Bob Vitamante is a Santa Barbara business consultant who is also a volunteer mentor with SCORE, the SBA resource dedicated to helping small businesses through free mentoring, workshops and online tools. Bob is SCORE’s past Santa Barbara chapter Chairman, he’s very familiar with the local business landscape. He has solid advice to share with any budding entrepreneur or business leader. Bob is a consultant and coach who is passionate about helping clients solve challenges in sales, staffing, and finance by fully aligning communications, systems, and people. Bob earned deep business perspectives through a career that has included roles as executive officer, CFO and President for private and publicly traded businesses such as Select Temporaries, Pinkerton’s, Olsten Personnel Services, and Columbia Pictures, and as a CPA. Through those roles and the many companies he helped acquire, he formed a ‘ground floor’ understanding of how businesses operate, the challenges they face, and the many ways to succeed. Philosophically, Bob sees the business world as a critical channel for most people to develop personally and as a community. Bob is considered an industry expert in business services, staffing, HR and entertainment, multi-office growth and acquisitions. His personal talent is his ability to quickly evaluate operations and the financial results to resolve obstacles and increase the bottom line. Second guest, Kelly Bridges, provides commercial voiceover and writing services for TV, radio and websites. Kelly began in the broadcasting in the 80s as an intern at KSFO in San Francisco while majoring in Broadcasting Arts at the College of San Mateo, home of NPR TV/Radio KCSM. Kelly worked as the #1 Airborne Traffic Reporter by Metro Networks, a traffic reporting service for dozens of radio and TV stations throughout the Bay Area. In 1988, Metro moved Kelly to Seattle to open the market and become the afternoon studio anchor. A year later, she auditioned and was hired as an afternoon air personality for the top radio station in Seattle, KUBE 93. While at KUBE, Kelly honed her skills in production and as a voice talent. She was among the very first to produce commercials on digital multitrack computer audio editors in 1991.