The Power Trifecta: Brand, Marketing, and Sales with Steve Caton, Altezza: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Nov 18, 2025

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, The Power Trifecta – brand, marketing, and sales so we welcomed on Steve Caton. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

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Transcript

Strategic Counsel: The Power Trifecta: Brand, Marketing, and Sales with Steve Caton, Altezza

Is it possible for marketing & sales to work together? If they’re doing so, are they able to actually stay consistent with the brand? These things need to happen for your business to be successful. Unfortunately, in many cases, marketing & sales become so siloed from each other, it hurts the business. We wanted you to learn from an expert with experience in all aspects of The Power Trifecta – brand, marketing, and sales – so we welcomed on Steve Caton. He’s the Founder & CEO of Altezza, who are experienced sales professionals delivering affordable results. You’ll also get a kick from their podcast, Whiskey Is for Closers. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

Inside the mind of a salesperson
Sales and marketing as a dance
Cultural fit vs market experience in sales hiring
What not to do!
Why teams don’t collaborate

And as always, if you need Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

The Power Trifecta: Brand, Marketing, and Sales with Steve Caton, Altezza
- [0:00] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [0:29] Introduction: The power trifecta of brand, marketing, and sales
- [2:11] Meet Steve Caton, CEO of Altezza: From real estate to Chief Growth Officer
- [4:58] What makes for a strong sales effort: Strategy, process, and people
- [7:28] The importance of brand positioning as the foundation for sales
- [9:47] Sales and marketing as a dance: When collaboration works
- [12:12] The feedback loop between marketing and sales
- [16:20] Inside the mind of a salesperson: What drives them
- [19:04] Core value alignment: The often-overlooked sales foundation
- [21:50] How savvy salespeople approach complex sales
- [25:06] Why you need all parts of the business working together
- [30:34] Altezza’s fractional sales model: Solving the first salesperson problem
- [34:16] Cultural fit vs. market experience in sales hiring
- [37:18] The proof of concept approach: 90-day sprints for testing
- [42:46] The ideal partnership between marketing and sales
- [45:33] What not to do: The webinar story and siloed teams
- [49:10] Ego, culture, and compensation: Why teams don’t collaborate
- [53:00] Quick-Fire Questions: DarrenDaily On-Demand, failure stories, and whiskey recommendations
- [58:21] Connect with Steve Caton and check out the Whiskey Is for Closers podcast
- Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

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Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.

00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to talk about the power trifecta, which is brand marketing and sales. So too often businesses isolate these functions in the work, but the true power, the true ability to positively impact your business comes from integrating these efforts. They are codependent.

00:52
brand defines your positioning and your equity, which influences how you express it through marketing, which then fuels the sales, which then comes back around to build credibility and reputation for the brand. Yes, which makes it terribly ironic that the work and the people that do the work are frequently at odds with each other. What we’ve seen more often than not, unfortunately, are things like marketing efforts are arbitrarily generated instead of being grounded in brand.

01:19
It’s assumed that sales and marketing are the same thing, the one that I really hate. So the power of each is diluted. If a business does have both marketing and sales, they don’t communicate with each other. So the efforts are sub optimized and again, diluted. And when this happens, either you over invest to try to force it or you settle for mediocre results. Neither is good.

01:41
Or the lack of consistency between the efforts means no attribution back to the brand, which also means a business’s ability to build credibility and reputation is compromised. But don’t worry, today we’re going to fix all of this. Yes. So it’s a tall order, but we’re going to tackle it. We’re going to do it. Yes. Cause we have a great guest to discuss this with us and he is Steve Caton and he is the CEO at Altezza. So Steve, thank you for being on the podcast. Why don’t you say hi to the listeners and give them a bit of your story.

02:11
Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s I’m super excited about this conversation. uh Having been in sales my whole life, so there’s a lot of energy around this conversation for me. And uh as far as the story goes, you guys, you know, I’m I’m a bit older than I look. So how far back do you want me to go here? Well, I mean, if you’re 25, I mean, maybe you can go back the last five years. Is that fair? You got to wish that would be amazing.

02:40
to go back and be 25 again, knowing what I know now would be awesome. man. I, bottom line, real short version, I’ve been in sales my whole career. I graduated from college with this crazy idea that I was going to go into financial services or banking. And the first day I put on a suit and went out for a bunch of job interviews, I was like, there’s no way I’m doing this. Like this is not me. So I ended up in sales because I mean, what else are you going to do? Right? Yeah. You know, go.

03:09
If you can’t get a real job, go sell something, right? I went and I got into sales in real estate and did that for 11 years and then went out to jump into the dot com in Southern California dot com boom, the first one. And I got this title of chief growth officer at this dot com and I didn’t even know what that meant. I love the sound of that, but I don’t know what it is.

03:35
Um, so anyway, that just began a career path for me where I was working in a lot of emerging growth startup tech or professional services companies. And I was kind of coming in as the first sales person. I was hired to sell, but because I needed to sell, also had to build some infrastructure so that I could actually sell something and be successful at it. Um, and so what I saw over and over and over again was a crazy amount of kind of.

04:03
things that we’re going to talk about today. But the one thing that I saw that kind of was the spark for what I’m doing today is I saw how hard it is to hire that very first salesperson. And I saw these founders that struggled to do it. And I thought, man, one of these days, if I ever start a business of my own again, I’m going to try to fix that problem. And so that’s what that’s what I’m doing today through Altezza. Now, I love that.

04:29
I hope all of our listeners can appreciate the fact that we didn’t just bring another marketing person to sit here and represent marketing and just talk about sales like they’re the third party evil third party. And at least, you know, we have them in the room for this conversation. so hopefully then you will get the full gamut on the surround sound of all perspectives. That’s the goal here. So Steve, let’s start. mean, you are the CEO of a fractional sales organization. So you have seen a lot of businesses.

04:58
What makes for a strong sales effort, especially if you’re hiring your first salesperson or even if you’ve been in your business for a while? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, the answer to the question applies in both cases. But the reason it’s so hard to hire the first salesperson is because a lot of what we’re going to talk about doesn’t exist yet. So I think for a uh really strong sales effort and by that, what I mean, something that is sustainable and predictable.

05:28
Right? You’ve got to have, it’s a combination of process strategy and people. Right? So, and I’ll start with strategy. So strategy has to be in place and that has to be both a marketing strategy, go to market strategy and a sales strategy. So who are we as a company? What is our brand? Who’s our, who’s our ideal client profile? Who are the personas that we talk to? What’s our messaging? How are we making their lives better? All that, like you got to have all that stuff first.

05:58
You don’t want the salesperson making that up because they will. you do not. because they will. They totally will. Yeah, they will totally make it the absence of the material, they’re just going to do it, right? That’s right. Exactly. So it’s good that you want to have all of that. And then you want to have a strategy that takes all that and translates it into the sales conversation, right? How do we attract people with that messaging? And then how do we move them towards being a customer through the sales process? And then what are the systems that need to support

06:28
all of that. All of those things working together is what really makes for magical sales results. But if any pieces of that are missing, it’s subpar. And then you’re always playing the uphill battle and you’re trying to figure out what’s not working here. That’s my belief on it. And the reason it’s so hard to hire your first salesperson is because most smaller businesses haven’t built all that infrastructure yet. Yeah, so we totally joked there, right?

06:58
I think that it is so true because that is so often what happens. And so we had a good laugh, but if there is nothing, the salesperson has to make something up. There is no other way. Right. And so then what we see is as more and more sales folks are added on, and I’m sure you’ve seen this too, Steve, it’s like you talk to all of them you’re like, wait a minute, this story, what we’re saying is not unified anywhere. depends which salesperson you’re talking to. Right. Exactly. And then that story is different than the founder’s story too. Right. Right.

07:28
Yeah. So definitely speaking our language with the brand and we would be remiss if we didn’t say or reemphasize all the things you said, which is making sure that you have your positioning really outlined and set in stone so that then you know who you’re targeting and then you can provide all of those different materials, which I think is where the magic of these groups working together really happens is that they know their roles, but it started from the right place and then carries through. then each person kind of has their marching orders of what to go and do.

07:57
Yep. Yeah, that’s well said. Yeah, I mean, I think that is the crux of all of this because it’s just it’s different sections of the funnel, right? And you have to have the whole funnel in order for it to be an effective lead gen or demand gen system. Right. And so a lot of times, especially if you’re a new to business or you’re new to launching a product or a service, we want to shortcut that.

08:27
um And we, these new tools that you profess to be the key to being able to generate that, call it like your backend sales tools, your Shopify or whatever, or even like Amazon, who now you kind of build Amazon marketing into your Amazon sales, which is definitely very important, but that is still at the end of the funnel, right? So the importance of being able, as April said, to have your positioning appropriate in what you said, Steve, too, about

08:55
being able to know who you’re even talking to so you know how to engage them through the right channels because sales covers multiple different formats, right? And so the having that baseline or that awareness and that foundation by which sales can go operate is critically important. So maybe Steve, you can talk a little bit about kind of like in your experience when you have… uh

09:20
good brand positioning that everything is anchored from and you have a strong marketing team that’s generating that foundation. Do you have a good sales team that’s then executing the leads that being generated? What does that look like conceptually? Like what is people’s roles within that? How are they communicating, working together? Speak a little bit to what you have seen be successful. This is an area of

09:47
of passion for me because I had in my career path, I had the opportunity in one company to be the guy that was responsible for both sales and marketing. And it was a total accident, but it was a happy accident. I was really excited about it because I’d always had somebody I worked with in marketing instead of having any kind of say or authority over it. And I always felt when it was

10:15
in the siloed situation, which unfortunately it ends up that way most of the time. I was like, what the heck is going on here? We should be dancing together. Like this should be a beautiful dance. It’s a waltz, right? Sometimes sales is leading, sometimes marketing is leading, like in a waltz, right? And you got, depending on what you’re doing, the one partner leads, the other one follows and vice versa. And sales and marketing should work that way, but they don’t. Most of the time,

10:45
If it’s a dance, it looks like a freestyle where I’m just freaking out over here in the corner and my partner’s doing the same thing, but we’re not really in sync with each other at all. That’s kind of a funny way to describe it. But the way it looks from a practical standpoint is marketing is setting the table in terms of the, again, ideal client profile, personas, messaging, how we’re going to resonate and all the things that resonate with those people. then sales is executing on it.

11:14
We’re taking that and we’re applying it in the sales conversation. We’re applying it in the sales process to move people through the deal stages. And then as we do that, invariably what we’re going to find out is that some messaging is working really well, some messaging is really landing, some messaging maybe not so much. Maybe there’s another persona that keeps showing up that we hadn’t thought about. We should maybe come back and revisit that. So sales is getting that front line.

11:44
real world kind of feedback from the customer, potential customer, we can bring that feedback back to marketing and say, here’s some things that we’re seeing that might suggest we need to tweak and refine. And then marketing goes, oh, that’s awesome. Let’s do that. So then they tweak and refine. We go apply it again in sales. And then the process continues, right? So there’s this continual feedback loop and dance that’s happening because the market is always changing. It’s never static.

12:12
So we can’t just like set it and forget it. So if you don’t have marketing and sales talking to each other, then you’re gonna set a course and then people are gonna march down that course and get a few degrees off. And the next thing you know, you’re out in the woods and you don’t even know it. You don’t know how you got there. So I would love for you to talk a little bit about how that role worked for you to be over both, because what you just described, right, is the ideal. It’s amazing when that can happen. I’m interested in this one too. I marked this down as a question.

12:41
because I’m like, how often we’ve actually seen that happen, which in some ways is why we’re employed, is not that, right? And so it’s like the finger pointing or the sales team going rogue or the marketing team turning into an admin source, you all those different things. Or one being neglected. Or one being neglected. the marketing is neglected. Yeah. And especially when it’s someone coming in that has a sales background, right? Because then if you don’t know marketing, just by happenstance, it can happen. So.

13:09
Obviously you did something right and making that work, but talk to us about how you lead both teams and get them to that point where it is that dance and then agreed on all fronts that, you know, that’s the Holy grail. Yeah, that’s, um, that’s a great question. So I think, is I think back through it going up first, I think it starts with mindset. So April, you said something early in the introduction about people think that marketing and sales are the same thing.

13:37
So having been in sales and then worked with marketing people later in my career, was like, okay, they’re clearly not the same. I understood and respected the differences that they brought to the table. A lot of business owners and business leaders don’t, like you said, they just lump them together. But I didn’t do that. So the first piece was recognition that they’re not the same. The second piece for me was recognition that I’m great at sales.

14:06
and I really respect marketing, but I’m not great at marketing. So I need someone who’s great at marketing and I’ll put them in that seat and they’ll report to me and they’ll have all the authority they need to go do what they need to do. But we’re going to do it in sync with sales because I know how important it is for sales for marketing to be in sync. So again, it was mindset followed by I have respect for it, but I’m not the guy to do it. So let me go find that person. So then

14:33
So when I sat in that role as kind of VP of sales and marketing, I primarily led the sales team, but the marketing, the, uh, the VP of marketing reporter or director of marketing reported to me. And we just, we met constantly to talk about all the things that we were doing and making sure we were in sync with each other all the time. So it wasn’t like this separate team sitting over here that no one talked to us like, no, we’re integrated all the time, me and the director of marketing. And then even the marketing team.

15:01
and the sales team met together on a regular basis to just brainstorm and give that feedback that we were talking about. So that’s what it looked like practically. uh And what was interesting is my CEO, he didn’t like marketing. He was one of those people that didn’t like marketing. And he and I had a very different view of it because he saw it as brand awareness, which is part of it. And I saw it as, yeah, brand awareness matters, but

15:27
I need leads for sales and I need sales enablement for sales. So it’s that too. So sometimes he’d get all wound around the axle about the, what a logo looked like or the colors on landing page. And I was like, I could care less. I need leads. That’s what I need. And it works. I got them getting leads. So leave me alone. Well, I mean, think that’s also a part of the challenge, right? Because a lot of

15:52
leaders don’t like marketing because they feel like it’s a black box. They put their money into things and they don’t get the results or they don’t get the leads or they’re not getting, you’re meeting their KPIs. And again, we have a gazillion episodes on how that can be solved for and the self-awareness you need in order to be able to leverage marketing for its full benefit and maximization. But I love for you as the sales guy in the room here to

16:20
Give us, put us in your brain. That might be a little scary, but like help us understand how a salesperson thinks. We talk a lot about how a marketing person thinks and what’s important for the marketing person. I think you hit the nail on the head when you think, when you talking about what the marketing, the marketers are focused on and why that’s important, but put us in the head of a salesperson. What’s important to them? What are they looking to drive? What are they, what do they find?

16:47
Fulfilling and what does success look like for them at the end of the day? Yeah, how do they tick? Yeah, that’s that well, you know salespeople You know, we’re just all a bunch of greedy dogs, you know, all we care about is the money Uh-huh Right, that’s the word right? That’s that’s the word That’s why everybody likes sales, literally. It’s the end of the funnel. That means the money’s coming. That’s right Doesn’t matter how we got there. Yeah

17:13
Exactly. that, know what, salespeople, we have that reputation and it’s well deserved because there’s a lot that operate that way. But I would say that one of the, one of the key aspects of really successful sales people, you know, they have a servant’s heart. So they believe that selling is really about serving people and helping them solve problems and find solutions or, you know, reach their goals and objectives and dreams. That’s what we feel like really good salespeople do that. Okay. So if that’s the case, that’s the way we sell.

17:43
then what fulfills us is being able to talk to more people that have the need, the problem that we solve, right? Or that want the thing we sell. So the more people we can have conversations with that we feel like we’re actually helping in a tangible way, that is what fulfills us. Now, obviously there’s money that comes with that. Money is an outcome of actually helping people.

18:10
And so what we really love is the ability to help people and talk to people who really do care about the thing that we’re talking about, right? And there’s resonance there, there’s a connection, you feel like you’re truly making a difference. And so when I’m a salesperson, uh if marketing is delivering a lot of people like that, then that makes me really happy, right? um So that’s, think, and that comes back to the…

18:35
clarity around the internal clarity around who your ideal client, your persona, what it is you bring to the table for them, how you help them. Like the more clarity there is about that and the less shotgun, then the more the happier salespeople are going to be because they’re not wasting their time talking to people who could care less what they’re selling. Well, and what I’m hearing here too, and this is the approach and I take is the internal out approach to any business, right? Which is the culture piece because

19:04
What you just said is, I mean, it’s totally fine. Like people are in sales because one of their major motivators is the money, right? It’s probably also the chase and all of these different things. But if you’re layering in that servant leader piece, that is an entirely different profile of salesperson. And I would say it’s a whole lot more intentional. And so I would think that setting that culture, whether it’s when you got into the position and you were like, Hey, I need marketing and I’m going to

19:30
hold off the CEO and I’ll be the barrier for that, but I need us to be operating this way. You’re setting forth the values by which the organization is going to be run. And then not only identifying clients you wanna sell to, but people that you want on your team that are built in that similar way where there needs to be that deeper connection, right? Yeah, 100%. And one of the things that we didn’t talk about when we were talking about the…

19:57
sales foundation, like what needs to be in place for successful sales. Absolutely core value alignment is one of those things, right? That has to be there. If you’ve got like all the things you just described, April, if those are true, if that’s true, the way we want to sell and the way we want to show up in terms of a brand in the marketplace, and then we hire mercenary salespeople, well, then that’s not going to work, right?

20:24
Yeah, because now you’re saying, well, we said we care about that, but really we just care about the money. And the boondoggles. And the boondoggles. Yeah, love the boondoggles. April’s husband is, he’s in sales too, and he’s traveling this week. So we can all speculate about what he’s actually really doing. Hopefully he doesn’t hear this episode, but I will put him on blast and say he had a nine day stint in Germany. I have young children, Steve. I don’t know if we’ve talked about that. Ten and seven.

20:51
Oh, no. And yet there was a weekend in there and suddenly we were at Oktoberfest. There’s a whole lot of videos of of that visit. I learned I learned very quickly not to be sharing pictures from my trips when my wife had young when we had young kids at home like I’ll do that. Yeah. And then also, I mean, I was in a role at one of the agencies where I wasn’t technically sales, but I love the sales. So I’ve also been on those trips. So let’s just be clear. A little bit of a decide.

21:21
I was always up for a good boondoggle as long as I didn’t have to stand in a booth. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the fun ones. Those are the worst. Oh, goodness gracious. All day, on your feet. Yes. So Steve, maybe you could talk a little bit about how does a salesperson decide how they’re going to sell? Like, what are they going to use to sell? What channels are they going to sell through? Give me little bit more insight into the job in a day-to-day format.

21:50
just to drive some appreciation for what you guys do. I’m hearing like, right, a savvy salesperson is kind of where I’m going in my head, right? Like the strategic strategy. Yeah, I think that’s where I was gonna go, April, was the more sophisticated the buying process is, then the more sophisticated the selling process has to be, right? So sometimes if we’re just selling widgets, we don’t need to overcomplicate it, right?

22:19
So sell the widget. can probably do that on your website. But when you’re selling a service, something that’s a little bit more, um there’s tangible and intangible. You got to be able to connect at different levels. So the savvy salesperson understands that I’ve got to figure out what are the emotional, like, first of all, what’s happening? What’s the problem that’s occurring? What are the emotional responses as a result of that problem? Like, how does that make that person feel?

22:49
And then what are the consequences of not doing anything about it? Like I need to dig into all of that and understand what’s going to help this person actually make a decision. Even if it’s not to do business with my company, they need to make a decision. That’s what we, again, salespeople who care, care that somebody actually changes their situation. So please make a decision. Don’t just do nothing, which unfortunately is the biggest competitor we have, right? Do nothing.

23:17
So you have to peel the layers back and find the practical aspects of what’s happening, the emotional response to that, and the consequences of doing nothing. And then you can tailor a solution that is much more kind of, you know, just going to resonate with that buyer and where they are. And if you’ve got the solution, great, it’s going to be really easy for them to move forward with it. So really savvy people, our salespeople understand how to do that.

23:47
And they’re able to do it in a very relational way. So it doesn’t feel like, oh, they’re reading from the script. They took Sandler sales. just, I’ve seen this before. No, they know exactly what they’re doing, but they’re doing it in a very, very natural, organic and relational fashion. And it was a little bit of a leading question too, because

24:09
What I knew you were going to say is you’re going to provide insight that then feeds back into what the marketing team needs in order to improve the marketing efforts, which then rethinks the brand positioning and helps to refine how we’re going to add value, all based on that need to emotionally connect. Which a lot of times, like you said, people don’t feel like sales is an emotional connection. It’s a transactional connection. And I think what you’re bringing to the table,

24:36
is that it is emotional connection, which transcends again, the thread of emotion. Cause we’re, we’re not just selling widgets and things we’re selling an emotional connection. We’re selling an ability to make life better. Even if it’s for a person who’s like, I have all this stuff on my plate. How do I actually eliminate some of this stuff off my plate? Right? So it’s all such this like circuitous, like beneficial flywheel that keeps everybody’s gears turning. Right. And

25:06
I don’t get how a leader can look and not see how they need every single piece of the gears in order to make the business run. and I just think it’s incredibly insightful to have somebody who’s at the end of it also see the need for all of it. Well, and I’ll give you a really, I mean, to get more practical so people can say, okay, here’s what this actually looks like. So in that company that I was talking about where I was leading both,

25:35
I asked my marketing lead, said, look, here’s what I need for my sales team. need a, basically we had multiple personas in our sales process. uh Typically there would be three or four different stakeholders for each buyer. And each one of those stakeholders was different. Okay. So they sat in a different seat. They had a different personality, different things that they cared about, different, you know,

26:04
emotional responses to whatever the problems were and how they landed on them. So I said, here’s what I need. I need to know basically the talk tracks for each of those personas based on who they are, what they do, what’s their, you know, what do they care about? What do they not care about? What’s their typical emotional reaction going to be to these things? And that was a game changer for us. he

26:27
They went and did that and we had our persona, basically a worksheet that said, hey, if you’re talking to this person, these are the things they care about. These are the things they don’t care about. Focus on these things, focus and test these emotional responses. And so whenever we were working through a complex sale, we had that to refer to and.

26:49
I got to tell you, was like sales conversion went up significantly once we had more clarity on how to talk to each of those individual personas. Well, and I think that communication piece is so huge, right? Like I was with a client the other day and I was rolling off those talk track things, which is really an and thing that I have learned from her from the PR and comp side over the years. will give you credit. uh

27:16
But I was just going and going and she stopped me and was like, this is you as a marketing and communications person. I need you to back up and slow down because I don’t know how to do that. And so I think it’s so amazing to hear you from the sales side, see and recognize that. And then also use marketing for what they’re so just naturally is what we do in order to get that. But the other piece that occurred to me as you were talking is the approach is really more of the long game.

27:46
than just the transaction of the sale. So we talked relational, but as you were going through, it’s the strategy of putting all those things in place, but so that there is a strong foundation, whether you call it relationship or the time or whatever, so that it’s harder for competition to come in and take your place because you have that sort of long view of where you’re going with these clients. Yeah, no, that’s really well said. In fact, in that specific example, what we were selling at the end of the day was software.

28:16
So, I mean, if you think about it, that’s pretty transactional, right? Software. everybody, everyone we competed against sold based on features, functionality, and beautiful user interfaces. And we sold on something completely different that was built around these personas and what they cared about is about value and radical change and how these organizations operated using our software.

28:44
as seen through the lens of these different personas. And because we sold that way, people literally would say, oh my gosh, I’ve never had a conversation like this about software. So it was incredible. mean, yeah, it was amazing. Well, yeah, because we were selling again the emotional benefit. And when you sell emotional benefit, you can you definitely close more deals. You retain loyalty. You can charge more.

29:12
You get more clients or more consumers or more customers more quickly because you have a foundation by which again, it’s improving life for humans. So, I mean, when you think about the fact and we’ve said until the world’s won by robots, there’s always going to be a human on the other side of the sale. So like the humanity of being able to sell in that way, it’s a foundation for all parts of the business and to infuse in all parts of the business.

29:40
And so I also think that that’s a reason why you need all parts of this business. So the other aspect of this is that a lot of people will combine sales with every other function that there is. So sometimes they smush marketing into sales and sometimes they do this, what’s called a seller-doer model and they take everybody, whatever position and they make them sales too, which to me is like as ludicrous as not recognizing that each function has a role.

30:07
because it’s like if my brain is spent 90 % on my day-to-day job and then I’m expected to go sell on top of that, like a lot of people’s brains don’t work like that. And that’s why I wanted you to talk a little bit about like how a salesperson brain works and what they’re motivated by because that’s a specific skillset and it’s a specific psychographic that it makes a good salesperson or a savvy salesperson. So I think this is a really good time to talk a little bit about what Altiza does because

30:34
you’re a fractional sales organization could be a solution for a lot of these conflicts or strains or not being able to hire and to fill all the seats. So maybe you can speak about how you come in, how you help businesses solve for that specific role and the approach you take. Yeah. Well, thanks for letting me talk about that. The problem that we’re most frequently solving is the problem where you have founders who have

31:03
basically done everything, including selling, get to a point where they hit that first growth plateau. You know, they do pretty good. They get some momentum, they make some sales, and then all of sudden things just plateau. And the reason that it plateaus is typically tied to capacity and just too many plates to spin. Right. And so they realize I’ve got to start getting some things off my plate. A lot of times sales is one of the last things they want to let go of because no one knows the company as well as they do.

31:32
Yeah, you can explain it as well as they can. And some of them actually like it. There are founders out there. know who don’t like it, but there’s a lot of them that do love the energy that comes with that. So it’s really hard to let go. And then when they finally decide to let go again, now going and hiring good salespeople is very difficult for all the things we talked about earlier, but also because have you, mean, how many salespeople have you interviewed that were a bad interview? Like they know how to interview.

32:02
They know how to interview. So you can’t just go on the interview. You got to be looking at a lot of other factors. And again, a business owner leader that doesn’t understand sales and marketing doesn’t really know what to look for. So what will happen and a lot of times is I’m just going to either go hire somebody I know, you know, either a friend or a friend of a friend, somebody my friend knows.

32:24
or and let’s hope that works out or I’m gonna go hire a maybe as somebody young just graduated from college, something I can mold and teach and they’re not gonna be that expensive. But what they really need is they very seasoned salesperson who understands all of the nuances that we’ve been talking about because they’ve been doing it for a long time. There’s no substitute for experience when it comes to sales. It’s like, you gotta have the at bats. uh It’s like.

32:51
Malcolm Gladwell’s outliers, right? The 10,000 repetitions. So we reference that a lot of times. There’s no substitute for that. But I, as a founder in an emerging growth business, I probably can’t afford that person. So I’m just going to default to a buddy, a friend, a friend of a friend or somebody young and inexperienced and then cross my fingers and hope that it works out. And unfortunately, more often than not, it doesn’t work out. It ends up being a very expensive experiment or mistake. And so with Altezza,

33:20
Well, the way we solve that is say, look, we’ve got the experienced salespeople. All the people on our team are very seasoned, ah know, 10 years minimum of sales experience. And most of them have a lot more than that. And we bring those people into the business part-time. ah But because they’re so good at what they do, a very experienced salesperson working 10 to 15 hours, you know, a week can accomplish more.

33:47
Honestly, we’ve seen it over and over again, more than a full-time inexperienced salesperson. mean, literally run circles around. ah So that’s what we’re doing. We’re putting those people into the businesses to help move the needle, get that founder out of the sales seat so they can go focus on being the strategic leader they wanted to be when they started their business. uh And then the, uh but the key, one of the key pieces that I think makes us really unique is we don’t just match a salesperson with a business based on

34:16
the market, like is industry experience. That’s one of the things we look at. But we also look at core value fit, like we talked about earlier, cultural value fit, like resonance with the actual value proposition. Do they care about what this company is selling? Because if they don’t, that’s going to come through, right? ah So we look at all of those things. And what we found after doing this for five years is that cultural fit actually is

34:42
more important than the market experience over and over and over again. We’ve seen that. We’ve made the mistake of putting someone with a lot of market experience into a company where there was a match there, but they didn’t really have the energy. They didn’t have the passion for what they were selling. It didn’t work. Or they were successful and no one liked them because they weren’t a cultural fit for the organization. cultural values, core values.

35:09
You got to look at that and almost no one thinks about that with salespeople. just say, let me go get the person who can make the most money and turn them loose and leave them alone and just sit back and count the dollars. Definitely speaking my language on that one. mean, I feel like every week I’m telling people it doesn’t matter what you’re saying, if they can’t hear you, it’s, you know, foregone conclusion there. Right. So and then the cultural fit, I think is really important. But I think this whole idea of placing someone and like you said, they have the expertise.

35:37
and they don’t have to be full time, they’re actually also bringing an outside perspective automatically, right? So when you said, well, we don’t, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that they have experience in the industry. A lot of times when we’re working with people across the board, we’re saying it’s actually more the aptitude and then the cultural fit than it is.

35:57
direct experience. And I would say because the value is the outside person, that direct experience could also work against them because they’ll take that lens of I’ve seen this before and I already know versus being curious about what’s going on around them. 100%. Yes, absolutely. You have seen that happen too many times. Well, and I think that’s what makes having a fractional salesperson if that’s the solution. oh

36:22
A possibility right when you are able to unite on the actual cultural piece. It feels more like a natural fit into the organization versus having somebody out here who’s kind of doing their thing and running their numbers and just hoping to hit their goals versus okay you’re part of our organization you’re in it with us we all understand when winning looks like and so therefore.

36:49
It doesn’t matter if you are inside technically our organization or if you’re a contractor who’s working part time, we’re all on the same team. Yeah, that’s right. Absolutely. know, did you guys I know you guys are familiar with Jim Collins, Good to Great, right? oh Yes. So in one of the follow up books was Great by Choice, which I think he wrote after How the Mighty Fall. So there was I can’t remember the sequence, right.

37:18
Good to Great was the anchor, the cornerstone book that he wrote, studying these companies that went from good to great and what was true about them. And then there was How the Mighty Fall, which is how some of those great companies didn’t stay great. And then he did another follow-up study on the ones that did and what were they doing. Well, of the things that they did and one of things he learned in these companies that stay great is that they do proof of concept before they go all in on ideas.

37:47
for when you think of fractional anything, whether it’s fractional sales, fractional marketing, fractional, you know, filling the gap. That just makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Because that allows you to, let’s go test it, let’s go try it, let’s see what works, and then we can pour gas on it, you know, whatever’s working. And if it doesn’t work, God forbid, then at least we didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure out it doesn’t work. This was a bad idea.

38:15
You know, so I think that’s one of the benefits of fractional sales for sure. But a lot of other things in that fractional context gives you the opportunity. We talk about testing and learning all the time, right? So you’re dipping your toe in and you’re at least doing something to your point before. Make a decision, move forward, all of those things versus being too afraid of whatever it is. The ticket, the I don’t know if this person’s going to work out, you know, all of these different things you can work your way into it. And then I think

38:44
The smart thing is you can flesh out if you don’t already have it, what the long-term solution is, whether that’s we need this type of personality or it’s we need several of these, like you said before, or it’s, you know, the problems within our organization are fill in the blank. It’s the founder who won’t get out of the way or whatever that is. You can start to uncover those things and solve it pragmatically as you go instead of getting someone in and then being like a square peg round hole. Now what do we do? Yeah, exactly.

39:15
Yeah, and I’d be curious about you guys. Like I know uh I’m the one you’re asking me the questions, but one of the things that we do in sales, I learned this from being in the software world. curious if it makes sense in the, marketing world too. But I always think in terms of 90 day sprints, that’s how we did things in software. Everything development wise was 90 day sprints. So I adapted that to sales and marketing and said, we’re going to do 90, 90 day sprints with sales and marketing.

39:45
when we’re trying something new. Like if we’re gonna try something new, let’s agree that we’re gonna give it enough runway to figure out whether there’s something here or not. And then if it works, let’s again, pour gas on it. If it doesn’t, or maybe it’s working a little bit, but we can tweak and refine it, then we do that. But then I always love that kind of methodology of the 90 day sprint, but does that work in your world as well?

40:09
It does if people are committed to the 90 day timeline because what tends to happen in marketing, especially, and even in branding is you have the best of intentions of doing the first stage of the development piece, if you will, assessing the landscape or discovery piece. And you have the best intentions of doing that in a week so that you can translate that into something more actionable in the next week. And you get that phase done pretty quick.

40:38
What tends to happen is that phase drags because a lot of people whine that don’t understand, or this is the first time they’re actually seeing this information and they need the time to process. So if you’re gonna call them the 90 day sprint after you have all of that stuff, then yes, I think most of the executional elements, again, if you’re diligent about putting them in place.

40:59
can be assessed over a 90 day time frame. But I know you kind of like put all of that in 90 days, which I find extremely impressive. And I know I’m accelerating your timeline on the work you’re doing with us, but like, and it’s cause usually you need like sales like today, right? But in marketing, it’s like, yes, you know, you need the Legion and you want the Legion to happen, but it’s usually takes a little bit longer to put into process and you, and it takes a little bit longer to learn from it. April, what do you have to say about that one?

41:28
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Like we talked at the beginning about the foundational things you need from a branding perspective first, and then you can press go. The only thing I would add to what you said, Ann, is if you don’t spend the time to get those things right first, then when you go to put stuff in market, it’s too muddy. Yeah, that’s thing. You haven’t got the persona right, or your positioning is just slightly off, or you shouldn’t really actually be in that channel yet. You should pick a different one, all those types of things. That totally makes sense. even in the sales,

41:57
world, uh a 90 day sprint is a very aggressive approach to it, right? Because you’re not going to get all the sales that you want in 90 days, but you will see leading indicators that suggest you’re on your way to it. So I think from a sales context, that’s really important when we’re in a 90 day sprint mode, we’re watching leading indicators that are telling us,

42:20
For instance, are we seeing more deals show up in the sales pipeline? Are we getting more meetings? Are we getting more qualified, like conversion of marketing qualified to sales qualified? And then the deals moving through the pipeline, like those are some of the things we’re watching for that tell us, okay, this is gonna work, right? But it may not actually come out of the backend of the pipeline in 90 days, right? So, yeah. Well, in that case, we would, an ideal like that.

42:46
I’m kind of preempting my own question because I want to talk about what an ideal partnership would look like between marketing and sales in our perspective. But in that case, the ideal relationship would be sales and fees that information back into marketing and marketing is already running A-B testing to kind of try to see what is working and what’s not working. So they’re refining on therein. So it’s a continuous cycle of new inputs and learning on those outputs.

43:12
giving everything enough time to actually learn because that’s the other thing people get very impatient and they don’t say anything in like a day or two, they don’t give the time for the systems to learn, for the people to learn, for it to reach its level of saturation that’s needed to make good decisions and actually have very valid data. So to me, if I was going to sit and think about this ideal partnership, which I’m gonna ask you guys both to speak to this as well, it is that continued collaboration

43:42
working together to develop the efforts in tandem. So if we’re developing a marketing campaign, for example, ultimately we want it to drive the sales. I mean, we wouldn’t be doing a marketing campaign if we didn’t want it to go to sales, right? But a lot of times we’ll work a marketing campaign independently of what the salespeople are doing. And that doesn’t make any sense. So marketing and sales need to be in…

44:06
Tandem and then if it’s like from a branding standpoint, if your marketers also you brand or if you have a brand strategist that person needs to be in the room too. So that all three pieces in development can hold together so that flow down the funnel, which we know the funnel kind of kind of circulates back and come comes forward and you know all those sorts of things. But everybody is in lockstep and can react and with a lot of high state of intelligence with the data that they’re given.

44:35
but then also be proactive in anticipating what might happen because they appreciate the other person’s role and they know what that person is trying to achieve and they know what that person’s goals are and what motivates them because that’s the other thing that, you know, it’s sometimes where the breakdown happens is that marketing is rewarded based on one thing, sales is rewarded based on the other. At the end of the day, everybody should be rewarded based on the big outcome of whatever you’re trying to achieve.

45:03
or else there’s no motivation for anybody to work together. So that goal has to be a higher order goal in order to make sure everybody works together. that’s Anne’s point of view on my Tide box that you have to that higher order goal if you want people to work together, but then you have to really facilitate that being in lockstep. So I’d to hear from Steve and you April as well. Like what is your ideal partnership? How would that look for you guys?

45:33
Well, I mean, I feel like you’ve said it really well. And honestly, that coordination piece is just to me, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult. Maybe I’ll take a little bit of a different approach and just say, here’s what it shouldn’t look like. And this is really fresh. was at this networking event last week and uh I was talking to a guy who’s in marketing. He’s director of marketing for a big accounting firm.

46:02
And we were talking about, I was just asking him questions about his approach and what was working and what wasn’t working. And he was telling me about webinars that they’re doing. And a lot of people are showing up for these webinars. then uh I said, uh man, I bet your sales team is super excited about that. Getting people to show up for webinars, because it’s hard to get people to show up for webinars nowadays. Right. When you think about how many, how ubiquitous they’ve he goes, yeah, my salespeople, they don’t care. And I was like,

46:32
What? Wow. What? And he said, yeah, they just don’t think those are the right leads. They’re afraid they’re going to spin their wheels. They want to go talk to these kinds of people. And so they don’t really want to talk to these people. I’m like, these are the people they opted in. They gave you their information. They showed up for an event and then they responded to a call to action and they don’t want to talk to him. And he was like, yeah, that makes no sense. That’s what I said. And so.

47:00
For me, what that’s a picture of and is the opposite of what you were talking about. Clearly, a strategy was developed over here by the marketing team. Maybe it was a great strategy. It seems like it’s working, right? But apparently, no buy-in from sales on it, right? So marketing did their thing. Sales is doing their thing. Why do you think that is, Steve? mean, is it because they’re just rewarded differently or if it doesn’t come from?

47:24
our, you know, our specific function, then it’s not our idea. It’s not our idea. So therefore we’re not going to go do it because we don’t get rewarded that way or we’re too ego driven. I don’t know. What do you think that is? Gosh, I don’t, mean, I obviously can’t speak to that specific situation, but based on what this is my, just my perspective, having been in the middle of that a few times, there is, um, there’s turf war kind of stuff going on for sure. So you have.

47:51
people that own, that running their little kingdom and there’s insecurities that we’re all humans. we have our imposter syndrome and insecurity deal, know, as challenges that we work with. And so there is a, man, if I really reveal everything I’m doing to this person, they might.

48:12
not like it and they might criticize it and that’s going to feel really shitty. So I’m just not going to do it. I’m just going to do my thing and they’re going to do their thing and we’ll figure this out. So I think there’s human insecurities that play a role in it. then I think internal corporate culture plays a role in it as well. So if you have a really kind of toxic culture where people are not encouraged and rewarded for collaborating with each other.

48:40
then they just don’t do it. So I think that contributes to it. And then one of the things you mentioned, that I think plays a role is compensation is different for the two areas. so salespeople are getting these big rewards for deals closed and marketing is gone. Well, we helped with that. Do we get to participate in any of that? And so the way they’re compensated and rewarded is totally different too. So where’s the motivation to work together? Yeah. mean, the thing, your example,

49:10
led right into where I was gonna go. First thing I was gonna say is the ego piece, right? But I think where that comes from, to speak to the cultural piece, is there’s lack of clarity in the role for each of those different teams, and then lack of accountability as a result. So I feel like where it works really well is where everybody understands, respects, and appreciates the other people, and that’s the culture piece. But then they also have their

49:39
I mean, call it a job description. I hate that because it feels in my mind, it takes a page and says it’s stagnant and this is what you’re supposed to be repetitively doing. But set the right way. The job description should have, should account for all of those things so that they know that respective teammate and their specific expertise is important to the bigger ecosystem, which Ann you said is that challenge. It’s bigger than all of them, right? I mean, there’s a lot to that. mean, I, I mean, even in an organization like PNG, which you would think

50:08
that it was being lockstep, it was not. And it was a struggle even there because of the different ways that people are rewarded a thousand percent. And they just felt like they don’t really get what I’m trying to do. And I was even as a junior person felt a little bit like that Steve, where I was like, I don’t want people in my business. I want to do it the way I want to go do it. And it wasn’t until I realized, hey, these people can help me do my job better. And that takes a like a very

50:38
Again, I’ve been using the word savvy, but I’m gonna say a very savvy person in either side of the coin here, marketing, sales, or even brand. It takes a really savvy person to realize, hey, there’s a big, like I want a bigger piece of a watermelon than a full grape here than, you and to use Mark Cuban’s analogy that he always uses on Stark Take. That takes a lot of like getting out of my own self and out of my own way.

51:06
Right. And so I think that is the key and it takes a leader to be able to facilitate and foster that. If the leader is not going to do it, nobody’s going to do it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You’re talking about, you know, self-awareness and EQ, right. Which is like super important to be able to do this stuff we’re talking about. Because, if you’re letting your ego drive it and your insecurities, that’s not really going to get you where you want to be. um And just like

51:36
And here’s what I learned, because I certainly, when I was younger, I certainly struggled with all that. And then just going through a life experience taught me the value of being transparent. And I learned that when I’m actually transparent enough and vulnerable enough to say, you know what, I really don’t know how to do that. ah Then people, good people, typically are like, well, I want to help, Phil, let’s do it together.

52:04
You know, I know how to do that. Let me help. That just works for me. So when I had the marketing guy that was working for me at that software company, I just straight up told him, I was like, bro, I’m in charge of this, but I don’t know nearly as much as you do. And so I want you and me working together to make this look amazing. And we’re both going to win the trick to figuring out the compensation stuff was a little harder, you know, because I had to work with.

52:31
a CEO on that piece of it. But I found a way that marketing people could also be compensated and rewarded for deals closed as well. It’s different than the salespeople, but it still was tied to that. So everybody was kind of working towards the same goals. I love it. Yeah, we’ve this was exactly the kind of conversation I wanted to have today. I feel like we covered so much ground in so many different verticals, but then also bringing it together and really demonstrating

53:00
the benefit and the impact that maximizing, optimizing that unity between the brand marketing and sales can really achieve for a business. But before I let you go, Steve, are you open to some rapid fires? Oh yeah, let’s go. All right. I don’t know. with that, I don’t know if I dug deep enough then I might have to have another one trigger for me. Okay. So we always start with what are you reading, listening to right now?

53:28
You gave a lot of good examples. did. So what’s the latest? Oh man. I listened to the Darren Daly podcast. Do you know that one? No. Darren Hardy. He wrote the book, Entrepreneur Rollercoaster and some other things. And he’s got a daily podcast. It’s like seven minutes long. That’s just like super practical stuff that I’ve, yeah, I love that every morning. Seven minutes with Darren Daly.

53:57
That’s good. Okay. Darren daily like daily, not daily. Okay. Okay. All right. What is, and you could kind of gone here, but I’m going to ask you the question anyway. What is one thing you failed at that had taught you a major life lesson? I was telling the story about my.com experience, right? And, I ended up, I ended up in sales for a financial services company that did basically really high end investment management.

54:27
Um, for private individuals, also for, uh, nonprofit organizations that had big endowments. Well, because I had had experience in the nonprofit sector, I got hired. So it was one of those deals where I got hired because of my experience, but I didn’t, I didn’t know how to sell to these organizations at all. Cause you’re talking about trying to convince boards of directors and trustees and all that stuff. So I, I was really good at like, I could get to the table.

54:55
but I couldn’t close. And so it was like, it was super embarrassing. Like I was not winning any, any deals and I was too embarrassed to say anything about it. Um, I was just like, I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out. And then, um, finally there was this, you know, conversation, difficult conversation with the month of my boss. And I just was like, okay, well, I guess I’m going to come clean cause he’s, he’s onto me. So he’s probably going to fire me anyway.

55:23
So I told him what was going on and he said, dude, why didn’t you say something to me about that? Because my best friend is a sales consultant for some company he rattled off. don’t remember the name of it, but I do remember this, the company was doing sales consulting with Boeing and IBM. And I was like, and he’s running that company. And he goes, yeah, he goes, you know what? Let me just introduce you and you guys can, maybe he can figure out how to help. Well.

55:52
Bottom line is he’s the guy that taught me all about sales process because up until that time I was just kind of doing it relationally, but didn’t have a discipline process to it. And he taught me all that and it changed my life. Um, so that was, that’s the one, when I think about professional context, that was like the one really painful time in my career that ended up being a huge blessing. Wow. That’s a great story. I mean, it’s so much, so much in there. Oh, I love that.

56:22
Alright, your third rapid fire. What’s your favorite whiskey? Oh man, that’s so hard because I love so many whiskies. I would like it’s so hard. People ask me this all the time and it’s like well, if I’m just just my everyday it’s this. What’s OK then? What’s your favorite like just day whiskey versus your special occasion whiskey? My favorite kind of just daily whiskey would just be Breckenridge Whiskey. The Breckenridge Bourbon Whiskey that this their everyday one, which is.

56:52
It’s a really solid whiskey. I’ve put it up in front of taste tests on a number of really more expensive ones and everybody always really likes it. My son works at the Breckenridge Distillery, so that probably has something to do with it. But I was drinking that before he got that job. So that would, and then special occasion, I actually have, uh I have this bottle that came from uh Nofo Brewery and it’s actually, it’s a brewery here in Georgia, but the brewery

57:22
became a distillery. So now they’re making whiskeys and they made a family reserve was the very first kind of addition of their whiskey that they released. And it’s a rye, which I don’t typically like. And it’s incredible. It’s like so good. And it’s you know, it’s bit pricey, but I got it as a gift. So I savor that one. Like when I have it when I close a big deal, I have a sip of that. And that’s not helpful because you can buy it now if you got a no fo.

57:51
brewery in North Forsyth County, Georgia, you can buy it. It’s available. But it’s not something you’ll find on the shelves in your local liquor store. So sorry about that. That’s awesome. That wasn’t the question. It wasn’t easy access. Well, I mean, Steve, thank you for all this. Tell everybody where they can find you. If there’s anything that we missed, you want to put a bow on, feel free to do that. And tell everybody about the podcast too. yeah, well, you finding me on LinkedIn is really easy. My last name isn’t all that

58:21
So if you type in Steve Katen, there’s not a lot of us out there. You’ll find me and I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. So that’s a great place. And then our website, if you’re interested in Altezza is Altezzasolutions.com uh with two Z’s. Yeah. In terms of the podcast. So the podcast is called Whiskey is for Closers. And people just always smile when I say that name, that the name of the podcast, which I love. Essentially the premise of it is

58:50
We want to bring in founder, business founders and other people like you guys who can speak to some of the same things we’ve been talking about. Essentially what we’re trying to do is encourage founders who feel stuck in that place of, can’t grow my business. I don’t know what to do. I feel stuck. I’m in the sales seat. I don’t know how to get out of it. We want them first of all to know, okay, you’re not alone. This is really common. So it’s okay. It’s not because you are terrible. uh

59:21
And there’s a way out. oh And here’s what that looks like. And freedom is what you’re chasing. And here’s what that looks like. So we want people who’ve actually been on that journey who can come in and share the stories that they have that can be an encouragement to others who are still stuck. then we also talk about whiskey, right? So we get to enjoy a little glass of whiskey or wine or whatever. We’ve had people on as guests who don’t drink. And that’s cool too.

59:48
You don’t have to, you you can be on the no alcohol movement and still be on whiskey is for closers. Well, that’s very inclusive of you. I don’t know if there’s much fun as a guest, though. I was going to say, I mean, the more the more you drink, I mean, I’m sure the conversations from the beginning to the end totally are a little bit different. It’s like Joe Rogan. He’s like on there for three hours and they start drinking at the beginning. You get to the middle and you’re like, I think this thing is going off the rails right now.

01:00:17
If you want a really good one, listen to the Woody Harrelson one with Joe Rogan. I mean, that was just two hours of pure entertainment, pure entertainment. Oh, man, I bet that was amazing. I’ll have to listen to that. Yeah, it was it was something else. He was definitely came in pretty, pretty lit up already. So but it’s still very coherent and very articulate. Like what is happening? So he’s one of those functional. mean, he loves his pod. So I don’t think everybody knows that. So.

01:00:47
Oh, well, thank you so much again, Steve, for being on and sharing all of your wisdom and insight. And with that, encourage all of our listeners to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put it into practice. could remember strategic counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business and make sure to Follow or Subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!