Sonya Locke: The CEO Who Collects People Like Cookies and Builds Empires | Staffing Series

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Sonya Locke. She is the Chief Executive Officer of EDS Service Solutions, a human capital management and staffing solutions provider that focuses on helping businesses improve operations and efficiency. Founded in 1996 with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, EDS Service Solutions uses proprietary technology and extensive talent acquisition expertise to allow clients to concentrate on growth while managing critical back-end functions effectively. Sonja has received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award, 2023, Southeast Award from Ernst & Young showcasing excellence in innovation and strategic development. Sonja brings a rich background in global strategy previously serving in leadership roles at Audi on Demand and managing large-scale projects as founder of workforce velocity. She earned a master’s degree from Florida State University, further enhancing her strong leadership profile.

We’re going to learn more about her approach to leadership, her take on innovation, and how she overcame challenges to reach new heights. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdVac Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of EDS Service Solutions, Sonja Locke. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Sonya Locke. : Thank you, Anthony, and thank you for having me. So, forward to our conversation.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, likewise. Let’s jump right into it. So you’ve led EDS since 2014 and you’ve got deep industry experience. Maybe pick one of your roles along the way that you feel really helped to prepare you for the leadership role that you now hold at EDS.

Sonya Locke. : Okay. Yeah. Do you mind if I digress way back to actually my education, which I feel like is a very unique perspective on what helped shape me to be a CEO in today’s world. Oddly enough, I went to school to become an art history professor and was getting my PhD to become a professor, well, academia and art history, not artists, find you. I don’t do the drawing stuff, but really with art history, one of the things that I felt like it really taught me to be a great leader is you’re really studying perspectives. You’re studying what does something mean.

You never had multiple choice questions. It was all about how can I give what the meaning of this is? How is impacting the community? How is impacting the culture? What does artists or what these, if we’re looking at ancient, what these communities were trying to say and how that impacted our lives?

And so I think with that was really just a strong foundation in not looking at the black and white and looking at the whole myriad and looking at different perspectives and how that makes us grow and innovate and overcome obstacles. And so I think a lot of that early came on with all the roles that I’ve had. When I first started out, it was with during the Olympics and it was very traditional staffing.

It grew very fast. We were in multiple markets and really that focus was on recruiting the best, finding the very best possible talent. And from different sources, when I was staffing for the Olympics, my first thing was going to the colleges and I’d sit down in the actual libraries or in the lunchrooms and recruit all these great colleges because what I could offer them was flexibility to where they were Tuesday, Thursday or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but they were smart. They were intelligent. They were eager to work with something that was not stressful. So it fit perfectly within an industry that had never seen people like that.

Most of the, especially in the carbonyl industry and the airports, it was more like day labor that would come and fill in. It wasn’t like a strategic recruiting initiative. And with that, what changed was everybody kind of had, there was a major recession afterwards and everybody had kind of blown their money and it wasn’t more about just finding the right people. It was about strategically planning your workforce.

Which recession are you referring to now? Well, multiple ones. There was one in 92, which kind of got me into that kind of space. And then more for Atlanta after the Olympics, a lot of companies, and you see that with every city when they have an Olympics, right?

All this money is brought in, everybody’s planning all that, but the companies a lot of times don’t end up making what they invested to be prepared for such a world event. So it was really in those late 90s and you had multiple ones that kind of went through. I think our generation was really plagued by, seems like lots of little recessions. But it was more about that’s when it was really discovering how to plan a workforce to optimize it, especially in highly volatile industries that are driven by customers’ demands that fluctuate daily, hourly, and everything else. So that’s really what also prepared me more on the analytical side. I was always very research, analytical, and actually very math inclined for some odd reason.

Anthony Codispoti : Which is not the mix you would expect from somebody who had an art history background.

Sonya Locke. : No, no. I have no clue why.

Anthony Codispoti : You’ve got this unique convergence of interests and talents.

Sonya Locke. : Yeah, I think it was just more, I think with data, it just kind of goes back to the inquisitive mind. I’ve always been a continuous learner. I always want to know everything and I dig into all of those different things. And data is one of our most key attributes to do that. So I think that both of those kind of experiences working with Striden and managing a company and seeing it go from not just I need people to, oh my gosh, I need to really figure out how to have the people at the right time and not blow my budget and how to be more optimizing for clients. And so I think that both of those really prepared me for understanding our market, how best operational plans don’t work without the right people in place and really valuing those different perspectives. Obviously, I’ve had experience on the technology side and working in development and working in Europe, which has also gained a really great experience. Even working with Audi, I worked directly with the team in Germany and very different cultures and very different dynamics of of how business operates.

And I really appreciated that was learning that there’s so many different perspectives and bringing those together is really, I think as a leader, it’s what empowers me the most because leading a large team like I do is understanding that you don’t have one model, right? You don’t have a square peg.

Anthony Codispoti : You’re not choosing from A, B, and C, and D answers. You’re having to have a more fluid perspective on things. Exactly.

Sonya Locke. : Exactly. And I always tell people that my greatest strength right now and as a CEO that my purpose and my greatest ability is I’m a good collector of people. And I can bring these different unique, diverse perspectives and talents together and hopefully lead them to be unified and lead them with one purpose. And I think that that’s really, as my gift, I think with CEOs, they say there’s three things that you have to be the master of and that is culture, people, and data, right? How do you blend those all together? And those are like your most important aspects leading a company and helping it survive.

Anthony Codispoti : I want to hear more about being a good collector of people. What advice can you give other folks who are like, oh, I’m terrible at that. What do you do to be able to identify that, the right talent to identify what seats they should be in? And once you’ve got them, like, how do you hold on to them?

Sonya Locke. : I think that the second part you said was the most important. What seats do they belong in? And a lot of times, I’ve invented positions for so many people where I’ve interviewed them and I’m like, no, I know they need to be on my team. I just love their inner drive, their inner excellence, I would say. A lot of people like to be challenged, to continuously learn, to continue to grow. And they have different talents, right? Some people are really, you know, they are more process driven. I want to, you know, this is what I want to do in my job. I can sit there, I mean, my programmers, how on earth they can look at a screen.

I have bought PHP for dubbies and every kind of book possible. And I was just like, okay, no, I don’t have the patience for that. But I can learn how to hire the right people that have that and how to inspire them.

So a lot of that is finding also the right seat. What is their strength? What is their passion? Not just a skill set, but what are they really good at? Are they good at, you know, my recruiters?

They can talk, most of them can talk to anybody, but they also can listen. And do they have a real drive of wanting to make those connections and helping people and helping companies? And they might be great at that respect. And then my operations managers, their drive is maybe completing tasks, right? And having organization and saying, this is, we’re going to optimize this and, you know, finding those different talents and what is the right physician for that person? So that’s what I say is a good collector of people. It’s all different personalities, all different diversities and giving them a way where their passion can meet their purpose so that they can excel personally.

Anthony Codispoti : So how can you get a sense from somebody if they have that inner drive to learn and to improve to get better? Because it sounds like that’s kind of the first step for you.

Sonya Locke. : I don’t know. I don’t have like a set of questions.

Anthony Codispoti : Sometimes it is. Yeah. And a lot of times that’s where I always have done my interviews more where it kind of goes just naturally. Kind of fact first, like, you know, okay, what’s your basic qualifications type thing to really bend more into the interpersonal, right?

And like, what achievement did they achieve personally or in school or at a job that they felt the most proud of? You know, and I mean, I’ve asked things like, if you could be a car, what car would you be and why? I mean, like, a lot of it is like understanding what is, what is their inner purpose and trying to make them feel comfortable to where they can have that vulnerability to kind of give you their motivation. And, you know, so that’s kind of how I like to really talk to somebody about them as a person.

And I think that’s where you can find, you know, do are they one of those people that like to be constantly challenged that like to be continuously learning, you know, or, you know, or and striving for that excellence, and they’re going to put themselves to the point of perfection, you know, and always see themselves as a failure because they’d like to have that challenge, but putting them into a position where they can grow from that and not overworking some of them, you know, not letting them like actually one of my managers that has been with me for 13 years. And she has been in every department of the company. And she is brilliant. And she is like my biggest success story, because she has now developed her own, I mean, she’s in charge of all the talent acquisition to where I feel like she’s built a company within a company, her own systems and her own culture, and drive with her team, just how she communicates. And one of the things I’ve always said is I knew with her, I would lose her the day I put her in a position where she wouldn’t be able to master the task at hand, put her in something that she would have no passion, and she would feel like a failure.

It didn’t matter what, you know, what the position was or the money, but if I put her into a point of failure, that was the biggest detriment because she is always going to disrupt and try to do something different and challenge herself. And I need to give her free reign. That’s the other thing I knew is she has to be ownership of it, right? She had to see the challenge and figure out, okay, how am I going to do it? Get the guidance, but have ownership to make mistakes and make the choices that she needs to make.

Anthony Codispoti : She sounds like a real gem.

Sonya Locke. : Oh, I have so many real gems. Yeah. And hearing you talk about that, I get what you’re saying about you’re a good collector of people because you’re identifying what it is that she needs to be fulfilled and successful.

Anthony Codispoti : Right. Yeah.

Sonya Locke. : And then you’re putting her in those positions to do that. Right. Yeah. Some of them, and one of my VP’s, she used to, one of her interview questions, which was one of our favorites, was what kind of cookie are you? Is like, a company is like a plate of cookies. You have sugar cookies. You might have the oatmeal raisin. You have the chocolate.

You know, it’s like, what was that? What kind of cookie are you and why? And as a company, when you’re growing forward, you need that full plate of cookies. You need that variety for that diverse perspective and finding a safe environment where they can grow within what their inner goals are, I would say. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : I want to get into EDS now. How and when did the opportunity to take over the reins there come about?

Sonya Locke. : Well, I came and took over the reins around 2014. Okay. And when I came in, and this is where we can also build about culture, it was more not just taking over the reins, but really transforming a company. They had a solid reputation. They had business, but really what was kind of lacking at that point due to some turmoil for the last couple of years, internal turmoil, which we’ll get to kind of later, it really didn’t have that culture.

Right? That team culture. There was a lot of inner competition. There was just kind of like that leadership to where it was, okay, who’s better than who, right?

And it wasn’t growing in a forward motion. So I think that really was transforming it was really coming in there and helping building a culture that was one client centric. And it was excellence first and understanding what our value was and how we were going to achieve that together, where one department was not above another department, you know, that it’s like a spoke and a wheel, how we can all work together to make one that all of us are better than one of us, right? And, and, you know, prior to that, I was really working on workforce velocity in Ireland and then launching the Audi on demand mobility projects in your and in the US, which was really interesting. So I think bringing those different perspectives of, you know, with innovation and also with building a company from scratch, which was what Audi on demand was, you know, no employees, it was an idea, it was a concept, like how do we bring this concept to life was really kind of some of what we brought into EDS to take it to where it is now and can successfully say that it’s grown by leaps and bounds and send.

Anthony Codispoti : So I’d like if you can offer some advice to our listeners on how you change the company culture, like, I think company culture is one of those things it doesn’t give enough get enough credit for how important it is. And I think it’s challenging, but certainly much easier to to establish and to build in a new company, but coming into an existing company that sort of has its way of doing things. And they weren’t the way that you wanted them done, like turning that ship, you know, in a different direction. It’s a pretty big lift. Like, how did you accomplish that?

Sonya Locke. : I think it was a lot of different things. First of all, I think was transparency. That was a real interesting shift. You know, previous leadership was very closed in, you know, kind of, like said, have these little competitions, but nobody really knew what the purpose was. I was an open book.

I mean, I let all of my leaders was like, oh, you want to see a P &L? Here it is. Here’s every single thing of it.

Here’s how much I make. I mean, I was more of a team player. I liked going into each role to understand what the challenges were, and also really talking to everyone and saying, okay, I want to hear your perspectives. What’s good? What’s bad? What do you think your your value is?

What do you think our value is? So I think with culture is a lot about communication and gathering everybody’s feedback and perspective, you know, true 360. I think being transparent.

And I think empowering people, empowering them to be the owner of their own domain, right? Versus these false competitions, you know, I always told everybody that our biggest competitor is our clients. If we can do it better than them, then we’re providing a value, right? And that’s what our value is, is we are really good at hiring and managing these variable hour workforces. That is our specialty.

We put everything in our resources into it. I don’t rent cars. I don’t own a hotel. I’m not good at those things, or I’m not trying to be those. I’m trying to help them succeed by managing the most important work, their most important asset, their human capital.

So I think one of the other things with culture is being purpose driven. What is it that your company does, right? What are you good at? What is your value add and not chasing profits for profit’s sakes? You see a lot of people that they just, you know, will change what their mindset or, hey, I do this or I also do that because they don’t really have a, this is what I’m good at.

And this is how I’m going to become the best at that. Versus trying to be everything to everybody and just to get a sale or a dollar or a profit. If you’re good at what you do, profits will follow, but you have to know what you do well first. So I think that we built that kind of culture first of the refinement and the transparency and the kind of empowerment of, you know, building that culture of pride. They want to have pride in what they do and they want to feel like they’re listened to and they want to have value that they’re providing. And how do we bring that all together in a for profit world, right? Where it makes sense.

Anthony Codispoti : So let’s talk about some of the things that you guys do well. I mean, you’re in the staffing industry, but that’s a huge umbrella. You guys are pretty good sized company. Like break it down for us in easy terms. Like what is it, what are the services that you provide?

Sonya Locke. : So we provide more full business process outsourcing and staffing. And what that really means is with most of our companies, we specialize in the travel industry. You know, think aviation, car rental, hospitality, automotive. And we provide the full workforce solution. So we many times will take over a function of a location. So think about for hospitality, we can take over the entire housekeeping division. But what’s different is we not only do all the hiring and recruiting, but we actually manage the people. We train the people, train them on their particular brand. We have KPI managers that their job is actually building these optimized schedules for all of these companies throughout the country. So they talk to the managers every day. And that’s one reason why workforce velocity was developed. What it will do is like look at all the patterns and create schedules based on an hourly KPI for every function within that department to ensure that you have the exact right number of people during that day. So we might have some locations like in Orlando, for instance, our largest airport. We have over 700 employees.

They never leave the lot. We work for multiple brands there on the car rental side. But we also have a management team of about 30. And they’re actually managing, directing, they’re doing risk, they’re doing, you know, the full giving the operational plan of how they’re going to move all those cars. Because on the car rental, the easy way to understand is they may rent 3000 cars, but there’s 100 parking spaces in that ready line. Our job is to move everything behind the scenes to make sure those cars are already always there. And that’s where it takes a lot of complexity with everything from dynamic labor schedules to active recruiting, to Six Sigma and lean operational processes to understand what’s the best process to get from point A to point B, one of those failure points, and our technology to really hone in how to do that correctly.

And all of those come together. And that’s why we have our different departments and managers, but we really look holistically in partnership with our clients to build their critical back end functions that are more labor specific, not like it or things like that, but more the critical functions like said, a kitchen or housekeeping department or drivers and car washers or baggage handling those critical functions that we can put not only data, but our skill set with with hiring and training those teams. And that’s why we have employees that may have worked for us for 10 to 15 years, because there are employees, we have our own culture, we have our own management teams.

Anthony Codispoti : And they may move within roles at some of your different clients, but they still stay with you. Yes.

Sonya Locke. : And most of the time we don’t move them within different roles and those serves opportunity for growth. And, you know, actually, my regional managers, three of them started out as drivers.

And over 10 years now they are running like multiple states and multiple different locations and taking that knowledge. So that promotion from within is also a very important part with ours, because we have such a diverse workforce throughout and, you know, offering them opportunity to provide insight and help with growth.

Anthony Codispoti : I want to better understand what the software workforce velocity does. Maybe let me start with this question. What is meant by dynamic labor staffing?

Sonya Locke. : Kind of what I was alluding to, there’s about 10,000 data points that are on the back end that automates everything. So first of all, with workforce, and it was built because there was nothing like it in the market, it manages the whole employee life cycle. So when someone applies, we have them immediately kind of go to our web, they apply, it will trigger first of all, we call everybody.

So we call 225,000 candidates last year to actually personally screen them and talk to them. But on the back end with workforce, that’s when their whole application process starts with the interview notes puts in, and then it automates the entire background, what their availability is, which is key to our success is, you know, understanding maybe they’re only available from four to 10 at night on Monday, Thursday and Friday. Our schedules are based on it then takes these dynamic nodes of understanding all these KPIs, the hourly patterns. So if you think about an airline, right, what times plane are coming in, how many people are coming off the planes on the planes, it builds a dynamic labor schedule based on optimized needs to fulfill all the task functions within those hours.

So, you know, it with COVID, as you saw, like said, you went from 3000 to 30, you had a huge change, but the schedules maintained. And with many of our clients, we do transactional based pricing, means that we can build their labor work model for the year, because it’s all based on KPI and these dynamic schedules with the same people and with the right labor price to where, say, every time they rent a car, they pay us a certain dollar amount per transaction, but we manage everything from the management to the employee risk to the compliance to everything to do it. So if we are doing good and we’ve optimized our labor force and they’re hitting a productivity, then great, we’re on track. But to meet our SLAs, if I have to staff more people or I fail and have too much overtime, then we’re kind of on the hook.

Anthony Codispoti : You’re taking on some of that cost responsibility. Exactly. So it’s a true partnership, right? Is both have skin in the game. I mean, to do that, you’ve not only got to have a lot of your own data points, you have to understand the data points of your customer as well, right?

Sonya Locke. : And so we take in all of our customers transactions, that’s what creates the patterns, that’s what creates the hourly schedules. I mean, in terms of what their customer load is, developed on our own lean six sigma, here’s the process, here’s every support position that works behind it. Then it also has timekeeping, which has mobile and kiosk that are all sensitive. So that actually goes into our billing and our payroll and optimizes that. And then of course, a lot of data reporting and the automatic scheduling, it can take what the employees availabilities are with what the open schedules are to automatically piece them together and you have full visibility into that employee. You can see every position they’ve had, everywhere they worked, every hours, if they’ve showed up five minutes late or any types of notes. So holistically, you’re always seeing the workforce in real time and responding to it in real time.

I can know right now in LA, if everybody showed up or if somebody called out or if somebody’s absent, we know instantly so we can fulfill that. And then with the optimization on the back end, like with our payroll, because it’s all real time and through tablets or mobiles and everything on the ground, I have two people in payroll that cut checks for 7000 variable hour employees every week in a two and a half day turnaround. Managing every single state, every airport, every state, have different compliance standards in

Anthony Codispoti : terms of- So the payroll platform is also internal to your software? Yes.

Sonya Locke. : Well, not the platform, it goes into our accounting system, but we actually calculate like there’s different PTO laws in every state and with us working the airports in California, every airport has different laws and different overtime regulations blended over time. So somebody could work five positions in the same day, right? But then their overtime is based on their blended total hours.

Anthony Codispoti : So we had to create a lot of different complex systems to manage all of that. And you already made the point, you guys built this because nothing like this existed at the time.

It sounds incredibly complex. Is it only used? You’re like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. And we’re just scratching the surface, buddy. And so is EDS the only company that is using it or do you also license it to others?

Sonya Locke. : Right now we’ve used it internally. We want to go public with it. Like said, we just did a UI UX. We have been audited and submitted for awards because of the revolutionary part of the technology. But EDS has grown kind of by leaps and bounds. So that’s kind of a whole different animal is the tech animal. So that’s kind of that’s a push to a later date. And it’s our competitive advantage. I mean, there’s no one that has a market like this.

Anthony Codispoti : So even in the time since you’ve developed it, have you seen anything else or heard of something else that’s doing something remotely close to it?

Sonya Locke. : A lot of them will handle parts of it, but not all in one system, which is also so key for that transparency and that communication is there’s very few that you can see the whole dynamics of your workforce. And we also have performance tracking, like especially with our drivers, we have a large automotive contract where we do all of the service delivery in 42 states picking them up at customers. And we can see if that person’s fed, we can see where they’re at, what time and track it so that we can offer the best customer service, as well as optimize, making sure that they’re they do have the right labor for what their needs are and their timing. So it’s constantly evolving. And we’re constantly pushing it to new limits.

Anthony Codispoti : I wonder if there’s maybe a specific case study that you can talk about a specific client example where sort of this confluence of your skills that EDS and workforce velocity came together to solve a particularly, you know, challenging employment situation for someone.

Sonya Locke. : Yes. And many different ones, like I said, it’s always kind of hand in hand with with with how we approach client or location. I would say right now Orlando is one of them is a very interesting dynamic market. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been to Orlando’s airport, but it’s huge.

And there’s three separate terminals. And it’s the largest car rental operations in the world. We will rent, I believe, I think, combined with all of our different clients. Sometimes I want to say it’s about 20,000 a week. And we have over 600 employees. And we’ve been deploying actually a system on on the airport, which was also a challenge where we actually are checking every single move that is less than a minute. from every employee and then in those garages. To one, help identify defective moves, also to have that visibility of where the…

Anthony Codispoti : A moving, like I’m moving the car from here to there, not the person themselves moving around.

Sonya Locke. : The person’s moving themselves around and then they use the technology to actually track that move into that car so they can see where it’s going at all times to give better visibility to have the cars where they need to be for the clients.

Anthony Codispoti : And what’s a defective move in this example then?

Sonya Locke. : A defective move, well, there’s a couple of different ones. Say you have a car that’s, or multiple cars, you don’t have enough cars in terminal A. They need to be in terminal B. Or you have a car that has maintenance that didn’t get checked in as maintenance, so then it’s there for rent, but you can’t rent it, right? So then now you have to go pick it up, move it all over again. There’s a lot of different ways you can have defective moves where you’re having to move a car two or three times for no reason, right?

And that of course fails in your optimization and everything else. But the biggest thing is what we were able to do with that is when we took over for one of our particular clients there, we literally had a week’s notice to hire, train, and deploy 400 new employees.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s a pretty unreasonable expectation. Oh, yes.

Sonya Locke. : But we were able to, because like I said, my recruiting team is like a powerhouse. They last year alone, like I said, they called 225,000 candidates. So they are mobilized, getting all the different talent in there, recruiting it, fast hiring. If someone’s background is clean, we can sometimes get someone hired within a 24-hour process after they’ve been interviewed in person, background check, fully compliant, all on, because all of their paperwork’s online.

Anthony Codispoti : And that still leaves enough time for them to get trained for this new position.

Sonya Locke. : Exactly. Because we could be bringing those in there. Then we have our operations team that is training them on the operations, setting up orientations, going out there with driving with them, making sure they’re safe. So it’s like so many different departments and it’s all in one system.

So we’re able to see everything visibly, right? And what those schedules are and the needs. And then my KPI managers are managing all those moves and all those different predictions and creating the schedules that’s been pushed out, that’s automatically drag and drop. And then of course, like I said, all the way down to payroll. To where that next week they’re getting paid.

That’s a great process. But yeah. So technology is a great enabler. It doesn’t replace the personal aspect, but it enables us to be much faster and better and more streamlined. And better communication and transparency between multiple different divisions and departments.

Anthony Codispoti : Give us an idea of the size of the operation, whether in terms of employees or locations or something. We can kind of wrap our arms around it.

Sonya Locke. : I think we’re about 151 locations across 35, maybe more states. We open places sometimes very quickly. And also with our technology during COVID, we were able to do remote recruiting for our clients. I forgot about that. And very odd places. You know, like in the middle of nowhere to where we could actually recruit, do the Zoom interviews, talk to the person, get everything done, put them in a client and still manage them ourselves. But that was that’s challenge. So I think we’re about about 148, maybe locations right now and around 7000 employees.

Anthony Codispoti : And are these all corporate owned or is it a franchise system?

Sonya Locke. : No, they’re all corporate owned, all W2, all completely compliant across every single state. So yes.

Anthony Codispoti : What do you think has allowed for such significant growth? What’s sort of your secret sauce and being able to expand as much as you have?

Sonya Locke. : Well, you wanna hear one thing that’s really interesting and everybody really laughs at this is the fact that about a year ago before we relaunched our website, if you typed in EDS service solutions, you would not find our website because we had zero SEO. So we have never done outside sales and marketing. We have very core clients.

You’re gonna have to repeat that. We had never done outside sales and marketing. It has been very partnership driven. We’ve had select clients where we have gone on nationwide to open and facilitate locations for them out of this trust and partnership. And that’s kind of how we built our network and our structure and our growth.

So very purpose driven. And having strategic partners like that requires you to have a good value on what you do, right? And to be excellent at what you do. That’s why we have high service levels and good operations managers that are constantly communicating and really embedding themselves in their client success. So I think a lot of our success kind of comes from our core values of integrity and trust. Excellence in recruiting, meaning also to our managers and who we hire and how we retain them and reward them and build them for success. And trust and integrity within everything that we do and innovation constantly changing, constantly pushing what we need to do next. So I think with growth is a lot of purpose but synergizing together and with our strategic partners like our clients and treating them as not a transaction but as a true partnership to help them succeed has really enabled our growth.

Anthony Codispoti : So when you say strategic partner, you’re referring to larger companies that have needs and locations in multiple states, multiple cities, is that what I’m hearing? Okay. Right.

Sonya Locke. : So like we operate in like all of the top 30 airports but across multiple different brands. So working with them.

Anthony Codispoti : But that had to take some kind of sales, marketing, business development effort or is that what you do?

Sonya Locke. : Oh, well kind of. I mean like we have our quarterly meetings and we discuss with them but also our reputation is what has grown us into all the different markets. So when they have an issue at a location, they know they can call us like for instance, the Orlando situation, that’s why we got a one week notice is they were in a major bind, their previous vendor failed and was not very scrupulous with them. And so they called us and we made it happen.

Anthony Codispoti : So I feel like there is a master class in the works here that like, there’s something to your process that you probably want to keep to yourself but I think a lot of folks would benefit from because to not have a sales and marketing team and to get to

Sonya Locke. : the level of- Getting one now as we’re branching out more. So that’s been kind of our challenges is like, it is relatively new for us. We’ve been very successful with our model and that’s good but there’s a lot of other opportunities that really fit within our wheelhouse and we know that and that’s where it’s really been more.

Anthony Codispoti : So now that’s where the innovation comes in. You guys need to improve. You need to be nimble and willing to change. Right. I’d like to shift gears, Sonia and I’d like to ask you about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life. What was it? How did you get through it? What were some lessons that you learned?

Sonya Locke. : I think there were several. Several challenges and always several lessons. When I discussed about taking the reins of EDS, my partner who had been since college days was my ex-husband. Went through a very termist divorce to two and a half years really kind of tore the company apart just a lot of extent.

I was kind of written off. I mean, literally had my name stricken as I did not exist and had a fight for everything back. And so it came down to two days before going to court and figuring out, I could either sign a 10 year non-complete peat and go drink pina coladas on the beach or I could take the risk and pay a absorbent amount of money per month that was non-bankruptible, non-tax-free to take over everything.

And took the choice, came in. We were negative EBITDA by a lot. As I said, no company culture, kind of us versus them, very distrustful type system.

And basically kind of felt like building the company back from scratch. And that’s where I kind of go with that trust and transparency being kind of a cornerstone and building that culture. To me, that was the most important is what do we stand for?

How are we gonna get there? And had a simple goal of saying, okay, five years, 50 million, that’s what we’re going to get. We did it in two and a half.

But a lot of it was our team really, we kind of broke down those barriers, got rid of that inner competition. And I listened to my instincts, I would say. One of the things that I kind of talk about it on some of these other journeys is, I’ve always been a hard worker and I’ve always been very empathetic. But I was not seeing is that kind of pound my chest, like, hey, we’re gonna get this done.

And heck with everybody or that, do anything to get by or to succeed type thing. And really I was embracing that and saying, no, I can do this, it’s scary. But some of my skills of being trusting to people are being overly empathetic and really kind of weighing out all the options and not making rash, move this way, move that way. And following stereotype is really kind of how we built the company and built it to where it was more authentic and kind of celebrating that a little bit more and realizing that every leader is different and how do you find what your superpower is to help lead and bring that forward. So I would say that was a big challenge that we learned a lot from. And like I said, I think it was learning a lot from everybody learned from each other. Recruiting was just as important as operations or sales as we would call it, like our main account managers and stuff like that, equally important, same as our support without the people in the back end doing risk or counting or payroll, nobody gets paid.

It’s not actually, I mean, they’re all equal pillars and they all have to work together and be valued as such and have an equal seat at the table to learn to grow a company. So I think that was a lot of the lessons that I learned on that side.

Anthony Codispoti : What did you see in the company at that time that made you want to take this giant risk? All right, you could be

Sonya Locke. : shipping peanut coladas, you can pay a whole lot of money and take over what sounds like a sinking ship. I mean, you were losing money. Oh yeah, there were some mini crying moments. Right, come home and go, oh my God, what did I do?

And I was raising two kids and had no salary at the time. So it was a challenging time and I will tell you, and I know this sounds very cliche, but the one thing I saw was the people. And it was the same people that are with me today. And it was the power of what we could do. I knew what our greatness was. I knew the hunger in the different people of being excellent and fine tuning them.

It was also my technology that was built from, you know, brainchild from the beginning knowing what that power was and realizing that that was an investment and we can do that and do this. And, you know, we had to go build relationships with our clients again. We didn’t have a lot of that client trust because it was very disjointed and really going in and partnering with our clients and stating, you know, what we are going to do to be of value to them and how to be a good partner and listening to them and, you know, aligning with them. So it was a big risk, but I think that’s kind of what most entrepreneurs do is they have that power to know, hey, I’ve got something good here. I have got good people. I’ve got good intentions. We have a good value with all of our different skill sets and we can succeed if we’re all working on the same team with the same beliefs.

Anthony Codispoti : How long before you felt like you had turned things around?

Sonya Locke. : I would say it was really, it was about less than a year in because we got a huge RFP with a client in 46 cities. And we had to take some real big gambles knowing the price was really low because it was a very competitive with like 10 different ones in. And it was kind of that foot in the ground where it was like, okay, we can either be extremely competitive and get the markets that we want. Knowing that we might not make as much profit is because these are transactional based, you know, some of them could be lost leaders, but we had to provide the service, right? We couldn’t just go and say, no, we’re gonna make profit only. We had to take all of these locations, take that risk and we succeeded. And that really helped us propel our growth because we opened like, I think it was 20 locations. I mean, I think most of my staff wanted to pull their hair out and they were really angry at me at the time because I was like, no, we can do it. But I do have a couple of those disruptors on my team as well that all they have to say is like, let’s go. And, you know, they say, oh yeah, we can do it all at the same day, sure, we can do it.

Anthony Codispoti : So I want to hear about how you got through sort of the personal and the emotional component of this. Long divorce, you’ve got kids not taking a salary. You’ve jumped into a company that, you know, jumped in to take over the reins at a company that is losing money and you’re committed to paying your partner, your ex-husband, regardless of what happens, you know, going forward. Like where did you get emotional and mental support through all of this?

Sonya Locke. : To surrounding myself with the right people, I would say. I would say one like attracts like. I’d say my HR director, who’s also kind of my friend. She was with me through both sides. She was on the Audi side. I tricked her into coming to the EDS side. But, you know, like I said, somebody that was there that supported you, that also listened and talked, that was important. Surrounding yourself with people that have the same mindset and that support system.

You know, it does take a village a lot of times. And I think that’s one of them. And then I think also too, it was coming to a realization and it comes to my favorite quote, which I know that was one of yours later is that, I never lose, I either win or learn. There’s something I know I’m gonna learn from that experience. And I also know I survived. I survived and I always am gonna survive. So it might have some difficult time periods, but I know that I will survive. And that’s really about just being happy with the journey and figuring out what challenges can I overcome? What problems can we overcome? And how do we lead it there? And, you know, trying to ride other people along with you. Because if you have a team of you working to that same thing, that does help.

So I would say, like I said, personally, I grew a lot. And a lot of my people that work for me are also my friends. I travel with them. I do things with them because we did go through the trenches together, I would say. So I think there’s a lot of lessons on that. And like I said, just looking at life, there is a journey.

And, you know, what is it? You can either cry in the rain or wait, cry in the storm or dance in the rain is what you choose to do with it. So I think just having that outlook and yesterday was one day and tomorrow is another. I like that.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, there’s something to be said. You know, you and many of your team members went through kind of a real life hazing together. Oh, yes. And there’s something about going through those hardships and coming out together that can just bring you together in a stronger way.

Sonya Locke. : And I will say COVID was the other huge challenge. We knew it was going to be bad. I had lived through 9-11 working in the travel industry. So I knew about some, but COVID was a whole different ball game because at that point we had like about 4,000 employees because there are RW2 employees. And we had a 95% drop overnight.

And 95% drop. And like I said, we’re still contracted with all these places. We are running these departments.

It’s not like we could just say, OK, we’re going to take a vacation for a while and come back. We were essential workers. And that was a very trying time for all of our leadership team. I think we worked longer and harder for nothing than we ever had. I mean, we were working at least 80 hours a week. So we were having phone calls every morning and afternoon discussing every city, every employee. Because one, we knew we had to save our management team. We had to support our clients. We were having to kind of create safety programs. Like there was nothing for it. I mean, you know, they didn’t have sanitizer. I mean, like you couldn’t go to the airport.

I mean, we were getting zipped like the pallet jacks delivered to my HR director’s house to try to protect our employees. I mean, we had a lot of different focus. And I think that was another great thing for our team. And where we were so strong is being resourceful.

And it was being innovative and understanding what our focuses were at that time. And counting down my burn rate, right? Like, OK, how long are we going to survive with a 95% revenue drop? And an amazing thing happened from that was we ended up growing during that.

Like, yes. Because with one of our clients, actually, we had several clients with bankrupt. But it was one of our clients because of our partnership with them. And because we did maintain our service and we were, like I said, we were really there. We ended up gaining additional locations because we became their essential supplier.

Anthony Codispoti : So coming out of COVID as things started to open back up, that’s when you guys saw the growth.

Sonya Locke. : Yeah. So between 20 and 22, I think we experienced 1189% growth, which was also very much kind of the rip lash effect. Right.

Anthony Codispoti : Like this. And then back up.

Sonya Locke. : Impressive. But I think that’s where you gain from different perspectives and everybody learning to be innovative and coming out with some ideas and working together as a team and communicating and being transparent.

Anthony Codispoti : I want to talk about something else impressive. Your 2023 EY entrepreneur of the year Southeast Award, how did that come about?

Sonya Locke. : That was also, I still don’t know exactly because that was at the time when you couldn’t find my website. And when I worked for Aldi, it was so hush-hush when we were in the pilot phase that my LinkedIn actually said anonymous. Top secret.

I mean, I have my name, but it says company was anonymous. I mean, we’ve always been behind the scenes and very comfortable with that. So, but I got nominated and then got brought into the program, went through all the interview things. And I will tell you, it is the most rewarding and most humbling program I’ve ever been a part of because it’s not about numbers necessarily.

It’s about, you know, what’s your entrepreneurial spirit? Have you overcome adversity? How have you done that?

And how have you improved? What is your purpose? How do you lead with purpose? What impact do you make? What impact do you make on your community, on your company, on your employees? What impact do you really make?

And innovation. And actually really interesting is this year I’m a judge with a program. And I was up until about three o’clock last night.

I’m probably not the most efficient judge because I have read everything and I’m just like so inspired by these companies that I was like, everyone open my read up. And I’m like, oh my God, I love that. And just really digging into it. But it’s a great program because it really remords more than just, you know, how’d you do, what’s your growth and stuff like that. But really what is it that you, what is the longstanding value that you can provide? And that’s a hard thing to do. How can you lead a team, right? And make and have true purpose that you can participate in. And articulate and motivate others around you to believe and to follow, right?

Anthony Codispoti : What’s a book or podcast, maybe a course that you’ve taken that was particularly helpful for you that you’d recommend to others Sonia?

Sonya Locke. : Oh gosh, there’s so many. And I’m now struggle to read, but actually at my last leadership conference, I bought 20 different books. And laid them all out on the table and said everybody, you know, here is, you know, grab them. And it was everything from, you know, good to great, which was a great book that I still love teaching based on because it talks a lot about the right seat on the bus.

And valuing that to everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten. You know, there’s a lot of new ones and old ones, you know, a lot about, so I’m not sure if I could say one. I really, I am a, I am always thirsty, you know, thirsty for more knowledge and stuff. And AI has been a complete game changer in that respect. For sure with their deep research, although their deep research is writing me like encyclopedias as I get like.

Anthony Codispoti : So how are you using it? How is it helpful to you? A lot of it is as a thought leader. And actually that was one thing I did have. And I would say it was a game changer at the EY summit, which is an inspiring summit to go to, like the leaders that come in, the thought panels, the networking. It’s always inspires me and I learned so much from them. But the president of Consera had a course on generative AI for the CEO.

And I believe they have a Consera course online as well with it. And it talks about using generate AI as a thought leader to bounce ideas back on to imperfect to, to, you really have to know how to prompt. But one of the questions that he had us ask, or he challenged us with, and it was really scary, is just go to chat GPT if that’s what you use and say, who am I?

Nothing more. And see if it actually answers somewhat correctly about you as a person, not just your online profile, which it was scary. It had it all down to my work like balance needs

Anthony Codispoti : and what had you fed it up to that point?

Sonya Locke. : Oh, a lot. I talked to it a lot.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay. There’s a lot of dialogue, a lot of asking questions. And yep. Okay.

Sonya Locke. : So and then how can I be more successful? And it gave me a 15 point thing in terms of both business and personal on how I could personally grow and be more successful.

It was really, that was really kind of, I would say something inspiring as far as that’s concerned. And, and that’s where I do use it more. And it takes me, I’m not quick with AI. I don’t like say, Hey, write this for me. I’ll go back and forth. I apologize to it all the time. Well, say, no, I’m sorry. I did not mean that. I’d like that.

Anthony Codispoti : But it’s good to always practice your manners. Yeah.

Sonya Locke. : Yes, exactly. But, um, no, there’s just so much, um, you know, and on podcast, you know, I’ve learned a lot from a lot of different podcasts, you know, just listening to different inspirations and different nuggets. Um, I think it’s just very powerful. And, you know, um, so I don’t know if I could say one. I’m sorry.

Anthony Codispoti : I think it was a great answer. And I think you just gave certainly myself, I’m sure a lot of our listeners to an idea of the next thing that they’re going to type into chat GPT. I think that could be.

Sonya Locke. : I heard so many people do that and they freak out. There was a thing. If you use it a lot, you’re like, whoa.

Anthony Codispoti : I had, um, a couple of friends a while back who were like, Oh, type this prompt in. Uh, it was basically like asking the, the large language model to, uh, construct a picture of how it views myself and, and what I do. Uh, and it was, it was a little.

Creepy slash eerie. Um, and it did a pretty good job, you know, based on the dialogues that we’ve, we’ve had. And so now I’m really curious to, to feed in your questions there. Who am I and how can I be more successful on it? I think that would be lightning.

Sonya Locke. : I bet you’ll get some really interesting response and it will be a little creepy. Yes.

Anthony Codispoti : Uh, like staring into my soul kind of a thing. Uh, Sonia, I just have one more question for you. Before I ask it, I want to do two things. Uh, first of all, I’m going to invite all our listeners to hit the follow button on their favorite podcast app. So you can continue to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with Sonia Locke, the CEO of EDS service solutions.

I also want to let people know either the best way to get in touch with you directly or to follow your story or that of EDS. What would that be?

Sonya Locke. : Well, I have a couple of different things. Um, first of all, I actually am starting a passion project of mine and I’m launching my own podcast. Um, first episode airs Monday.

Anthony Codispoti : Oh, terrific. What’s the name? Spark Spark sessions with Sonia Locke. It’s a series of fireside chats with different women leaders or, um, you know, inspirational motivators talking about a lot of different, like my first episode is based on generational differences. And I have three women from Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z talking about the different motivations, the different aspects of purpose within each one of them and how working with a multi, you know, generational workforce. Cause today there’s six generations in the workforce, which has never happened in history, which is fascinating to me. I mean, it’s just, so a lot of different topics like that that impact women. Um, it’s not like a business type podcast exactly, but it really is. I look at different inspirational leaders and we have a fireside chat and kind of discuss, you know, um, topics of relevance and hopefully passing on inspiration to the next generation.

Um, also you can go to edsserviceolutions.com or my LinkedIn or our company’s LinkedIn for edsserviceolutions.com. We are much better with that. And actually you’ve got a lot of thought articles like that’s one of the things that we’ve really been honing in on is like talking about topics and research and, you know, things that are important to the industries that we serve to our community at whole or to the workforce and, and really inspiring on that. So, um, the podcast Spark Sessions, uh, is it going to have its own website? Can people find it on spot? Like how do people access that when it comes out? By the time this podcast goes live, you will have already published your first episode.

Sonya Locke. : Um, it does have its own website, which I believe is called sparksessions.com. Or you can follow it from my website, SoniaLock.com. And, um, it will also be on Apple and Spotify. Great.

Anthony Codispoti : And we’ll make sure that we Spark sessions with Sonia Lock. Like I said, we launch it next week. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : But okay, we’ll make sure we find the links and we include them.

Sonya Locke. : And obviously on LinkedIn, edserviceolutions.com.

Anthony Codispoti : We can keep up to date with all of that. Gotcha. Okay. So last question as you look to the future, Sonia. What are the changes in your business that you’re most excited about here in the next two to three years?

Sonya Locke. : Well, I think, um, you know, I’ve had a lot of conversation. I get called with robo calls and AI for recruiting, which I can give you. That’s too long a conversation for me to tell you why that does not work. Um, there is a place for AI, but it’s not in the people business. So I think, you know, you’re seeing a big change in the workforce. Um, it’s, it’s much more of a conversation. It’s not, um, it’s not the traditional path. And you’re seeing a lot of people trying to grasp that.

Like, well, how does, how do I get people to work? You know, we’ve had the great resignation. We’ve had, um, you know, the changes since COVID and everything like that. People do want to work, but they want purpose. And there’s a mix between how do employers really match with employees and understanding that it is a, it is a two way streak right now.

It’s not a one side fits all. And I think that you’re going to see more of that kind of personalization as everyone is navigating coming back to the office, right? You know, um, where some companies are just like, you’re coming back to the office and forget about it, you know, and hoping people resign. And I think you’re going to see some pushback with that. They’re going to have to try to keep up with to make their brand successful. It requires people to believe in your brand that work for you. And then they’re fulfilling that. And I think that you’re going to see much more of a push towards, I would call it customer service, right? We are getting more like when we travel, right? What makes a memorable experience? I would say to me about 90% of the time is a service I get from a place, right?

If I’m in a beautiful place and I have horrible service or it’s just a horrible experience, it kind of takes my view. And so I think with businesses, they need to distinguish themselves. And with doing that, they need to also refocus on what is their workforce?

How can they work and navigate with hybrid work, gig economy, different types of things to make it work to look for the value of the person and not just fitting a mold. So I think you will see a lot of changes with that. There’s a lot going on politically, obviously, which is really making everybody all fired up. I think you’ll see a rebalance of that. I think that the private sector will make it because they’re going to need to distinguish themselves.

Anthony Codispoti : Great stop. Sonia Locke, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Sonya Locke. : Well, thank you, Anthony. You were great. And I really look forward to listening to some of your other podcasts.

Anthony Codispoti : Thank you. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.