In this insightful episode, Angelo Ponzi shares how you can enhance your exit strategy with a strong brand focus. If you’re struggling with market saturation, or if you feel unprepared for a big exit, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
- Why understanding culture ensures a smoother exit and lasting legacy
- How to assess your market size to avoid unrealistic growth goals
- What internal data analysis reveals to balance client concentration risks
This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 5 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz
Angelo Ponzi is a fractional and interim CMO, CRO, CSO, and marketing and brand strategist specializing in B2B, B2C, and DTC markets. He is also a keynote speaker, author, and podcast host with extensive hands-on experience across marketing, branding, advertising, research, and sales. With a career spanning diverse industry verticals and brand niches, his portfolio includes engagements with notable brands such as AT&T (formerly SBC Global), Ericsson, Kendall-Jackson, and Disney, among many others.
Want to learn more about Angelo Ponzi's work at Craft? Check out his website at https://www.craftmarketingandbranding.com/
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Ritzheimer (00:00):
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome, once
(00:02):
again to the secrets of thehigh demand coach podcast. And
here with us today is the oneand only Angelo Ponzi, who is
a fractional and interim cmoCRO CSO and marketing and
brand strategist specializingin B to B, B to C and OTC DTC
markets. He is also a keynotespeaker and author, podcast
(00:23):
host with extensive hands onexperience across marketing,
branding, advertising,research and sales, with a
career spanning diverseindustry verticals and brand
niches include, his portfolioincludes engagements with
notable brands such as at&t,formerly SBC global, Erickson,
Kendall Jackson, and Disney,among many others. He's here
(00:46):
with us today. Angelo, I'mexcited to have you on the
show. Something on yourwebsite just totally
fascinated me, and we're gonnaget into that here in a
moment. But first question foryou out of the gate is
someone, let's say it's afounder. They've built a multi
million dollar business.They've got dreams of the big
(01:06):
exit, right? That they'restarting to set their their
targets. It's easy to thinkthat the numbers tell the
whole story, right? And thismay not even be exit, it might
be acquisition, but in thatwhole space of kind of mergers
and acquisitions, we get sonumbers sensitive, but you
emphasize that's not the wholestory. So what is and what can
(01:27):
we do about it?
Angelo Ponzi (01:28):
First of all, Scott, thanks for having me
on. Excited to be here. Youknow, it's an interesting
question, because I'm gonnabacktrack just a few months I
was invited to sit on a panelon acquiring businesses. And
the the moderator was a VC,and he said, I understand why
(01:49):
the lawyers here, I wonderunderstand why the advisors
are here and the bankers, butI don't understand why
marketing is here and and sowhen I kind of went through my
spiel with him, if you will,the end, he went, I get it.
And so that was an additionaltrigger for me. And and if you
think about whether you're aquiet let's focus on a query.
(02:09):
I mean, ultimately peopleconcerned about the EBITDA,
what you're buying and makingsure it's financially sound.
But I never hear anybodytalking about culture. How
does the company fit together?Is there an overarching
company? Do you roll it up? Doyou keep them separate? What
happens to the customer base?Are you going to cannibalize
your customers? How do yourcustomers feel about this
(02:33):
acquisition? And I'll tell youa quick story after this. And
so by digging into the dataand understanding and going
out and talking to yourcustomers, talking to your
prospects, really digging andtalking to your employees.
Nobody ever talks to theemployees. And so when you
merge two companies together,people start feeling, is my
job in jeopardy? Now theystart thinking, especially if
(02:54):
they're key employees. And sonone of that's really, in my
opinion, done a whole lot upfront, and that becomes
something that's reallyimportant, because ultimately,
you just made thisacquisition, depending on how
big is, how you gonna put ittogether? So I had the
opportunity, and fortunateopportunity, to sell my
business, and it was theybought me, and they bought my
(03:16):
creative partner. I had an adagency at the time. They
bought us both, put ustogether, and we thought this
was going to be great. So wehad employee issues about now,
who do you take? Who do younot take? Adjustments? I
actually was, even though Iwas one of the senior
leadership, I actually tookthe longest to adjust, because
(03:36):
I'd been my own boss for manyyears, but our clients didn't
like it, because we werepurchased by a billion dollar
organization, and they justsaw $1,000,000,000.07 150
people were used to workingwith, you know, a small
organization, and we lostquite a bit of our business
before we even kicked off,because they just assumed we
(03:58):
were beginning to become atraditional, siloed agency,
and so we're so right thereand then, in my own
experience, you know, we had,you know, a lot of work to do.
We didn't handle it well. Theacquisition happened very
quickly. So I think that, youknow, for me, when I look at
whether you're acquiring orlooking to sell, so on the
(04:20):
sell side, we get invited inthat hey, you know, your
EBITDA is not quite there.You're not going to get the
multiples that you want. Youneed to go back into the
market and, you know, generatesome more revenue and
profitability. And when I'mand I I usually get called in.
It's like the bit, they'vebeen in business for 20 years.
They're a 10 million company,and then they want to sell
(04:41):
them three more, and they wantto be a 50 million. And you
know, the rationale for me is,well, it took you 20 years to
get to 10, and you want to gofrom 10 to 50 and three. What
are you going to do different,right? And I don't think
businesses step back andreally analyze, what do we
need to do different? How havewe saturated our. Market. What
are the adjacent markets thatwe can go into? And part of
(05:04):
this came from working with amed tech company. About 16
months ago, I was called in.They wanted me to figure out
how big their market was, Tam,Sam and som. And as I started
to dig into the data, I lookedat their revenues over the
last five years, I could seethat some of their clients
were starting to spend less.They, on average, grew about
(05:27):
six and a half percent a year.But this year that I was
involved in had a 37% hockeystick growth goal. Wow. Okay.
Why? Yeah. And so as westarted to dig into all of
this, and look at the dynamicsof the business. You know,
360, 7% of their business wascontrolled by three companies.
(05:48):
One sales guy controlled about85% of all their business. And
what happened is, we looked atPipeline and all of this, we I
realized that there wassomething up. And I did find
out eventually that theyactually brought me in because
they wanted to sell. They gota poor valuation, or bad
valuation, as they like tosay. And so now they wanted to
(06:10):
flip the script, thinking theycould sell the business in
here. And you know, there wasjust no way that was going to
happen. And so they wereunrealistic. But the fact that
they'd been in business for 40plus years and had no idea how
big the market was. To me,that was just a lot of red
flags. So I think, you know,there's kind of both sides of
the fence, if you will. AndI'll turn it back to you,
(06:31):
because I've been ranked.
Scott Ritzheimer (06:31):
Yeah, there's, there's so many
things that I want to unpackin there. The first one was
the the hockey stick growthgoal. I call it the strategic
planning slot machine. Youknow, it's like you just, you
know, it's the closest thingthat I can relate it to, like
in my own life, other thandoing it myself, but like
outside of work, is when mywife and I were engaged, we
went to AM, we went to Target,and they give you this little
(06:55):
scanner for your registry. Andyou just kind of walk around
and scan this and scan that,and it adds it to the registry
for you, and it feels like yougot it, and you didn't have to
pay anything for it, right?That's basically how a lot of
us treat our strategicplanning like our target GIF
registry, but it feels good.It just doesn't work very
well. But then you brought outa couple of points that that
(07:18):
again in my work, in the exitspace, I see time and time
again, but it's like theseconcentrations, right? We
focus so much on, how do wegrow revenue? How do we grow
revenue? And we think of it asit as if all revenue is
created equal, but it's not.So this is where I think you
know, going back to your VCexample, like, why are you
(07:38):
here? It's why branding needsto have a strategy at the
table, even if you're not likea heavy marketing company, or
haven't been historically, Ithink it's especially true. So
there's so many places tostart with this. I'm just
trying to pick one. But how doyou go about right? Let's say
someone is putting an exitthey find out they're overly
(07:58):
concentrated, either in asales rep or in a couple of
customers. What? What's theprocess for starting to expand
that for, for getting out tomarket in a way that's
healthier and more balanced?
Angelo Ponzi (08:10):
Yeah. Well, that gets back to a deeper dive
into the organization. We, wetend to look in the we broad,
right? Well, we tend to lookoutward more than inward and
and I encourage companies toLet's spend time really
dissecting the internaldynamics. So I work with a
company, I actually still siton their board, and we spent
(08:32):
the first two months of myengagement literally just
looking at their data. And wefound so many interesting
things about they won 30 theywould win 30% of every
proposal they put out. That'sand they were 25 year old.
Company, fantastic, but wheredo they concentrate their
their number one sales personhad 750 accounts, and most of
(08:53):
them were tiny, $1,000 $500right? And but she was
spending her time generatingthat instead of focusing. And
so by just understanding thedynamics, understanding where
their sales were coming from,not only sales, but
profitability, looking at whatservices, products are really
generating revenue andprofitability. You know, what
(09:14):
are the dogs that you mighthave been your first product
that you started with, butnobody's really buying it, and
you just can't seem to lovego. So really taking that
inward look before you startto figure out, where do you
go? This med tech company Iwas talking about, for
example, is they wereconvinced that they had
saturated the market. When Ifirst started working with
them, turned out to be it wasa $7.6 billion market, and
(09:37):
they weren't even close. Butwe were looking at adjacent
markets. How can we use thesame products and services we
have in a new market withouthaving to, you know, start all
over again? And so we foundrobotics, for example, we
could, we could move intorobotics very easily with just
a new hire versus having tocreate all brand new services.
And so again, it's thatspending time to work. Uh, you
(10:00):
know, I call it on thebusiness, right? Work on your
business. Really understandwhere you want to go. Do you
have the capabilities? Do youneed a new distribution
network? This company I wastalking about earlier, as we
wanted to expand across theUnited States, we needed
installers. Well, we can'tship people from California to
go install a unit. So now wedefine places across the
(10:22):
country where could we havedistribution so very strategic
approaches. How do you grow?And how do you grow
efficiently and profitably,versus just growing? Because
I'm sure you know, not everypiece of business is good
business.
Scott Ritzheimer (10:35):
Yeah, for sure. So you touched on
another major issue, and I seetwo equal and opposite
responses to this. They'reboth wrong. So both of them
stem from misunderstanding howbig their market is. Right?
Either, like, overtly, we justthat we've we've maxed out the
market, or inadvertently, wejust believe that we've maxed
(10:58):
out the market, but we'venever actually asked the
question. So the first one is,we have to start brand new
things in totally differentmarkets that don't play to our
strengths, and it's just tryeverything or buy everything,
right? And the other side ofit is, well, we've done
everything we can in themarket. I guess we'll just eke
out a little bit moreefficiency and try to be more
profitable, and revenue willgrow by 6% with the market,
(11:19):
and that's it. And we justkind of coast, right? So how
can folks really unpack howbig the market is?
Angelo Ponzi (11:27):
Well, so part of my kind of back my background
is research, and so I'm a bigadvocate of doing market
research, whether you'redoing, you know, quantitative,
qualitative, predictiveanalytics while you're doing
secondary research, is to getfacts, not only internally,
but externally, to try tounderstand the dynamics. What
(11:50):
are the market drivers,behaviors, those kinds of
things, in laying a strategythat way, if you moved into
like the example, moving intothe robotics market, well, who
are the competitors in thatmarket? How many are there?
Who owns what share? What arethe possibilities of actually
being able to leverage thepresence or perception of our
brand into that new segment?And so all those factors have
(12:13):
to be weighed. But a lot oftimes decisions are made, you
know, in this particularcompanies, you know, is like,
yeah, that sounds good. Let'sgo to robotics. It was like,
well, let's do some duediligence first, before you
invest a whole lot of time andenergy to find out that what
maybe you win one account,what you spent, you know, 10
times 1010, fold, to win that.And so companies don't, my
(12:35):
broad opinion, spend the timeto really understand not only
the market, and they'recompeting in rights, sales are
happening, revenues happening.But you know how much you
missing out on is and so doingthat due diligence to really
drill down, like we do a lotof competitive analysis, and
it's typically a one and done.You know, we're do our annual
(12:56):
competitive intelligence,yeah, but as soon as we're
done with it, competitors dosomething different. If you
don't have an ongoing program,you're in trouble. We see that
with SWOT analysis. And youknow, they they do them, but
they don't really use them,right? Yeah, so can again,
just again, I can't emphasizeenough, is just doing that due
(13:18):
diligence to really identifythe facts, not your personal
opinions. You know, I shouldget out of the boardroom. You
know, I work on a waferstepper company, and did help
make semi semiconductors. Andthere were a million dollars
at the time, a machine was amillion dollars, and they were
making these decisions. And Iwas like, Whoa, time out. How
(13:39):
many of these are youpersonally going to buy this
year? And the answer was none,I said. So why are we using
your opinion, not theengineers that are going to
have to make those decisions?We need to go talk to them.
And so that's another thing,is go talk to your customers,
not not ask your sales people,because it comes back a little
filtered. But, you know, hirean independent person to go
(14:02):
out and talk to your customersand really understand why they
make decisions to hire you,not to hire you, why they buy
what's important to them, howthey even find out about you.
And so again, back to that duediligence.
Scott Ritzheimer (14:17):
So good. I want to take a bit of a
personal turn here. So a lotof folks I work with, a lot of
folks that are listening tothis podcast, are founders.
And one of the things that's alittle different about
founders is like the businessis their baby, and it's true
for nonprofits as well, tosome extent. And one of the
things that a lot of founderswant to do is they want to
(14:37):
leave a legacy behind, right?And particularly from your
lens in terms of your brand orstrategy or kind of the ethos
of the company, how do youcapture that to ensure that
their legacy thrives evenafter they're gone?
Angelo Ponzi (14:52):
Well, that's always an interesting
question, right? Becausedepending on how you sell or
whether you're passing it onto your kids or. Whatever
you're doing. Ultimately, onceyou don't own it, they can do
anything they want to do withit, right? And so, so part of
that is, is ensuring that youhave a strong brand, and that
(15:13):
people don't, if you will,don't want to mess with it,
because it potentially isgoing to hurt them in the
marketplace. And and sothat's, you know, building a
brand takes time. It'snurturing. It takes
investment. It's not anexpense, it's an investment.
And to making sure thatthere's consistency across not
only your communicationsexternally, but internally,
(15:35):
companies do a poor job inreally bringing their
employees on board and makingsure that they understand
their role, what's their theirpiece of the puzzle, and how
it contributes to the wholeand and because everybody they
walk out the door at night,they're not just the
accountant or the, you know,inventory manager, they're
they're a brand ambassador,but if they don't understand
(15:57):
what's going on, they can'tcommunicate. So I think
there's it has to be kind ofnurtured and set along that
people feel proud and and andenthusiastic about working for
an organization, and thathelps to cement, you know,
what that stands for. But, youknow, once you sell it in,
like, in my case, once I soldmy company, they, you know,
(16:20):
we, opted for a completelynew, different name, you know,
my, my name disappeared fromthe from the shingle, if you
will. And that was okay withthat. I wasn't looking for a
legacy of, you know, lookingto grow a business, but those
that want to pass it on, Imean, I think you have to
really nurture it along. And,you know, it's your baby, and
(16:43):
I get that, you know, as I'veThis is my third business that
I found, and I'm veryprotective of it, but I found
ironically with my last name,it doesn't speak well
sometimes you know that that'sYeah.
Scott Ritzheimer (17:04):
Got it. I think the thing that really
struck me there is you justhave to know what's important
to you right, to some it'slegacy, and that's great. One
of the things that you'vedone, if you've reached a
stage where you can thinkabout these things right, or
have to think about them.You've earned the right to do
what you want with it. Right?You may not be able to
(17:26):
maximize some dollar amountbased on all of those things.
Maybe you can, maybe youcan't, but knowing what's most
important to you during theprocess is really what I think
is the most important. And Ilove how you've identified,
hey, this is what I was tryingto do at that stage. Okay, now
you can set your strategybased on that. It was very,
very cool. I've got anotherquestion that I want to ask
(17:49):
you. Ask all my guests. I'minterested to see what you
have to say. Antelope, thequestion is this, what is the
biggest secret that you wishwasn't a secret at all. What's
that one thing you wisheverybody watching or
listening today knew?
Angelo Ponzi (18:02):
Well, I think that's there's a lot to unpack
there, but I think the for me,it's get out of your own head,
get out of the boardroom andgo out into the market and get
the facts. Again. I there's somany case studies of people
sitting around the boardroom,making decisions or not paying
(18:26):
attention to trends in themarket. I mean, just go back
to Blockbuster. Kodak is acouple examples, right? They
knew. I mean, Kodak inventedthe digital camera. You know,
Blockbuster had the chance tobuy Netflix and red box, but
they rationalize that, hey,nobody's going to want to
watch, you know, Kodakpictures on their television,
(18:48):
those kinds of things. So, Imean, you have to be very
aware of what the trends areand what's happening in the
market, and the influencesthat are going on. And so,
like I said, you know, get outof your own thinking. Make
decisions based on facts andnot emotion, I think is the I
wish I could make everybodycan see.
Scott Ritzheimer (19:09):
Yeah, so good Angela, there's some
folks listening, and they findthemselves recognizing that
they they believe that theirmarket is too small, or
they're thinking about thatnext stage, or that next exit,
or that next acquisition, andthey want someone to really
help craft a strategy aroundit, where can they find more
out about you and the workthat you do.
Angelo Ponzi (19:28):
So the easiest way is to connect with me on
LinkedIn that has links to mywebsite, my social channels
and things like that, butLinkedIn is probably the best
on my website. I do have, youknow, some free resources,
some ebooks and things likethat. I'm actually, I'm about
six weeks away from astrategic planning book, if
(19:50):
you will, that we'll beintroducing, and it'll be up
on the website, but the butthat's the easiest place,
everything, all my resourcesare on the website. But to get
there. As easy as throughLinkedIn.
Scott Ritzheimer (20:02):
Got it excellent. We'll get the
LinkedIn profile and hiswebsite in the profile or in
the show notes. So feel freeto click through on those.
Angelo, thanks for being onthe show. Just love, love the
way that you you look at theworld, you look at business.
There's some really greatinsights in there that I think
are very powerful for some ofthe folks listening today, I
know I enjoyed them, and forthose of you who are watching
(20:24):
and listening, you know yourtime and attention mean the
world to us, I hope you got asmuch out of this conversation
as I know I did, and I cannotwait to see you next time.
Take care.
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome, once
(00:02):
again to the secrets of thehigh demand coach podcast. And
here with us today is the oneand only Angelo Ponzi, who is
a fractional and interim cmoCRO CSO and marketing and
brand strategist specializingin B to B, B to C and OTC DTC
markets. He is also a keynotespeaker and author, podcast
(00:23):
host with extensive hands onexperience across marketing,
branding, advertising,research and sales, with a
career spanning diverseindustry verticals and brand
niches include, his portfolioincludes engagements with
notable brands such as at&t,formerly SBC global, Erickson,
Kendall Jackson, and Disney,among many others. He's here
(00:46):
with us today. Angelo, I'mexcited to have you on the
show. Something on yourwebsite just totally
fascinated me, and we're gonnaget into that here in a
moment. But first question foryou out of the gate is
someone, let's say it's afounder. They've built a multi
million dollar business.They've got dreams of the big
(01:06):
exit, right? That they'restarting to set their their
targets. It's easy to thinkthat the numbers tell the
whole story, right? And thismay not even be exit, it might
be acquisition, but in thatwhole space of kind of mergers
and acquisitions, we get sonumbers sensitive, but you
emphasize that's not the wholestory. So what is and what can
(01:27):
we do about it?
Angelo Ponzi (01:28):
First of all, Scott, thanks for having me
on. Excited to be here. Youknow, it's an interesting
question, because I'm gonnabacktrack just a few months I
was invited to sit on a panelon acquiring businesses. And
the the moderator was a VC,and he said, I understand why
(01:49):
the lawyers here, I wonderunderstand why the advisors
are here and the bankers, butI don't understand why
marketing is here and and sowhen I kind of went through my
spiel with him, if you will,the end, he went, I get it.
And so that was an additionaltrigger for me. And and if you
think about whether you're aquiet let's focus on a query.
(02:09):
I mean, ultimately peopleconcerned about the EBITDA,
what you're buying and makingsure it's financially sound.
But I never hear anybodytalking about culture. How
does the company fit together?Is there an overarching
company? Do you roll it up? Doyou keep them separate? What
happens to the customer base?Are you going to cannibalize
your customers? How do yourcustomers feel about this
(02:33):
acquisition? And I'll tell youa quick story after this. And
so by digging into the dataand understanding and going
out and talking to yourcustomers, talking to your
prospects, really digging andtalking to your employees.
Nobody ever talks to theemployees. And so when you
merge two companies together,people start feeling, is my
job in jeopardy? Now theystart thinking, especially if
(02:54):
they're key employees. And sonone of that's really, in my
opinion, done a whole lot upfront, and that becomes
something that's reallyimportant, because ultimately,
you just made thisacquisition, depending on how
big is, how you gonna put ittogether? So I had the
opportunity, and fortunateopportunity, to sell my
business, and it was theybought me, and they bought my
(03:16):
creative partner. I had an adagency at the time. They
bought us both, put ustogether, and we thought this
was going to be great. So wehad employee issues about now,
who do you take? Who do younot take? Adjustments? I
actually was, even though Iwas one of the senior
leadership, I actually tookthe longest to adjust, because
(03:36):
I'd been my own boss for manyyears, but our clients didn't
like it, because we werepurchased by a billion dollar
organization, and they justsaw $1,000,000,000.07 150
people were used to workingwith, you know, a small
organization, and we lostquite a bit of our business
before we even kicked off,because they just assumed we
(03:58):
were beginning to become atraditional, siloed agency,
and so we're so right thereand then, in my own
experience, you know, we had,you know, a lot of work to do.
We didn't handle it well. Theacquisition happened very
quickly. So I think that, youknow, for me, when I look at
whether you're acquiring orlooking to sell, so on the
(04:20):
sell side, we get invited inthat hey, you know, your
EBITDA is not quite there.You're not going to get the
multiples that you want. Youneed to go back into the
market and, you know, generatesome more revenue and
profitability. And when I'mand I I usually get called in.
It's like the bit, they'vebeen in business for 20 years.
They're a 10 million company,and then they want to sell
(04:41):
them three more, and they wantto be a 50 million. And you
know, the rationale for me is,well, it took you 20 years to
get to 10, and you want to gofrom 10 to 50 and three. What
are you going to do different,right? And I don't think
businesses step back andreally analyze, what do we
need to do different? How havewe saturated our. Market. What
are the adjacent markets thatwe can go into? And part of
(05:04):
this came from working with amed tech company. About 16
months ago, I was called in.They wanted me to figure out
how big their market was, Tam,Sam and som. And as I started
to dig into the data, I lookedat their revenues over the
last five years, I could seethat some of their clients
were starting to spend less.They, on average, grew about
(05:27):
six and a half percent a year.But this year that I was
involved in had a 37% hockeystick growth goal. Wow. Okay.
Why? Yeah. And so as westarted to dig into all of
this, and look at the dynamicsof the business. You know,
360, 7% of their business wascontrolled by three companies.
(05:48):
One sales guy controlled about85% of all their business. And
what happened is, we looked atPipeline and all of this, we I
realized that there wassomething up. And I did find
out eventually that theyactually brought me in because
they wanted to sell. They gota poor valuation, or bad
valuation, as they like tosay. And so now they wanted to
(06:10):
flip the script, thinking theycould sell the business in
here. And you know, there wasjust no way that was going to
happen. And so they wereunrealistic. But the fact that
they'd been in business for 40plus years and had no idea how
big the market was. To me,that was just a lot of red
flags. So I think, you know,there's kind of both sides of
the fence, if you will. AndI'll turn it back to you,
(06:31):
because I've been ranked.
Scott Ritzheimer (06:31):
Yeah, there's, there's so many
things that I want to unpackin there. The first one was
the the hockey stick growthgoal. I call it the strategic
planning slot machine. Youknow, it's like you just, you
know, it's the closest thingthat I can relate it to, like
in my own life, other thandoing it myself, but like
outside of work, is when mywife and I were engaged, we
went to AM, we went to Target,and they give you this little
(06:55):
scanner for your registry. Andyou just kind of walk around
and scan this and scan that,and it adds it to the registry
for you, and it feels like yougot it, and you didn't have to
pay anything for it, right?That's basically how a lot of
us treat our strategicplanning like our target GIF
registry, but it feels good.It just doesn't work very
well. But then you brought outa couple of points that that
(07:18):
again in my work, in the exitspace, I see time and time
again, but it's like theseconcentrations, right? We
focus so much on, how do wegrow revenue? How do we grow
revenue? And we think of it asit as if all revenue is
created equal, but it's not.So this is where I think you
know, going back to your VCexample, like, why are you
(07:38):
here? It's why branding needsto have a strategy at the
table, even if you're not likea heavy marketing company, or
haven't been historically, Ithink it's especially true. So
there's so many places tostart with this. I'm just
trying to pick one. But how doyou go about right? Let's say
someone is putting an exitthey find out they're overly
(07:58):
concentrated, either in asales rep or in a couple of
customers. What? What's theprocess for starting to expand
that for, for getting out tomarket in a way that's
healthier and more balanced?
Angelo Ponzi (08:10):
Yeah. Well, that gets back to a deeper dive
into the organization. We, wetend to look in the we broad,
right? Well, we tend to lookoutward more than inward and
and I encourage companies toLet's spend time really
dissecting the internaldynamics. So I work with a
company, I actually still siton their board, and we spent
(08:32):
the first two months of myengagement literally just
looking at their data. And wefound so many interesting
things about they won 30 theywould win 30% of every
proposal they put out. That'sand they were 25 year old.
Company, fantastic, but wheredo they concentrate their
their number one sales personhad 750 accounts, and most of
(08:53):
them were tiny, $1,000 $500right? And but she was
spending her time generatingthat instead of focusing. And
so by just understanding thedynamics, understanding where
their sales were coming from,not only sales, but
profitability, looking at whatservices, products are really
generating revenue andprofitability. You know, what
(09:14):
are the dogs that you mighthave been your first product
that you started with, butnobody's really buying it, and
you just can't seem to lovego. So really taking that
inward look before you startto figure out, where do you
go? This med tech company Iwas talking about, for
example, is they wereconvinced that they had
saturated the market. When Ifirst started working with
them, turned out to be it wasa $7.6 billion market, and
(09:37):
they weren't even close. Butwe were looking at adjacent
markets. How can we use thesame products and services we
have in a new market withouthaving to, you know, start all
over again? And so we foundrobotics, for example, we
could, we could move intorobotics very easily with just
a new hire versus having tocreate all brand new services.
And so again, it's thatspending time to work. Uh, you
(10:00):
know, I call it on thebusiness, right? Work on your
business. Really understandwhere you want to go. Do you
have the capabilities? Do youneed a new distribution
network? This company I wastalking about earlier, as we
wanted to expand across theUnited States, we needed
installers. Well, we can'tship people from California to
go install a unit. So now wedefine places across the
(10:22):
country where could we havedistribution so very strategic
approaches. How do you grow?And how do you grow
efficiently and profitably,versus just growing? Because
I'm sure you know, not everypiece of business is good
business.
Scott Ritzheimer (10:35):
Yeah, for sure. So you touched on
another major issue, and I seetwo equal and opposite
responses to this. They'reboth wrong. So both of them
stem from misunderstanding howbig their market is. Right?
Either, like, overtly, we justthat we've we've maxed out the
market, or inadvertently, wejust believe that we've maxed
(10:58):
out the market, but we'venever actually asked the
question. So the first one is,we have to start brand new
things in totally differentmarkets that don't play to our
strengths, and it's just tryeverything or buy everything,
right? And the other side ofit is, well, we've done
everything we can in themarket. I guess we'll just eke
out a little bit moreefficiency and try to be more
profitable, and revenue willgrow by 6% with the market,
(11:19):
and that's it. And we justkind of coast, right? So how
can folks really unpack howbig the market is?
Angelo Ponzi (11:27):
Well, so part of my kind of back my background
is research, and so I'm a bigadvocate of doing market
research, whether you'redoing, you know, quantitative,
qualitative, predictiveanalytics while you're doing
secondary research, is to getfacts, not only internally,
but externally, to try tounderstand the dynamics. What
(11:50):
are the market drivers,behaviors, those kinds of
things, in laying a strategythat way, if you moved into
like the example, moving intothe robotics market, well, who
are the competitors in thatmarket? How many are there?
Who owns what share? What arethe possibilities of actually
being able to leverage thepresence or perception of our
brand into that new segment?And so all those factors have
(12:13):
to be weighed. But a lot oftimes decisions are made, you
know, in this particularcompanies, you know, is like,
yeah, that sounds good. Let'sgo to robotics. It was like,
well, let's do some duediligence first, before you
invest a whole lot of time andenergy to find out that what
maybe you win one account,what you spent, you know, 10
times 1010, fold, to win that.And so companies don't, my
(12:35):
broad opinion, spend the timeto really understand not only
the market, and they'recompeting in rights, sales are
happening, revenues happening.But you know how much you
missing out on is and so doingthat due diligence to really
drill down, like we do a lotof competitive analysis, and
it's typically a one and done.You know, we're do our annual
(12:56):
competitive intelligence,yeah, but as soon as we're
done with it, competitors dosomething different. If you
don't have an ongoing program,you're in trouble. We see that
with SWOT analysis. And youknow, they they do them, but
they don't really use them,right? Yeah, so can again,
just again, I can't emphasizeenough, is just doing that due
(13:18):
diligence to really identifythe facts, not your personal
opinions. You know, I shouldget out of the boardroom. You
know, I work on a waferstepper company, and did help
make semi semiconductors. Andthere were a million dollars
at the time, a machine was amillion dollars, and they were
making these decisions. And Iwas like, Whoa, time out. How
(13:39):
many of these are youpersonally going to buy this
year? And the answer was none,I said. So why are we using
your opinion, not theengineers that are going to
have to make those decisions?We need to go talk to them.
And so that's another thing,is go talk to your customers,
not not ask your sales people,because it comes back a little
filtered. But, you know, hirean independent person to go
(14:02):
out and talk to your customersand really understand why they
make decisions to hire you,not to hire you, why they buy
what's important to them, howthey even find out about you.
And so again, back to that duediligence.
Scott Ritzheimer (14:17):
So good. I want to take a bit of a
personal turn here. So a lotof folks I work with, a lot of
folks that are listening tothis podcast, are founders.
And one of the things that's alittle different about
founders is like the businessis their baby, and it's true
for nonprofits as well, tosome extent. And one of the
things that a lot of founderswant to do is they want to
(14:37):
leave a legacy behind, right?And particularly from your
lens in terms of your brand orstrategy or kind of the ethos
of the company, how do youcapture that to ensure that
their legacy thrives evenafter they're gone?
Angelo Ponzi (14:52):
Well, that's always an interesting
question, right? Becausedepending on how you sell or
whether you're passing it onto your kids or. Whatever
you're doing. Ultimately, onceyou don't own it, they can do
anything they want to do withit, right? And so, so part of
that is, is ensuring that youhave a strong brand, and that
(15:13):
people don't, if you will,don't want to mess with it,
because it potentially isgoing to hurt them in the
marketplace. And and sothat's, you know, building a
brand takes time. It'snurturing. It takes
investment. It's not anexpense, it's an investment.
And to making sure thatthere's consistency across not
only your communicationsexternally, but internally,
(15:35):
companies do a poor job inreally bringing their
employees on board and makingsure that they understand
their role, what's their theirpiece of the puzzle, and how
it contributes to the wholeand and because everybody they
walk out the door at night,they're not just the
accountant or the, you know,inventory manager, they're
they're a brand ambassador,but if they don't understand
(15:57):
what's going on, they can'tcommunicate. So I think
there's it has to be kind ofnurtured and set along that
people feel proud and and andenthusiastic about working for
an organization, and thathelps to cement, you know,
what that stands for. But, youknow, once you sell it in,
like, in my case, once I soldmy company, they, you know,
(16:20):
we, opted for a completelynew, different name, you know,
my, my name disappeared fromthe from the shingle, if you
will. And that was okay withthat. I wasn't looking for a
legacy of, you know, lookingto grow a business, but those
that want to pass it on, Imean, I think you have to
really nurture it along. And,you know, it's your baby, and
(16:43):
I get that, you know, as I'veThis is my third business that
I found, and I'm veryprotective of it, but I found
ironically with my last name,it doesn't speak well
sometimes you know that that'sYeah.
Scott Ritzheimer (17:04):
Got it. I think the thing that really
struck me there is you justhave to know what's important
to you right, to some it'slegacy, and that's great. One
of the things that you'vedone, if you've reached a
stage where you can thinkabout these things right, or
have to think about them.You've earned the right to do
what you want with it. Right?You may not be able to
(17:26):
maximize some dollar amountbased on all of those things.
Maybe you can, maybe youcan't, but knowing what's most
important to you during theprocess is really what I think
is the most important. And Ilove how you've identified,
hey, this is what I was tryingto do at that stage. Okay, now
you can set your strategybased on that. It was very,
very cool. I've got anotherquestion that I want to ask
(17:49):
you. Ask all my guests. I'minterested to see what you
have to say. Antelope, thequestion is this, what is the
biggest secret that you wishwasn't a secret at all. What's
that one thing you wisheverybody watching or
listening today knew?
Angelo Ponzi (18:02):
Well, I think that's there's a lot to unpack
there, but I think the for me,it's get out of your own head,
get out of the boardroom andgo out into the market and get
the facts. Again. I there's somany case studies of people
sitting around the boardroom,making decisions or not paying
(18:26):
attention to trends in themarket. I mean, just go back
to Blockbuster. Kodak is acouple examples, right? They
knew. I mean, Kodak inventedthe digital camera. You know,
Blockbuster had the chance tobuy Netflix and red box, but
they rationalize that, hey,nobody's going to want to
watch, you know, Kodakpictures on their television,
(18:48):
those kinds of things. So, Imean, you have to be very
aware of what the trends areand what's happening in the
market, and the influencesthat are going on. And so,
like I said, you know, get outof your own thinking. Make
decisions based on facts andnot emotion, I think is the I
wish I could make everybodycan see.
Scott Ritzheimer (19:09):
Yeah, so good Angela, there's some
folks listening, and they findthemselves recognizing that
they they believe that theirmarket is too small, or
they're thinking about thatnext stage, or that next exit,
or that next acquisition, andthey want someone to really
help craft a strategy aroundit, where can they find more
out about you and the workthat you do.
Angelo Ponzi (19:28):
So the easiest way is to connect with me on
LinkedIn that has links to mywebsite, my social channels
and things like that, butLinkedIn is probably the best
on my website. I do have, youknow, some free resources,
some ebooks and things likethat. I'm actually, I'm about
six weeks away from astrategic planning book, if
(19:50):
you will, that we'll beintroducing, and it'll be up
on the website, but the butthat's the easiest place,
everything, all my resourcesare on the website. But to get
there. As easy as throughLinkedIn.
Scott Ritzheimer (20:02):
Got it excellent. We'll get the
LinkedIn profile and hiswebsite in the profile or in
the show notes. So feel freeto click through on those.
Angelo, thanks for being onthe show. Just love, love the
way that you you look at theworld, you look at business.
There's some really greatinsights in there that I think
are very powerful for some ofthe folks listening today, I
know I enjoyed them, and forthose of you who are watching
(20:24):
and listening, you know yourtime and attention mean the
world to us, I hope you got asmuch out of this conversation
as I know I did, and I cannotwait to see you next time.
Take care.
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