to figure out if you don't live in that world, where do I go for resources?

Where do I get the help?

How do I get the best supports for my child?

Because we all want better for our own kids than we had.

And that became the mission.

And it's the mission I still live every day at MarcFirst.

It's supporting kids and adults with disabilities.

That's what we do but it's more personal than that.

- And it's in your heart.

- [Brian] Completely.

- I say it all the time that when you're in a job, like you're in and we're going to hear about it here in a second but when you're in a job that you're in, you wake up every morning, you're ready to brawl.

- You are, you really are because you're in essence where we're a lot of times fighting for those who may not have a voice to fight for themselves.

And in some cases that's not the case.

I don't want to make it seem like everybody that we serve doesn't have that voice but there are people who we support, who don't have that voice and we are that voice and we are the ones to brawl for them.

- [Matt] And it's about community.

- Totally.

- It's about you living in Bloomington, it's Brian's job to take care of Bloomington-Normal.

- Without a doubt.

- And a lot of other people's job, but it's for you personally, it's yours.

Tell us MarcFirst.

What is MarcFirst because the name doesn't really describe what it is.

- No, it doesn't.

MarcFirst has been around about 65 years and it was started as a school because back in the fifties, people with special needs, significant needs had no place to go for school.

A lot of times they were put in institutions and there was nothing left for them.

Few families came together and started MarcFirst back when it was arc and all of those other things as a school.

But it's grown to where we're serving well over 1500 kids and adults with intellectual developmental disabilities.

So we actually support McClain County and beyond from beginning of life, really to end the life.

We do early intervention, pediatric.

- You hear that a lot early intervention.

Is that zero to three?

- That's birth to three, Matt.

Early intervention will be in the home 'cause it's best practice.

Our staff will drive all over McClain County, down to Champagne County, even as far up here as to Peoria County now.

And they'll go into a home to help a mom and dad with their child through speech, eating, sleeping, emotional supports, whatever it may be, occupational physical therapy.

We do all of that stuff in the home.

- [Matt] What type of job or who's who goes into those homes?

- We call them early interventionists.

So they would do some of the social, emotional and developmental training that we develop mental therapies.

But if it becomes that a child may need more where it's very speech driven or it's occupational physical therapy, they'll also go into the home to provide that therapy.

- Are they trained like when they go into a home to sit there and look for other signs that may be medical signs, like let's say a kid's jaundice as an example or the mom has high blood pressure.

I'm just making things up but because those interventionists, those people can change lives and save lives pretty easily.

- Without a doubt.

And that's something you've always preached, is change lives and save lives.

And I think our therapists have been doing it for so long that those little signs that might exist within the dynamic of the household, may present themselves to a parent who otherwise wouldn't be thinking about it 'cause they don't know.

They don't know what they don't know.

So you need those professionals to help provide that.

- How many people flow through your agency each year?

- Kids and adults can range almost shy of 2,000 depending and some of that's duplicative services.

Some of our kiddos might get multiple services, but I would say per individual, it's well over 1,200.

- [Matt] Is there a waiting list?

- Always.

- As a CEO, what do you do to help deplete that waiting list?

Or what can you do?

- Two years ago, when I took the job, our former COO who passed away, came to me within three weeks and said, "We have this incredible business going on with our pediatric therapy team."

And they were in a building in about a thousand square feet.

And he said, "If we were able to give them more space, they can expand how many kiddos they see."

And within three months, we made that decision and started that started that process.

And because of COVID, it stalled a little bit but last November, we opened our very first clinic and we went from a thousand square feet to 4,700.

Within three months of that clinic opening, we took another thousand square feet.

- So the demand is there.

- Demand is there and we're about to open our second.

- Oh, that's cool.

- Not even a year, it's not even going to be a calendar year and we're going to start construction on the second one.

- And we talked about workforce a little earlier.

We touched on it but does the workforce or lack of workforce play into your planning when you look at this or do you sit here as the CEO and go it's mission and then we'll figure it out?

- It's a little bit of both, where workforce is really hurting.

- [Matt] That's a good answer actually.

(Brian laughing) - Workforce has really hurt us.

MarcFirst, our team they're like angels on earth.

And what I want to make sure I talk about a lot is our adults and the adults who live in 24 hour, seven day a week, still is and the staff that do that are just incredible people.

- [Matt] They're special.

- Yeah, they really are.

Those direct support professionals are just some of the most amazing people I've ever met.

And workforce has had a larger impact on that staff that are peed staff because that peed staff is very specific.

They went to school to be an occupational therapist.

So they went to school to be a physical therapist or a speech pathologist.

They want to either work in a school setting or a clinic setting.

Workforce isn't quite as hard when it comes to that group of people.

because they're very specific.

In Bloomington-Normal specifically is erupting.

We're blowing so big between Rivian and now potentially Samsung and all of these other things that are being generated by Rivian, so the pool for workforce is shrinking significantly.

- They're blowing up but that's not necessarily, it's good for the city, - [Brian] Correct.

- But it's not necessarily good for some other business because they're pulling.

Amazon just announced they're putting up something in Pekin.

And they're looking at 500 employees.

- [Brian] Right.

- Okay.

- And it'll affect all of us.

It's not just going to be a Bloomington-Normal, they'll pull from Peoria.

- [Matt] It's middle Illinois.

- It's all.

People will drive 60, 70 miles to go work for Rivian.

And you know, when Rivian, it's a God sent that they're there, but when they started, they were looking at 800 people max.

Now they're going to 4,000.

So housing, everything that you would think from an infrastructure standpoint has to be fixed now, has to be adjusted to meet those needs.

And for MarcFirst, it's definitely creating challenges and potentials.

- One of the things when I think about your programs, it's not just providing the services but it's providing, when you're talking about developmental disabilities, you have to do it in a meaningful way.

- [Brian] Totally.

- Explain that.

- I'll give you an example.

We added applied behavior analysis therapy when we opened that clinic.

It's very focused on kids on the spectrum.

And obviously we know now that that that group of kiddos, the number of children being born on the spectrum is increasing.

And so we have to come around as a community and say, what are we going to do to support those children?

Because the earlier we provide that intervention, the more impactful it is on the whole community, 'cause you think about school and where does that child get educated?

- People don't talk about the prevention piece a lot.

They just think, okay, we'll just wait and now services are here.

- No.

- I didn't mean... - No but Matt, you know this as well as I do, the earlier we start those interventions, which is why our early intervention team is so impactful because that birth to three can really change a trajectory for a child for the rest of their lives and I can speak to that to my own son.

Because of the interventions he received at two and a half, he's in typically developing educational classes now.

- And you're talking positions like speech pathology, as one example maybe.

- Social-emotional, social workers, occupational or physical therapy, so finer gross motor skills.

Our social workers, again at that be applied behavior analysis that we're providing now., we had a young lady come to us and within two weeks, she was potty-trained.

Within a few more weeks, mom and dad were talking about going out into the community for dinner.

Things that had never been happen.

- [Matt] It changes lives and that's what people don't understand.

One thing that doesn't sound as like that big of a deal when you're talking about higher end things, but it changes the family dynamic.

- [Brian] Without a doubt.

- And keeps families together.

- A hundred percent because that can be a huge strain on families.

And then I think about how our adult teams do the same thing.

We're one of the larger supporters of supported employment programs.

So our adults with developmental disabilities are working, gainfully employed out in the community.

- Give some examples there.

A high level overview of someone's 35 years old, can work, wants to work, how does that happen at MarcFirst?

How do you go in?

- So our job coaches will start by doing some interviews with them and figuring out what area they want to work.

Let's say I want to work in the food service industry.

Well, okay.

We're going to identify some of our local restaurants and say, "You're in need of a hostess or host.

Okay, great.

Well, we have somebody who really enjoys food and they're always smiling, they're always friendly.

They want to be gainfully employed."

We walk them through the interview process and then they'll go on an interview with this local restaurant.

They get hired, we'll begin with the job coach who will go with this person to work.

And the idea is to say slowly just pull back the job coach and eventually, we have people working at Target, in State Farm, in Country Financial, all of whom have it have embraced MarcFirst and said, "Let 'em come, bring them in."

- [Matt] That is awesome.

- It's so awesome and our job coaches now, they might go check in once a month.

- And think about this, think about how many places keep griping it and rightfully so, that they don't have employees.

They have all these open positions.

We all have them, from hospitals to nonprofits, to restaurants, but you're filling that gap.

- And our team of job coaches are absolutely incredible group of people because they put in lots of time, lots of love, lots of the energy.

- Love, I love the word because it's very true.

You have to have it in your heart to be able to make it work.

- We have two core values at MarcFirst that we just created and the first one is a culture of love.

That's our very first core value.

- People are afraid of that word, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

It's a good word, we need more of it actually.

- We do and when I did an all staff meeting a few weeks ago, I talked about a culture of love being okay because think about our loved ones.

We're both married, we hold our spouses accountable, we hold our kids accountable.

- [Matt] Right.

- It's okay to love somebody and hold them accountable, so you can do that at work.

You can have a culture of love in the workforce.

- And you're talking about having that empathy piece, that compassion, - [Brian] That's one of our other ones.

- The passion and that compassion.

It's interesting because there've been so many situations this past year with all this COVID stuff that people are hurting still and they're still recovering.

And if people have lost loved ones or they've lost their jobs, whatever it may be, it's our job to take care of these people and to lift others up and stop being so negative all the time.

I could go on a whole show of tangent just on negativity, but I won't.

- You talk about that, I couldn't believe how our staff, our residential staff stepped up during COVID.

If we had COVID go into one of the homes, they moved in.

They left their loved ones, they moved in and stayed 24/7 in our residential to make sure that the adults that we supported in their homes were still getting those supports and we weren't exposing anything else from a COVID standpoint.

I'm so proud of that team and so blessed to be around them, it's unbelievable.

- Let's switch gears, let's talk cash.

- Money.

- How are you funded?

- Something I'm going to thank you for that you taught me is you want to be diversified.

We're a business, just because we're a not-for-profit but we're a business.

And it used to be that MarcFirst was almost 75% state dependent, state funded.

Two years ago when I got there, we're now 50% state dependent.

We're developing other business lines that meet our mission and support the group of people that we're supporting throughout McClain County and beyond, just looking at it differently.

- You have to look at it differently, I appreciate you saying that.

I didn't say it for that but it's interesting because you have the business changes 24/7 in all business.

You have to stay on top of it, but you don't know funding streams from state or federal, you don't know where they're going.

And so, do you do fundraising?

- We do.

We have two predominant fundraisers.

We have a gulf outing.

We're actually blessed Fazziz Ella came down for two days this year and joined our gulf outing and that did really well.

And then our really big one is divine affair, which comes at the end of September.

- [Matt] What's that called?

- Divine affair.

MarcFirst used to have a few different fundraisers and became a little difficult.

When you do three or four a year and you're asking the same people.

We got down to one and it's a dinner that Troy Thomas, the head chef at Biaggi's in Bloomington has built and will host about 400 or 400 plus people in Biaggi's parking lot under some tents this year as a fundraiser.

And we've got eight other restaurants joining him to cook and present food for the whole night.

It's gonna be really awesome.

- It's fun to look at the different revenue streams that come in.

Do you write grants?

- We do write grants and McClain County is very gracious to us and their 377 grants and other local grants, John M. Scott, we get a bunch of grant writing.

And it's always something that you need a good grant writer though and you know this.

Finding a really strong, good grant writer who can not only write the grant but then manage to make sure that you're following it, those are hard people to find and in a world today, that's a hard position.

It's like HR people, it's hard to find.

We've got a great chief human resources officer and her team is great but it's hard to find those people.

- It's funny because that's my next question.

I was going to talk a bit, you said earlier, you're also a business, but you have HR, you have audits, you have payroll.

There's all of those things that a regular business has and you have to have key people in those positions.

- And to your point, you got to have cash to pay it.

I mean, we make payroll every two weeks.

- It's a business.

When people hear the name, MarcFirst, I alluded this earlier, do they know in Bloomington-Normal what that means?

Do you have to explain who MarcFirst is?

- Two years ago when I got there, I didn't realize people didn't know who we were or what we did or how large we were.

We have 200 people working there now.

I ask most of our local professionals in town, they have no idea what we do.

But we have a really brilliant staff member who does our marketing and development and with the right funding, she's been able to go out and get us some airtime on TV and some billboards and some radio stuff.

- Social media, I've noticed.

I can watch, I can see it.

- And you have to have the right people and you have to be willing to bring them in and understand there's a cost to that.

But the return on investment there is massive because now I don't necessarily have to say, do you know who MarcFirst is?

A lot of people know who we are.

- But when you do say it, now the conversation changes.

You're not in explanation mode, you're in sell mode, so to speak.

- A little bit.

- Or teach mode, either one.

Why is it so hard right now to hire like speech path or ABA?

Why is it so hard?

Are they not out there anymore?

- Even our schools, I think, are struggling with that.

- [Matt] Therapists, social workers.

Are you seeing kids not getting it?

Are you getting applications from people that are under the age of 25 coming out of college?

- If they've went to school locally, if they know about us.

You started by asking me about moving here from New York and how great this community is, but people don't know how great Central Illinois really is because they think Central Illinois, my friends still think, "Oh, it's cornfields, right?"

When you talk about we've got Caterpillar here, we've got State Farm here, we've got Rivian, we've got ISU, we got UAI, we got Bradley.

We have a lot of big things.

- And you've got ICC and you've got Heartland.

You've got Eureka College.

[crosstalk] - There's a lot of great schools, Illinois state.

There's a lot of great schools around here, it's almost like all the businesses need to get together and rethink the model of tapping into these schools and showing the vision of what these kids could get into, because we need these people in our business to help our community thrive.

I think it's our job to help push that, people do not understand that we need these people.

- Yeah and I think, I know you were always really well connected with the chamber and that's something that I kind of strive for and I've got a really good relationship with our chamber.

And I'm part of a CEO council with some for-profit, not-for-profit, other business leaders in the town and we're constantly talking about how do we do that?

How do we bring about selling our communities as a whole and selling Central Illinois?

Because to your point, where we're located, if you really want the big city, it's two hours away in three directions.

You can get to St. Louis, Chicago or Indy super easy if you want to.

- Well, you do a great job.

I appreciate really everything that you do, your team does.

I got to tour your facility.

There's a lot of heroes that work in your business at MarcFirst, you've got a great board.

And Bloomington-Normal, like you said, it is a up and coming community.

Every community goes through that little stagnant time, but now you're back on the up, which is good.

You still have State Farm, Country Financial, the core ones.

But thank you, Brian Wipperman for coming in, CEO at MarcFirst, keep up the good work.

Tell your team, keep it up to.

I'm Matt George and this is another episode of "Business Forward".

(upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning in to "Business Forward", brought to you by PNC.