Welcome to the Adaptive Mindset. I'm Brett Gallant, cybersecurity thought leader and founder of Adaptive Office Solutions. Here, we don't just talk tech, we unlock the strategies, stories, and mindset shifts you need to stay secure, lead boldly, and thrive in a digital world. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Adaptive Mindset. I'm very happy to have with me today my guest Angelo Ponzi. He's a fractional CMO with more than 30 years of battle-tested marketing and business strategy experience. He's built and sold two companies, worked with global brands like AT&T, KettleOne, and Purina. And he now helps $5 million to$75 million companies create marketing blueprints that actually drive revenue. Angelo isn't here to sell you on shiny campaigns. He's here to challenge you how you think about growth. If you're a founder stuck in the weeds or scaling a business without a strategic marketing foundation, you need to hear this. So welcome, Angelo. Yeah, thank you, Brett I'm happy to be here. I appreciate the opportunity. I want to dig into your origin story for a moment and I want to ask you, what's the Well, it wasn't something I just pulled out of thin air. I'll give you the history. I started from New York, originally moved to California. My first job was in an advertising agency. And, you know, right away they had me started looking at data because I had some research in my background. Of course, you're coming out of school, there's schoolwork, and then there's the reality of what happens in business. So for the next two or three years, I moved agencies and each agency from a small agency to a little bit bigger agency. And then my third agency was actually at the time the 16th largest in the world. And so there I really got focused on planning and understanding the value of it and putting plans together and using research to gather the data to support whatever we were recommending. I was told earlier on, I can't draw a straight line with a ruler. And the creative side was not necessarily someplace I wanted to go. But I like that kind of analytical side. It's It can be objective, not subjective, like I see a lot of times in creative solutions, right? I like blue, you like red, and it makes no sense because the customer is like something completely different. So that really led me down that path. Somewhere along the way, I went client side. So then I went client side for several years, and then I went back to an agency. And then I decided that, you know, I wanted to be my, it was actually my second entrepreneurial venture. My first happened when I was very young, in and out in eight months. It started off great, blew up, tanked, crashed and burned, but it was a great learning experience. So I decided that I was going to be, in doing my research, a lot of my competitors that the agencies did not have a me. They did not have a planner. They did not have a research person. So they were very creative focused. So I went and I pitched a bunch of my competitors and I ended up actually working over the next five years for about 12 different agencies as their strategic planner researcher. I didn't do, you know, wasn't calling on clients per se. I mean, I presented to them, but basically I became the guy that helped put the strategies together. Then at some point in time, I decided to do my own agency. And that allowed me to kind of take that full service agency work. But a couple of interesting things happened along the way. We're doing marketing and advertising for one of my clients. They actually brought me in, in those days we called it contract work or outsourcing. And they brought me in as a outsource VP of marketing. So before they started calling it fractional, I was doing that job earlier on. And that happened a few times over the course of that agency, and then eventually I sold it. The people that bought me put me together with a creative team, and we became a new agency that lasted about eight years. In the meantime, I also had a research company in the action sports industry. And so we're using that not only to do research, but we're also leveraging that for clients. Anyway, long story short, I went back to the client side for a while, wanted to get a little more experience. And that after about four, I think almost three and a half years, I was there. And then they got purchased. I saw that the new management was going in a different direction. And that's when I said, I'm going to go back and just work for myself. So this is 11 and a half years now as a fractional. Wow, awesome. Did you, in all of this, did you have a defining moment when you realized marketing without Yeah, actually, it was You know, a lot of times trying to sell a client on research, you know, it's too expensive, it takes too much time. You know, like my salespeople, they're telling me what's going on. I've been in the industry for 20 years, I know everything. So, I mean, we're always facing and bumping into that. And some of the more adventurous, especially during that time when I was working with a lot of agencies as a researcher and working on plans, That was something that really allowed us to dig into the data, and that was part of the package. But I would say, in my action sports days, actually the whole thing was nothing about research. And I remember that I worked for a retail company as an outsource researcher for about nine years. I saw the power of the data. I saw that there was no data in the market. So I launched my own company. And I remember the first time I went to a trade show, the largest trade show in action sports, and they promoted me. They had never done a webinar or seminar before. And I had about 300 people sitting there, but they were mean looking because they were convinced, how could this guy come and tell us how to run our surf company or a snowboard company or skateboard company? And so that was some big hurdles. But during that 13 years, what it really showed me and them that it didn't really matter. how I grew up in a sense of not doing those activities, that the power of data could change everything. I remember somewhere along the way, we got into retail and I didn't wanna do forecasting and then I kinda got pushed in that and actually pushed in that by Nike. Nike wanted to know how big the market was, those kinds of things. So now we started doing forecasting. But there was a period of time where I was getting some feedback from companies saying that things are slow, things are slowing down. I started doing some demographic analysis, and what we found is there was going to be, for at least three or four years, a dip in the number of kids coming into those markets. And I remember a lot of people blowing me off saying, yeah, hey, Numbers don't lie. And then I got those phone calls going, oh, my god, you were right. We should have listened to you. And so during that time, I think it really just sunk in that while I was doing this, and it was always sometimes hard to convince people, it became a mainstay. We became the de facto standard in the industry. I mean, everybody, Nike and Reebok, as well as the you know, the D.C. Shoes and the Etnies and the Billabongs. I mean, all these people bought our data. But more than just buying the data, a lot of them we got to consult and really dig in and help interpret and lay strategies. So it was during that time more so than, say, the advertising business. But then when I left the ad agency and then sold those two companies, I went client side again. And there was an opportunity. And the reason I went there was because it was evidence-based research. And so they never talked to customers. They never talked to consumers. It was all based on this methodology of deconstruction and reconstruction and this codifying that they did. And they'd been doing it for 30 years. It was mind-blowing to me. And that's why I went there, because it was really interesting. And that, and just some of the other research that we did, that got me exposure to, and why I worked with international brands before it got me involved in some really bigger brands, saw the power of understanding how your consumers react to your advertising, and which ones are gonna work and which ones are not gonna work. And again, all based on, is it working with the strategy that was developed? And so again, now the pieces are all coming together. So when I started this, I had a choice. I could become an ad agency again or a digital marketing firm and be one of a gazillion of them. or I could do what I really love and really focus on helping businesses understand the power of research and And because we were talking briefly before the show began, you really want to help people understand the importance of strategy. And my observation, just from looking at it through my lens, A lot of people are approaching their marketing tactically and not looking at the overall strategy. You must run into this Actually, all the time. I get phone calls, hey, I need a new website or I need a new social media campaign. And so we get into conversations and I try to explain the way I work. And if I took that job on, I'm just reiterating, regurgitating what they're already doing, or somebody's telling me, we sit in the boardroom, right? And they just tell me what they think. And my attitude a lot of times, and I do say this, and I do say it respectively, I don't care what you think. Because at the end of the day, it's not what you did yesterday, it's what we're gonna do tomorrow. And if all you're telling me, and frankly, why am I here? Because you've got a problem. and if everything was working the way you are saying it's working, then you don't need a me, but it's not, that's why I'm here. And so we need to take a different look at it. This happened actually a couple of months ago with a industrial client and they came and said, you know, we're referred in, we need a website, we need some website fix. I said, okay, I don't just do that, I need to do this and nice, but I'll talk to them. And I was surprised, it's a pretty large company with the CEO came on. And I started explaining that, you know, I won't just take it on, I'm happy to make recommendations, but here's how I work, let me explain it. And he said, yeah, let me help. Make sure you're aligned, yeah. Right, and then at the end he went, I want that, I agree with you. If I just tell you what I need, it's not any different than we're doing now. And they went through the process. Actually, the updated pages that we worked on went up yesterday, but it took two and a half, three months to work through the data, talk to their customers, dissect their competition, talk to their, look at their messaging and positioning and a lot of What a lot of companies do, they focus on company centric, right? We've been in business for 75 years or 40 years, whatever it happens to be. And my attitude is that's a good reason to believe you have done something right. However, that's Same thing, they wanted to work on their messaging and they thought they had some revenue problems and things like that, I was referred in. So when I went to talk to the customers, they're like, they love us, you don't need to talk to us, talk to them. And I said, well, you know, this is my process, I'd really like to do it. And so they acquiesced and said, yes. So they were a large HVAC rep organization. So big stuff like, you know, at airports. And so I talked to their customers and they were right. They were loved. However, most of their engineers that really supported their business all these years were getting ready to retire. And the new generation of engineers actually didn't like them very much, because they didn't offer any environmentally friendly products. And their competitors were also offering package deals. They were not. So they had two strategic issues that basically were gonna cause an issue that, so they might go another three or four years, these engineers retire, because they used to say, oh, the young guys will talk to the old guys. Well, the old guys weren't gonna be there anymore. So that alone, you know, shine some light on their strategic issues that they needed to deal with. And as if you do nothing else, you need to bring a new equipment and you need to think about these package deals. And you need to do things to get these younger folks, 30 to 50, to start to understand you and why you're offering a Right there is the importance of strategy. Looking at the market and understanding what's coming ahead. Yeah, exactly. I tell folks all the time for your listeners, a competitive analysis doesn't happen once a year for your annual strategic meeting that most companies even don't have. It needs to be ongoing. This stuff that we're talking about needs to be ongoing because things change, the market changes. I remember driving to a presentation one day and I heard that interest rates went up. So I got to the presentation and I said, how many of you people have lines of credit and those kinds of things? And most of the people raised their hand. I said, by the way, your cost of doing business just went up today. You're sitting in this meeting. You have no idea that it was just announced. Interest rates went up. So your cost of goods and everything else is going to change. And that's what keeping your finger on the pulse of the market or politics, all these things have influences on business. And you just can't not ignore it. You have to be constantly looking It's not just the market, it's the people coming up, like you said about those engineers that was changing that whole relationship with that company, significant change. Cause the old way of doing business was changing right before their eyes within three to five years or less. It changed significantly. Wow. Yeah. Exactly. And, and, and so, you know, we see this all the time, you know, it's like, Hey, we're a$20 million company. We've been around for 40 years and, but we want to be 50 and three. And it's like, so, so it took you 20 years to get here. and now you wanna double two and a half times your revenues in three years. What are we gonna do differently? Why do you think that can happen? How big is your market? I've actually worked with a 41-year-old company a couple of years ago, and one of their requests was, we don't know how big our market is. And why I didn't say anything is scratching my head. It's like, how do you not know what your possibilities are? How do you know what your market Yeah. And I think in a lot of cases, small, medium and business that you work with, there's an awful lot that don't actually spend the time strategically working on that with a partner like you. Yeah, I come across you. Yeah, well, no, but I see it a lot. I see it a lot in just from an outside or looking in what I'm doing. We do cybersecurity for a number of organizations and surprising what I see from different shifts in the different clients that There are certain trends and strategies that a large number of them are not implementing, even from strategy to being prepared for the new changes that are coming. You know, the big elephant in the room is leveraging AI. Some are not, some are, some are scared. And some that I know have had an opportunity to work with somebody like yourself and haven't engaged in it yet. So that leads me to ask you this question. What mindset blocks are you commonly seeing in Well, I think right now there's a huge uncertainty. I mean, I think we're fortunate because some of the folks that were coming to us and dealing with it recognize that uncertainty and want to kind of get ahead of the game. But there's a whole lot that are not. And AI, and to your point, AI is creating a lot of confusion. You know, chat, yes, chat GPT is AI, but it's not gonna solve all your problems. And people don't understand that I just did a short survey for a group of trusted advisors. And one of the things we asked is, how many of your customers have implemented AI tools? Only 6%. And then I said, out of the rest of you, how many do you know that your customers have something going on right now? And it was only added in maybe another 15%. So that was a huge number of folks that have no idea. And then when we asked them about themselves, it came back to, well, we're a large insurance organization. We can't do this. We're a bank. We can't do that. And we don't know what our, and it's just all over the place. And I've been fortunate for the last, since last August, working with some AI companies. And one of the ones that I worked with developed a pretty interesting platform, ultimately way ahead, agentic AI, autonomous, agent And so, but he's way ahead of the game. People don't, they can't think that far ahead. They're worrying about how do I get an application? And so all the market data tells me it's application driven. And so when I consult with people, it's like, you wanna build something? It has to be driven off an application that solves a problem. Oh, geez, just like marketing and sales do, right? We're solving problems. We're not building, we're not worrying about technology. It's that old saying for me anyway, don't tell me how you built the watch, just tell me what time it is. And so they don't want to know all the ins and outs. They don't want to know all this detail. They're expecting you to do it. We're talking to a group right now at the end of the day. They love the solution. And then we say, and we can train you to take it over. And they go, we don't want to touch that. We want you guys, not me, but the group I'm working with to still handle that because we're not those folks. We're the implementers. We're the guys solving the problems. And that's what all we really want to do. So AI is having a huge impact on what's going on. I think it's just that uncertainty of where do we go? How do we get more business? I've got a client, sells through dealers. They got 2,800 dealers on their list and maybe 600, 700 of them are active. Strategically then, how do I get the rest of them? going? Why How do we get into that? I worked with a home compostable straw company a few years ago for about three years because all the plastic bands But one of the things that we did is I mapped out all the states and state, county, city bands. Because like in California, there was a state band, county bands, and city bands, and they were all written slightly different. And so we had a large fast food chain come to us and say, we want to buy your compostable straw, but we want it to go in every market that we're in. And we couldn't solve the problem because all the rules and regulations were written differently. Now, they could have bought it, not worked, then we would have had an issue, we might have tooled up for them, because they were pretty big, and then it didn't work. We mapped all that out. We mapped out where all the leads were coming from. We noticed, for example, from a strategy standpoint, we were getting a lot of inquiries from Texas and Georgia, but they didn't have any bands. So in digging, those were the largest, a lot of headquarters for fast food chains, fast casual, casual, and convenience stores. So that's where the corporate headquarters were, but they were having to deal with how do I buy a straw that would work in Texas, but it won't work in California or Arizona because of the bans, right? So we could have just sent out salespeople knocking on doors and we would have been wasting a lot of time, but now we're able to strategically zero in. And one little nugget I think that was really interesting is I would have thought the adoption in restaurants, especially fast food would have been a no-brainer. It was actually very difficult. There was a mindset. They all had their sustainability, but straws ended up at the bottom of the list. Also, there was this attitude as, hey, I go to McDonald's, I get my burger, my fries, my drink, I eat it there, I walk out the door, I throw it in the garbage. Convenience stores, however, had a different attitude. It was like, yeah, you drive in, you get your gas, you walk in, you get your slurpee, you walk out the door, you get back in your car and you drive away, and potentially you're gonna throw that straw and that cup out the window. And so they had a different mindset about compostability because they didn't wanna see all their stuff laying out the side of the road. So Incredible. And we've seen that change just in that niche so quickly, no one really seen it coming. And that's where it was important to do the research to find out what worked in what region, what city, for what client. When a founder is too close to their brand, how do you guide them towards Well, part of it is having honest conversations is to get them to understand. And yes, you grew your business and yes, things are going well, but but that next level is do we truly understand why your customers buy? And are they buying all from you? I always ask a simple question to them, to the client, and to their customers when I talk to them. Do you know all the products and services that XYZ Company sells? Guaranteed, the answer is no. So right away, is there an opportunity to upsell? across all opportunities, because now we're educating them a little bit more. So when trying just to be honest and pose these questions, I usually, when I sit with somebody, I take them through a lot of questions to try to understand what they're doing, what they're not doing, where the opportunities are, and then in turn, put it back on them. Does it work every time? Absolutely not, because founders and Sometimes we as founders get a little stubborn and a little pigheaded that we know what's right. Hey, I started this. We know our baby. Yeah, we know our baby. Hey, I'm at this 11 years. You can't tell me anything that I don't already know. But that's not true. Right. There's always that. There's always something new. There's always a new challenge. I mean, Who knew the recession was coming? Who knew COVID was coming? Who knew AI was coming? AI has been around a long time. People don't understand that. I mean, this is back in the 50s. It's been there. But now all of a sudden it's accessible to all Yeah, I was listening to somebody. Yeah, that's so true. It's been around for a long time, yet it's moving like a freight train. It's just like you mentioned COVID. COVID came, we were warned a little bit about it, but then it came like a freight train and it flipped our entire world upside down. And like, how do you deal with that? Like your mindset dealing with that at the time must have been incredible with Yeah, well, most of, you know, during those early days of COVID as companies were pulling back on their budgets and, you know, cause they were confused, we were all confused. I spent a lot of time writing and lecturing webinars, because we couldn't go anywhere. And trying to show that even though it was recessionary times, that it's documented that companies that continue to invest in marketing during downturns, when the downturn is over, they come out much higher, much more aware and greater market share than those that cut back. I've done quite a bit of reading and research. There's been a lot of companies, successful companies, that were born in those downturns. They did the work, they did the strategy. What does the market need? They see the need. I think you've answered this in a way, but I want you to expand on it. Why does research matter before a single ad dollar is spent? We touched on that Yeah, well, it's about understanding what motivates your customers, understanding why they buy. understanding what's important to them. Otherwise we're just, you know, we're talking. And so by having that data, now we're being more relevant and our communications are very customer centric. And therefore it's not just about, hey, look at all those whiz bang stuff I have, a client in the Christmas industry, for example. When I got there, their marketing was about, we have quality product, it's going to weather the rain and the snow and our trees are built, blah, blah, blah. It's all about quality, which is fantastic. But in doing research, we found that we were able to change the way we spoke to their customers. So think of one of the customers as a mall. So now we're going to the mall instead of saying, you should buy us instead of them because we have all these quality products. We were saying, we're gonna help you create memories for your customers. They're gonna come to take selfies and bring their kids. They're gonna come back over and over because you're creating this beautiful Christmas experience. And oh, by the way, reason to believe our products will withstand the weather and blah, blah, blah, right? So we changed how we approached it as opposed to, you know, that rational appeal, right? Here's the features and the functions. We went up, I call it laddering. We laddered up to the emotional connection. And we used that. Yeah, emotional drive. And it's sticky, right? It's hard to display somebody And that experience that you help them create, experience and emotional attachment. Yeah. You talked about the importance of constantly working on your strategy. And so I had this question written down to ask you, how do you build a marketing blueprint that doesn't collect dust? That I guess really it's just constantly working and doing the research and pivoting. Well, that becomes, I mean, that's really about the internal folks, right? A lot of engagements as a fractional, I mean, I'm there X number of hours a week or month, whatever it happens to be. In some cases, I'm on site, you know, the last several years. I mean, I had one client, I was on site three days a week. Another one was a day and a half a week. So that presence, but, that, but ultimately we are fractional and therefore we're not there all the time which makes it responsibility of someone internally. And I think that's where companies fall down when they bring in someone like myself and we build a plan or we build a strategy and then they hand it over to somebody that's got four other jobs. I'm dealing with a client right now. My marketing contact also does HR. So it's fine. And then another client that does the marketing, he's an engineer. And I feel bad because I always apologize. Sorry, I need this from you. I need you to do this, I need you to do that. And I remember earlier on when I started this, it was, I'm gonna do my work, get to the point where we have a plan. You're gonna agree and I'm gonna hand it to you and you're gonna go implement it. And then I'd get these phone calls. Hey, we've been implementing your plan for the last six months and it just doesn't seem to be working the way you laid it out. And I said, well, let me come down, let's have a chat and let me see what went wrong. What went wrong is you gave it to the kid three years out of college who decided he wanted to go something, do something completely different and you let him. No And so I found that- You have to inspect what you So yeah, exactly. So about year three, I said, okay, I'm gonna now offer management of the business of what we just did. So it doesn't execution. So it doesn't fall apart. In some cases we actually do some execution if we need to, but a lot of times I'm working with other creative and marketing teams, but I, on the glue, right? We have a plan. You're gonna stick to the plan. You're gonna stay on strategy, on budget, on time. And I'm gonna manage that. And you're accountable to me, not the junior kid or whatever. Not to disparage the junior folks, because I was there once, but- We all were. We all were, we all were. But that entrusting the team, but a lot of times I find there's just no over sunk to make sure that they're staying. And so that's why I did add to And that leads me to this question. What makes a company or organization ready or not ready Yeah, I think there's probably some confusion on how that works and what that is. So I try to explain, look it, I'm gonna sit in your C-suites with you. You're gonna tell me your secrets. I have to be just another person in the room, because if I don't understand all the details, then I can't help. So that is a prerequisite of mine. So typically we'll find revenues are trending down, could be a competitive situation, could be a turnaround. They're just upside down and they really need to deep dive on product profitability. And they're carrying a bunch of products and the reality of half of them aren't selling and they're adding no profit, but they're paying for warehousing and there's costs. So I'm a very holistic, I almost don't even like to use the word marketing, almost like a chief strategy officer, which is a role I've had, because I look at in manufacturing and I look at inventory, I wanna know, can you fulfill the orders if we get them? What's going on? How's this process? Who's saying what? One of the interesting things I find is if I'm interviewing internally, I ask, if you met a prospect, how would you present your company? I don't care if it's two people or 20 people, I get different answers. And so right off the bat, there's this internal thing that I like to look at. And so how do I get you in alignment? Because I believe that the team's not in alignment. A lot of what I'm going to do, you're still going to have the issue is nobody's going to be listening because there's a misalignment. And so really it's that process of education, helping them understand that if you're just looking for, in the advertising days, we used to call it a risk, right? If you just need somebody to go, you know, do your creative for you or, you know, punch your numbers for you, I'm not your guy. I'll give you that guy or gal, but at the end of the day, we're gonna do this together. We're gonna sit, we're gonna talk. I'm gonna be part of that team and we're gonna try to solve the problems Together, because I'm not a one-man army. I still have to rely on everybody else to participate, give me the right information, digest that information, and put it into action. Then we need to monitor it and make sure that it's doing what it's supposed to do. And if You gotta build the plan and work the plan and pivot and find the way, because things change. And like you said, you have to adjust. Can you give us a brief success story where fractional was the better path? I've used a lot of fractional work to support my organization. Is there a place where you've seen fractional work successful? I can see so many reasons why fractional would be a better path Well, a lot of times, too, a company makes a, it's like, we need someone who's at a higher level. That higher level comes with a cost. To bring someone on, like myself, at a higher rate, now you got whatever, 25% or 30% overhead, and all of a sudden, you know, it's really expensive. And so the question becomes, do you need that person full-time? Because I also hear a lot of times, depending on the type of organization, hey, I brought in the CMO and half the time, you know, he's writing copy. Well, that's not what you should be doing, right? You have to be strategic, you have to be digging in the data, you have to understand. And so I think an expectation of what that person does and how that person can influence and change. I'm not sure companies think that through a lot and they just think they need that person. And again, it comes with a big cost. And so we'll have, I need you, but I'm not sure I need you full-time and I need part of your time and I can afford that versus if I wanted to bring you on full-time, which I wouldn't do, but that stuff starts to change. Just with the way everything has changed in the last number of years, I know more and more people are looking for options. This is We have a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders that listen to the podcast. The question that I had here that I want to make sure I ask is you've built and you've sold companies and you've helped people build, sell their companies. How does That's an interesting question. It's something that I started focusing on about a year and a half ago, that was a result of a company in the MedTech space. And so when they brought me in, one of their questions, and I alluded to it earlier, but I didn't say who they were or what they did, was how big is our market? Well, it turned out to be, to make the story really short, they had a poor valuation, a bad valuation as they called it, and they were convinced that the valuators were wrong. So one of my goals was to determine their TAM, their total addressable market, their SAM, their serviceable addressable market, and then their SOM, which is the key serviceable obtainable market. That serviceable obtainable market was $7.6 billion. They weren't even close. They wouldn't have been close and they were on the one yard line on the football field. So now the question is, how do we grow? And then we looked at all the other things that were going on. Pipeline was taking too long. Lawyers took too long. They had to have people all over the world that could go do these servicing jobs. So we kind of really, again, got dissecting it into that kind of data, if you So piggybacking on that, founders, what advice would you give to founders and entrepreneurs who are two or three years away from an exit? Do Honestly, when I sold my business, my first one, I wasn't planning at all. kind of happened. And it happened over a six month period, but all of a sudden it was like one day we got a phone call and said, hey, we want to meet you guys. And next thing you know, within a week we were in negotiations. So I think if, so you asked a question, I don't think I totally answered it. So in the MNA space, right? I recognize based on that MedTech situation is like, well, If I'm buying a business or selling a business and you need to show your market how profitable you are, all these different things, or you're buying and now you wanna understand, okay, how do I put two companies together? Am I gonna cannibalizing any existing business where the profitable products or services they have versus what I have, how it's gonna impact the market? And so I realized a lot of the work that I do answered a lot of those questions. So I started, you know, really trying to work into that M&A space to work with more buy side, if you will, than sell side, but to really kind of do help with that due diligence, right? All we hear on that one side is EBITDA, EBITDA, we've got to get multiples. Well, at the end of the day, you're still buying a company. You still have to put them together. Are you going to put them under, you know, make them two separate companies, put them under, you know, the different type of brand architecture? Are you going to merge them together? What's going to happen to the people? Are people going to leave? And so I really started trying to understand all of that and really become an asset to folks that are doing that. And so I've been doing quite a bit of that in the last year. But if someone is thinking about selling, it takes time to figure out what your business is worth. I'm working with companies right now, they're having to go back into the market for another three or four years because they can't get the multiples that they want for their business. They don't wanna sell prematurely. So now it's like, okay, now we're back. What are we gonna do different? Because you already know you're not there. So we need to drive more revenue, but more importantly, we need to drive more profit. So let's look at your makeup. Are you carrying any products that might be generating revenue, but absolutely no profit? Or it's the one you started with, and you love it so much, but nobody buys it. Are you got too many people? Or how are you selling through your distribution channels? How can we expand that? How can we get you to the number you want? That's back to that We're 20 million after 30 years, and now we want to be 50 in three. How are we going to get there? How do we do that that doesn't cost a fortune? I encourage folks to say, I want to exit in three years or five years. What's my target? What would I think I need to retire? And then how do I get there? And then work backwards. So that's what I look at when someone says, I want to be 50 million in three. I ask a lot of questions, but then I say, OK, to get to 50 million, we need to deconstruct everything. We need to work backwards and figure out how we're going to get there. Is it adding new customers? Is it selling more to people that we have? Is it do you have a renewal business? I have a client that that their big orders come every three years. So what happens in year two and sometimes year three before they get to the end and they get the big orders again, how do we keep that customer engaged? How do we add stuff to sell them while we're waiting for that big order again? So there's a big ebb and flow. We know that, but we know our renewal business. We got renewal business, we'll recapture a few and A plus B equals C and you wanna be whatever $50 million sees your acquisition. Where are you gonna get that business from? And then you can fold that into your renewal. So again, just hopefully I'm not- No, no, it's incredible. And there's a number of people that are listening that a few of them I know have been talking mergers and acquisitions. So the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. From there, my website is there. We do a lot of posting, we have videos, we do a newsletter. You can subscribe to my newsletter. I have a LinkedIn newsletter, but I also have a newsletter that has more stuff in it. And we send out once or twice a month. It's all educational. Very rarely do I sell anything. I am selling something though, which is my new book, but other than that, it's all educational. On my website, I have a, it's a mini course, but free marketing course. I have eBooks on competitive intelligence and storytelling, videos, you know, those kinds of things. So website is very robust and again, educational in nature. And there you can get to my website and sign up for all sorts I want to encourage everybody to visit Angelo's website and subscribe to his newsletter and go And the book is called The Strategy Blueprint and it's on Amazon and paperback and in Kindle. And then in the book is what it is. It's a strategy, it's a blueprint for strategy. And I think the only time I talk tactics is strategy versus tactics. I mean, it's, you You know what? It's so funny. I grew up a Superman fanatic. I mean, to the point where my parents used to see me walk out with my Superman outfit underneath my clothes, and then they'd see me run down the street and then wonder where my clothes were. But I became a kind of a Batman guy over the years. So I like them both, but I like the superhero movies. I actually just saw the new Superman movie. I'll have to check that out, yeah. And so, yeah, it's, and when people ask, you know, what's your superpower? That's a question I And that's a really good superpower to have. I'm gonna wrap this up with something fun. And I'm gonna ask you five to six questions, rapid fire. I want you to answer the first thing that comes to your head, okay? All right, let's go. Ready? Okay. What's a marketing campaign you You're still a winner, okay. If your personal brand was a What's one, I love this question. I forgot Believe it or not, it's picking up my cat and showing him some love while If AI could automate one marketing task forever, what Probably a competitive analysis, I think, because it's time-consuming, especially if they have a lot of competitors. Perfect. What's more painful, a failed campaign or Oh man, those slow yeses are really, really difficult. You know, because I don't focus a lot on the creative side. I don't see that kind of change. I mean, I've been fortunate. I'm sure there's campaigns along the way that we wish we hadn't done, but I've had, in my opinion, we've had some very successful ones. But the slow yeses and the slow responses. So here's a tip for anybody who's a trusted advisor. And the sales guy told me this. I was talking to him one day and this is recent. I mean, this is like within the last three weeks. And I said, man, I got a call from this guy. He referred me into this client and no response. I mean, it's crickets. I had my meeting and they told me, we want to engage, crickets, crickets, crickets. I said, I've written letters and nothing. He said, do this, send him an email and say, are you okay? Say nothing else. And I went, so maybe something was wrong, right? And he goes, yeah, just send them that. Don't iterate anything else. And I did. Within the end of the day, I got I'm keeping that. That's a good takeaway. Last question. Who's harder to market to? Gen Z, boomers, or stubborn founders? That's stubborn founders. I knew that. I had a feeling that was gonna be the answer, Angelo. So Angelo, thank you very much for being here today. I had an incredible time. I learned a lot. I know our audience is going to have a lot of takeaways from this. And for the audience, best way to thank Angelo and myself is I know you can think of one or two people, three, you could hear the wisdom what Angelo shared. Share it, help someone. There's been some jam-packed with gems of wisdom, strategy, and I know it's inspired people to look at their marketing strategy differently because of having you as a guest today. Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Angelo. Have a great day. All right, you too. Thanks for tuning into the Adaptive Mindset. If you found value in today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready to thrive in the digital age. Stay secure,