Organization & Operations Team

Frankie Shannon

Frankie brings over 20 years of retail experience to The Insight Companies. As an accomplished business leader with a strong background in sales and operations, Frankie is an indispensible source for business knowledge regarding strategic sales growth, operations efficiency and effectiveness, performance management, strategy execution, customer experience, enterprise cost reduction, merchandising, purchasing, and inventory shrink reduction. During his career, Frankie has held key leadership roles at some of the nation’s leading retailers, including Sears, Radio Shack, Gander Mountain, Kohl’s and Montgomery Ward. During his time at these prominent organizations, Frankie’s roles have included being the National Director of Sales/Stores, VP of Operations, VP of Merchandising, and the Regional Director of Stores.

In his roles, Frankie launched major new business initiatives on a national level, introducing new products and services to millions of consumers and creating new sales and revenue streams for his organizations. He was also involved in the drastic expansion of these retailers. Under his leadership, over 500 new store openings were held nationwide—making him a true pioneer of retail growth.

Frankie brings tremendous value to the operational processes and workflow it takes to operate efficient, profitable retail leaders. At some of the nation’s leading retailers, Frankie was instrumental in the development of cross-functional, time saving, technology-based solutions that increased productivity and decreased costly resources. He also built new sales, support and technical service organizations and developed the infrastructure needed to support such efforts. Frankie also led major sales improvement training initiatives during his career, helping America’s best retailers provide more value to their customers.

Frankie’s ability to help organizations align their high-level strategic initiatives into simple and easy-to-understood goals makes him a powerful addition to any team. His ability to help businesses foster strong relationships, both inside and outside of the organization, has resulted in greater consumer and stakeholder satisfaction.

Frankie began his career in various store leadership positions where he learned the core basics of customer service, business management and organizational leadership. Having grown up in and around family businesses, Frankie understands the challenges, decisions, and balancing acts that business owners must face daily.

When Frankie isn’t driving the operational functions of the nation’s biggest retailers, he can be found spending time with his family. An avid sportsman, he also enjoys fishing, hunting and taking in the great outdoors.

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Richard Atherton

Mr. Atherton is President of Atherton Retail Consulting, LLC, a retail advisory and concept development company. Atherton Retail Consulting works with clients in all phases of retail including concept and business development, financing and raising capital, real estate and construction management, lease negotiations and marketing/merchandising.

Mr. Atherton is an investor and on the Board of Directors of Hot Mama Inc., a fast growing 17 store specialty retailer of women’s clothing for upscale moms. He is also an investor and Chairman of the Board for a new start-up in men’s fashion, Hammer Made, a designer line of shirting and accessories that compares in fabrics and quality with the highest end of men’s shirting fashion but at a value based price. Mr. Atherton is also an active member of Twin cities Angels, an angel investing group located in the Twin Cities area. He is on the screening and serves on due-diligence teams evaluating companies for investment.

Prior to consulting and investing Mr. Atherton co-founded and was a Principal and CFO of Chico’s of Minnesota, a franchised operation of Chico’s FAS, a 1000 store, $1.7billion national women’s clothing company . After building out the state of Minnesota to twelve stores doing $18 million in sales, Mr. Atherton, as lead for the owners negotiated a strategic sale in 2007 back to the parent corporation.

Prior to joining Chico’s fulltime as CFO in 2002, Mr. Atherton ran the sales and distribution arm for Steelcase Inc.’s Midwest area, a $130 Million division overseeing a franchised dealership network in the contract furniture industry. Before Mr Atherton held several management positions at Ford Motor Co., most notably as Dealer Development Manager responsible for overseeing the buy-sell and Dealer restructuring process of the franchised auto dealerships in the upper Midwest.

Mr. Atherton brings over 30 years of entrepreneurial and corporate franchise management expertise to the retail and franchise market. He holds a degree in Business Administration from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

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Wendy Nemitz

Wendy Nemitz is the founding principal of Ingenuity Marketing Group LLC; a firm focused on helping professional service providers grow thriving practices and create strong firms. Since 1992,

"Expect compelling ideas and intuitive leaps based on 20 years of industry experience to help develop strategic vision and clear communication."

Ingenuity Marketing has been helping CPAs, attorneys, financial service professionals, engineers, bankers, consultants and other professionals grow their businesses through:

• Facilitating firm-wide and leadership retreats and developing mission, vision and strategic plans and comprehensive marketing plans.
• Researching opportunities and recommending new lines of service and niche markets.
• Creating and implementing marketing and sales tactics that showcase our clients’ expertise, including fresh brands, websites, collateral materials and PR.
• Training and coaching professional service providers in practice / business development, leadership, effectiveness and sales skills.

Wendy has worked in sales and service marketing since 1984. In 1987, she was the first marketing professional at Olsen Thielen, a large CPA firm in Minnesota. She went on to be the Director of Marketing for Rasmussen Colleges, Minnesota’s largest and oldest private two-year college system, before founding Ingenuity Marketing.

Wendy has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications from the College of St. Catherine in Saint Paul and a Master of Arts in Leadership from Augsburg College in Minneapolis. She serves as a board member for the West Side Safe, West Side Citizens Council and the Society for Marketing Professional Services.

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B. Scott Binion, MBA, CPA

Scott is an accomplished business strategist. He focuses on key business drivers and the strategic alignment of corporate planning, business processes, operations improvement, revenue and margin enhancement, and empowering people.

His diverse range of expertise includes accounting, management consulting, advisory services, tax planning, federal and state compliance, growth expansion and consultation relating to business start-up and capital financing. His grasp of the interrelation of business disciplines creates value for clients throughout their entire operation.

Scott is a member of the Minnesota Society of Certified Public Accountants, and holds a Masters of Business Administration degree.

For the last several years Scott has been instrumental in the business development of a variety of companies across several different industries. Below is a listing of examples of how Scott has helped organizations accomplish various objectives:

• Raise capital to fund business expansion and growth
• Negotiate favorable credit terms for small to medium sized businesses
• Become a trusted business advisor for companies experiencing transition – whether from business decline or stagnation
• Be a liaison between lending institutions and troubled companies
• Provide mentoring and/or coaching services to new up and coming business leaders
• Create processes and systems to aid in business development, corporate planning, and profit maximization
• And the list goes on…….

Each company or business today will face both generic or complex pressures, but in certain cases, those pressures can be more challenging to identify let alone to find appropriate solutions. Scott brings to each engagement an ability to co-strategize with each key influencer in determining how to make the best decisions possible. In some instances, the best decision is to leave things as they are – other times a whole new business model needs to be implemented.

Seeing things from a different perspective is what separates us from other consulting organizations. Scott has often said “Business owners usually make the easier wrong decisions, instead of the harder right decisions. In my experience here lies the difference between becoming a success or falling back in the ordinary.”

Scott has consulted with companies that need only a listening ear throughout the year. Other clients need more active engagement and participation. In each partnership, active or proactive planning in all business areas takes place – some in a more formal fashion, other instances in a theoretical format. One of the underestimated and often overlooked deterrents to success is that you actually achieve your goals or objectives. This may sound counter-intuitive, but Scott can help you look at the premise or basis on which the objectives were set. Scott has said “What if you actually achieve your goal – what then? Have you actually arrived or not? What if your goals were under what you should have done! That’s where Insight Cos. takes the initiative!”

Scott’s expertise is quite expansive as it relates to business development, accounting and tax planning, and process improvement. There are a lot of very well qualified consultants that can provide quality services, but few have actually been where the small business owner lives.

“Being a former construction business owner, and having personally experienced all of the normal day-to-day pressures, the last person you want on your team is someone who sits in a office and has never known what it’s like to actually have owned a real business. I’m a CPA, business consultant, and an advocate to partner with you to help your company grow.”

“ We should be your next logical choice– to see you where you want to be.”