Brand Strategy and FastLane's Role in the Middle Market M&A Ecosystem

Branding for a company is more crucial than you would realize. Your brand is not only the logos and colors that you see but it is also the personality of your brand. Some businesses are struggling in building their brands. One of the struggles is how to communicate and establish their values in front of their customers. In this episode, Chris Faust, founder, and CEO of Fastlane, an independent, full-service branding, marketing, and communications agency, will discuss what branding is and how to establish the values of the brand and communicate it with the target audience. He also talks about how they help their clients establish their brand in front of their customers and what typical clients they’ve handled. Lastly, he gives some takeaways about what are his hopes and dreams for the future.

Key Takeaways

Chris's background and his company
What are Fastlane and its place in the market
Definition of branding and why companies are having problems with establishing brand values
The clients they worked with and the challenges they experienced
Takeaways and wishes from our guests

Quotes

"Branding goes well beyond just a good logo. It involves the entire totality of the experience and touchpoints that a customer or a buyer, B2B or B2C has with that company." - Chris

"We walk our clients through what we call a value ladder. The value ladder is ultimately asking questions that can provide feedback to make the customer's experience better." - Chris

Featured in this Episode

Christopher Lisle
Growth strategy advisor for the ecosystem of investors, Banks, and the companies they work with (middle market).
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kit-lisle
Websites: Acclaropartners.com / strategicgrowthcouncil.com
Contact: [e-mail] / 703-867-7269

Christopher Faust
Founder & CEO, Fastlane
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmfaust
Profile: https://fastlane.co/chris-faust/
Company Website: https://fastlane.co/

Words from our Sponsors

Thanks to our sponsors Acclaro Growth Partners, a strategic consulting firm serving middle market mergers and acquisitions. You can visit acclaropartners.com. Our other sponsor, of course, is Strategic Growth Council, not the podcast, but the Peer Advisory Council slash virtual roundtable slash mastermind group for senior execs and business owners. Contemplating what an acquisition, a sale, or just strategic growth is? Strategic Growth Council collaborates with participants in the M&A ecosystem, such as private equity groups, lenders, investment banks, and relevant service providers. Visit strategicgrowthcouncil.com to learn more.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
01:57 About Chris
06:21 What is Fastlane and where does it fit in the market?
10:10 Working with global leader businesses
13:14 What is the reason that clients come to you?
16:38 Experience with clients that wants acquisition
19:10 Helping clients to prepare pending sales from a marketing communications standpoint
22:51 How do you define the value of a brand?
31:17 What are the typical clients you work with and what are the challenges?
38:10 Thoughts about peer advisory network groups
41:15 Chris sharing his hopes and dreams
44:17 Conclusion

This podcast is produced by Heartcast Media
https://www.heartcastmedia.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Welcome to Strategic Growth Council, apodcast about strategic growth and mergers and acquisitions
for the middle market. Strategic GrowthCouncil provides growth, strategy, planning,
and peer advisory roundtables that meet virtuallyevery month. We focus on solving members
cases or business dilemmas, growth dilemmasas a group, intentionally, consistently and

(00:36):
as a dedicated support team for oneanother. I'm just the moderator, but
feel free to contact me to learnmore. The website is Strategic Growth Council
dot com. And this is ourpodcast. If you're interested in learning more
about organic growth, growth by acquisitionor the sale of your company, the
show should be interesting or useful foryou. Thanks to our sponsor, a

(01:00):
Claro Growth Partners, a strategy consultingfirm serving middle market M and A.
Visit a Claro Partners dot com now. Every episode I interview an expert or
a practitioner in the world of strategyor growth or M and A. And
today I'm joined by Chris Faust offast Lane Consulting. Chris, Welcome,

(01:26):
Thank you, Kit, thank youfor having me on. And I've known
you for many years. Kit,I didn't know you had such a voice
for radio or podcast to get thiscase. And I also have a face
for radio, so it works outreally well. There you go. So,
Chris, this is great. Tellus a little bit, you know,
thirty sixty seconds, a little bitabout you and I have known each

(01:47):
other for probably more than fifty morethan either of us would care to admit
a long time. But thirty tosixty seconds on yourself and your firm.
Sure, So I'll give you theshort form, not the long form version,
so kind of the condensed cliff notesversion, so kind of. In

(02:07):
short, I like to consider myselfmore of a brand and business builder,
fortunate enough to serve on several boards, the past president of several associations.
I started my and I'm also aninvestor, beginning to be an early investor,

(02:27):
small investor in a couple different venturesas well. So I started my
career as the assistant press secretary tothe Governor of Delaware. From there I
moved on to work at person Marstellerin New York City. At the time,
they were the largest reputation management firmin the world. So great platform,

(02:51):
great experience, working with very largefortune fifty brands, a couple large
sovereign entities and you know, individualsdoing all kinds of different types of unique
fun type of work, crisis communications, brand communications, executive communications, PR,

(03:12):
reputation management, et cetera. Fromthere, I became a partner to
high tech consultancy down in Northern Virginiacalled the Merit Group. Pretty well established,
well regarded public relations, strategic PR, and mark Confirm down in that
area, so specialized primarily in thetechnology sector, but now they've diversified into

(03:36):
representing other industries. Then I wenton to move on to the corporate side.
From there, I was kind ofan agency guy. I was always
advising clients what to do with theirlarge budgets, and I hadn't been on
the corporate side, kind of walkingin their shoes. So to kind of

(03:59):
round out my portfolio, I decidedto join a little no name venture at
in New York City called Interworld TechnologyVentures. I think I was the tenth
or eleventh employee hired. I changedthe name to Interworld, and within five
years we became one of the topfive enterprise commerce software companies at the time.

(04:26):
So that was my corporate experience.Corporate NBA kind of building teams,
working globally working with agencies and youknow, eventually taking them through the whole
pre IPO, IPO post IPO processand then exiting. So kind of went
through in a very short amount oftime. The whole life cycle of that

(04:47):
company was a little bit of arocket ship ride and then a just kind
of an equally quick exit because wewas right around the dot com when the
dot com bubble burst, we neededto kind of move on. Then from
there I went to Lincoln Financial outof Philadelphia, was part of the Eagles

(05:08):
stadium naming deal and working with LincolnFinancial in their wholesale LFD division, and
then from there started my first agencybreakthrough communications, grew that sold it,
and then I started fast lating overten years ago today. Yeah, excellent,

(05:29):
Chris. The word communications came upa lot, and I'm curious about
crisis communications. We could we couldtalk about what the Trump folks should or
should not be saying at this time. It's oh yeah, it's September first
that you're going to be hearing thispodcast later than that, but interesting time.
Nevertheless, So a lot of eclecticbackground agency side, the client side,

(05:54):
marketing communications. As I said,So that's great. Now a naive
question. Fast Lane, I thinkdefines itself as a consulting firm, but
you could also call yourself an agency. What's the difference. Where do you
fit into the world of marketing,communications, consulting, brand strategy. How

(06:18):
do you define fast Lane? Yeah, good question. We are a little
bit of a unique agency in thatrespect. We do frame ourselves as an
independent, full service branding, marketingand communications agency, which is a lot
that covers a pretty large spectrum.Within that, we often refer to ourselves

(06:44):
as well as a baby Bane ora mini McKenzie. We do a fair
amount of consulting work where we're doingbrand benchmarking, voice of customer, brand
sentiment analysis, go to marketing strategies, gap analogy. So we're we're involved
very heavily on the strategy research sideof marketing communications because from my perspective,

(07:13):
you can't do really well branding marketingcommunications work and to fundamentally understand that business
and the strategy and the drivers necessaryto move the needle. So we that's
where we get involved on the frontend, doing a lot of primary secondary
research. We really dig into understandthat client's pain points, their problems,

(07:36):
and I think that what makes Fastlyunique in the industry is the custom plans
that we generate are truly you know, tailor made custom plans. So a
lot of agencies they have their bestpractices and their commodity services that they provide

(07:56):
and they're you know, you know, supporting that business in one area,
whereas we take a little bit moreof a holistic approach on across the enterprise,
not just marketing and communications. We'lllook at operations, We'll look at
the executive team, even the boardon how the board can support growth for

(08:18):
a business informing strategic advisory. Sowhen we really are able to kind of
get in at a strategic level,the custom marketing plans that we generate our
geared towards very specific KPIs short andlong term business objectives that we can point
back to and see what's working,what's not working. And more than just

(08:43):
the strategy and council that we deliver, we execute everything we recommend. So
we have a team of fast lanersthat provide the implementation support of everything that
we're outlining in a game plan forthat business. Yeah, I'll jump in
there that this is this is greatso for our audience's benefit, A firm

(09:05):
like our sponsor, Claro Growth Partners, they'll they'll do similar type of work,
primary research, secondary research, createa report, and the output of
that work is essentially what you're describingas kind of the the starting point,
the infrastructure of the foundation. Sothere are firms out there, like a

(09:26):
Claro Partners that you know, sortof start the process and hand it over
and the deliverable the output is awritten report. And what you guys do
is you do that research and analysisfor the purpose of an end point that
is a marketing recommendation or next stepor you know, it serves as kind

(09:52):
of, as I said earlier,the foundation of whatever that next step might
be. Now talk to us aboutwhat that next step, what those next
what potential next steps are they It'ssort of an input into the process and
it's an ongoing process as opposed toit just being a deliverable. Right,
Yeah, that's right. I meanI can give a very relevant case example

(10:18):
in working with a Claro. Soright now we are working with a global
leader in the hardware security space foraccess solutions, and we are looking at
the entire market from a SWAT standpoint, a competitive analysis. We're doing a
full Compintel perspective, and we've actuallypartnered with a Claro to do a full

(10:46):
voice of customer sentiment and analysis workin addition to messaging and positioning. All
of this is being done to supportan upcoming product launch that they're having this
year rolling into next year. Sothis is an example where we are testing
some assumptions and I give a lotof kudos to the leadership in this business

(11:11):
with saying, hey, look,we're a glow. They're already the global
leader, but what they see istheir market share mindshare, HeartShare has been
eroding over the past five or soyears because they have a new wave of
buyers and decision makers coming into thatspace that are looking at things a little

(11:35):
bit differently. They're not your statusquo buyer. They're leveraging technology, They're
leveraging augmented reality. They're they're leveragingdifferent points of data to make decisions on
what solutions to go with in ahospital setting setting, you know, a

(11:56):
large building, commercial building setting,or whatever they may may maybe to do
to employ their solutions. So thisis an example of we are developing the
story, the new kind of crystallizedstory and position for them to go to
market and launch their products that wewill tie to specific revenue drivers. So

(12:18):
we will look at, you know, all of our launch initiatives, and
there's about a dozen different launch initiativesthat are all spearheaded to supporting the launch,
and they go way beyond just traditionalpublic relations, email campaign marketing.
We're looking at doing you know,annual insight trends reports. We're doing true

(12:41):
account based marketing with key accounts andother thought leadership initiatives. Yeah, I
mean, let's back up to thedriver of this. It doesn't necessarily have
to be this particular client. Icertainly don't want you to reveal anything you
don't want to reveal, But what'sthe driver of an engage or a relationship

(13:01):
such as this. You mentioned anew product launch, but that's maybe maybe
that's typical, maybe that's atypical.What is a typical drive or a reason
that a client comes to you andsays, we want to work with Vassline.
So it varies, um, youknow, because we we deal with
customers that are along a continuum intheir life cycle. We deal with large

(13:26):
global two thousand enterprise class clients tothe mid market clients, which is really
our sweet spot and very early stage, venture backed entity. So you know
a lot of times they'll come tous with, you know, a brand
problem. You know, they're namingconvention where they've over the years, they've
acquired a bunch of different businesses,but now they're very fragmented. The left

(13:50):
hand doesn't know what the rights doing. Even from a brand perspective, they
still look very siloed. They looklike, you know, ten different entities
is going in ten different directions,and that's not their ultimate end goal.
Their ultimate end goal is to getbehind that one arrow, to go faster,
to go further. And so it'sour job to kind of take that

(14:13):
a little bit of a complex nowstory that they've created, to kind of
create a little bit more of asingular approach brand consistency, brand story,
naming convention to go to market.So a lot so that's on the branding
creative side, and then even justfrom marketing strategies, what we see often

(14:35):
too is sales and marketing are stillnot aligned. It's the classic problem.
You know, you own a lotof clients where you know, you have
your sales team often running trying tomeet their quarterly objectives, and then you
have the marketing team doing the same, but a lot of times they're simply
not aligned andy integrated to the degreethat they could be. So lately we're

(15:00):
a lot of work in just salesand marketing alignment. It's not sexy work,
but when it's done right, itreally works very well for a lot
of a lot of companies. Andthen the last piece I'll say is technology
disruption. You know, there's justa lot of new innovations and technologies,
even within the mar tech stack,of different types of applications and solutions that

(15:26):
businesses are struggling with. What's theright platforms, what are the right technologies?
Can we streamline our processes? Dowe have the right people in place
to implement some of these solutions?So they're just struggling with the right you
know, direction in some of thoseareas. Yeah. So you know,

(15:46):
our clients, our listeners, ourviewers, our audiences is largely comprised not
of early stage, not of bigenterprise type clients, but the metal market.
So if we focus on the metalmarket and we we think about organizations
that are becoming more strategic, moreintentional about strategic growth, or organizations that

(16:08):
are in M and A mode,they're considering acquiring a business. Maybe it's
the first time they're considering a saleand it's a big deal in those contexts.
Can you give us an example ofeither past experience or situations where you
know, middle market client is facingmore intentional strategic growth or an acquisition or

(16:32):
a sale where you guys came inand solve the need or performed a service
that was really relevant in that situation. Yeah, I mean, I think
you know, one good example iswe have a long time client, maybe
ten year client relationship. It's along time, A long time. I
mean, we pride ourselves most ofour clients have been with the firm for

(16:57):
six to seven plus years UM,and which is which is a pretty good
run rate for a small agency ofour size and growing so UM. But
I think a good example is thatthat account that you know, that's a
client where you know, when wefirst started with them, they were a
small five million dollar company in thehealthcare billings arena, and you know,

(17:22):
five years later, they're well overfifty million UM, probably approaching one hundred
million at this point. And andwe've helped them all the way through the
capital raise process, even working withan investment bank or recently for a successful
exit. So but along that continuumof those past five years, we always

(17:48):
had an exit in mind they started. It's one of the first questions we
ask off is what's what's your endgoal? You know, where are you
trying to be five ten years fromnow? And then we reverse engineer the
process steps and the strategies that welooked for to help support that that end
goal. So that's an example ofa client over a five year perspective where

(18:11):
you know, a five million,little baby firm that was a regional,
local player. We helped them,put them on the national spotlight, became
a national provider, doing channel marketingwith specific key select partners to get them
to that perspective, and then continueto kind of grow the brand and grow

(18:32):
demand very strategically. That's great.So I love the backwards thinking. Yeah,
I have a military background, wasan army officer, and you know,
I like the concept of starting withthe endpoint and backwards planning. But
nevertheless, a sale event, let'slet's let's hypothetic. Like, let's hypothetically

(18:55):
say you have a client that tellsyou five years from now we plan to
sell the business. And other thanthat, I'll leave it up to you.
How do you how do you helpa client prepare for a pending sale
from a brand marketing communications standpoint,So, you know, it's a lot

(19:15):
of businesses that are exploring exits.And we're working with another global HR talent
acquisition company right now that's a headquarterat at Argentina. So we've been working
with this client for several years nowhelping them continue to explan expand their global

(19:37):
footprint, primarily going from a LatinAmerica based company with about ten different business
operations centers in different markets into theUS market and now we're bringing them abroad
in the pan European and eventually AsiaPacific markets. But that's an example of

(19:59):
you know, we're big beginning tohave those exit discussions with them now because
they're at a crossroads of potentially needingadditional capital to get to another stage or
exploring a strategic buyer or a partner. So we're just in the very early

(20:21):
stages of saying, well, eitherscenario, you need to tighten the story
of the business in terms of howyou got to be where you are.
We're enhancing some of their their brandin a couple areas, so right now
their branch offices are operating almost asindependent businesses where we're folding them now under

(20:45):
the parent company, so they're all, you know, contributing to the quarterly
story that they can go to thestreet around their performance. Other aspect is
just looking at the capital requirements tocontinue to run the business for the next

(21:06):
several years, and if they wereto exit, what are the things that
we would do for them to getto that point. So a lot of
times it's a lot of work justcreating some of the data rooms and the
information required for a buyer to review. So we're helping going in and pulling

(21:29):
out key information, asking the rightquestions, generating their reports and presentations that
they're delivering to those different audiences.Could because a lot of them they don't
even have investor decks, investor presentations, or prospectives, key marketing materials,
even some of the data. Theydon't even have the right data pull together

(21:51):
to begin to have some of thoseconversations. Yeah, So Chris, having
done jeez, probably hundreds of duediligence exercise is over the years. It's
often occurred to me that one checkthe box exercise. I hate to say
check the box exercise, but onetenet of overarching mark due diligence should be

(22:11):
brand strategy due diligence or brand diligence, in other words, assessing the value
inherent in the brand. Have youever done anything like that? And maybe
a better place to start, Chris, is how do you define brand?
And? In other words, youknow, if some of our clients,

(22:33):
let's say hypothetically a listener is atwenty million dollar widget manufacturer that they've got
the name and their clients know thename, but they've never really thought about
the brand and the value of theirbrand. So let's start there. How
do you define the value of abrand? Yeah, it's it's it's really
great because we're in a lot ofthese conversations where we're looking at a valuation

(22:56):
of a company or having those conversations, and often the branding is really underserved
or left out of those discussions andrural always surfacing it. As you know,
first of all, let's define youknow, what is a good brand
and how's that contribute to a higherbrand valuation. So branding goes well beyond

(23:22):
just a logo a good logo.It involves the entire totality of the experience,
and touch points that a customer orbuyer B to B or B two
C has with that with that company, and it could be a product,
could be a service, and itcrosses internal and external by the way,

(23:42):
a lot of our branding exercises westart internally. We start with creating the
internal brand champions and ambassadors to carrythat brand forward, but we are really
hyper about looking at everything when itcomes to the way a company positions its

(24:04):
brands. So we look at thebuyer journeys, journeys, we look at
different personas and all of those differenttouchpoints, everything from the time you're approaching
a business or a store, towhat your professionals are wearing, to how
they're conducting themselves to the web experience, you know. So it's the totality

(24:26):
of that experience, and we havedifferent audits and checklists and methodologies that we
walk our clients through in all ofthose areas, and then we come back
with a little bit of a reportcard or report at a high level that
says, you know, here's someareas that you're you have a tremendous amount
of value and this is why customersare buying from you or coming back to

(24:49):
you and then there's here's some areasthat are in needs of improvement. And
then in terms of value. Yeah, I'm just going to summarize for our
for our listeners a couple of termsthat you threw out. So the buyer
journey refers to the stage that abuyer is at in making a purchase decision.
And the personas are just essentially differentsegments of types of customers by demographic

(25:15):
or by personality, and some segmentsor some types of personalities make purchase decisions
in a unique or different way thanother groups of customers might, and you
have to understand those those nuances inorder to be able to sell to them.
Right. But what you're talking aboutthis overarching experience or feeling that you
have in interacting with a company,that's that's the brand. That's what the

(25:38):
brand is, and there is valuein that in having a powerful brand.
And I'm just going to give asimple example. Okay, I saw a
little vignette, sort of a littlemini movie once that was so beautiful and
simplistic. Two characters. One characteris a customer who walks into a cell

(25:59):
phone shot. You may have seenthis, Chris, And the other character
is the salesperson, and so thecustomer walks in and says, I want
to buy an iPhone, and thesalesperson says, great, we sell lots
of different kinds of cell phones.And the customer says, I want to
buy an iPhone, and the salespersonsays, well, let me show you
this phone. It has these featuresand benefits. And the customer says,

(26:21):
I want to buy an iPhone.And then the customer says or the salesperson
says, well, let me showyou this other phone. It has better
features and better benefits than everything elsein the store, and it's way better
in terms of these features and benefitsthan the iPhone. And of course the
customer says, I want to buyan iPhone, and that's it, and
it ends there. But the poweris, you know, sometimes people get

(26:45):
so wrapped around the mystique of aparticular brand they want to be a part
of it, regardless of whether thefeatures and benefits and the way that that
product or service meets unmet needs ismet. It's just the I want to
be a part of that company,right I'm The loyalty that's created is the

(27:07):
direct result, in many cases ofthe power of a of a brand.
Sorry, Chris, I'll get offmy soapbox. No, I think that's
good. I'll give you another analogythat you know, it's it's really down
to the individual consumer level. Butyou know, you go into a restaurant,
you sit down, you have ayou know, you love the food,

(27:30):
you have a great experience, butthe service was less than par.
You walk away from that restaurant saying, you know what, loved it,
loved the food, but the servicewasn't great. You think twice about going
back just because of that one simplepoint from one person not kind of living

(27:51):
up to that brand standard and beable to fulfill on the promise of what
they're expecting. So a lot oftimes, you know, we're getting that
standard, that brand standard, andthe expectation that they then need to fulfill
on in order to have that unifiedbrand experience that creates value and get you

(28:12):
as the company and you as thebrand strategist working with the company, get
to determine what that brand promise isgoing to be, like we stand for
service or we stand for quality butnot service. But the customer ultimately brands
you because it's it's the totality ofall those customer experiences, feedback, loyalty,

(28:36):
etc. That basically determines what thebrand actually the value that the brand
actually has. So that's why it'svery important to pay attention to feedback and
to proactively go out and do whatChris talked about doing as the first step,
which is primary research, secondary researchto understand what the what the needs
and interests and buying behaviors of customersare. I'm doing way too much talking

(28:57):
here, Chris, Oh, Ilove it. And you know what,
we walk our clients through what wecall value ladder. So the value ladder
is ultimately you know, who areyou, what have you done, why
do you do business? What makesyou different? You know, there's a
series of value ladder questions that weask that are associated with different characteristics that

(29:21):
we're looking for as part of thatthat experience, but it all ends up
in that that brand value and howyou're positioning yourself, you know, in
the marketplace and where it gets interestingfor us, and this is where we
spend a lot of time, iswhat really makes you different? Because you
have a lot of brands competing formind share, you know, in a

(29:41):
specific segment, there's a lot ofcompetition. Typically in a lot of different
segments and they're all saying the samething. You could look at a category
or a segment and you have fiveat the top ten providers or even all
of them, and you could swapout one way name for the for the
other, and you think you're stilldealing with the same company. So we

(30:03):
create separation. We're looking for wheredo we create additional separation in the market
share on how you're positioning yourself withreally specific key differentiators that we can measure
with proofpoints that can back up thosedifferentiators. And that's really important because you
get a lot of commoditized language andservices and boducts that are just you know,

(30:26):
they're starting to get the sea ofsameness that we really try to break
them out of. Excellent. Ilove it and I love the proofpoints.
You know, being able to testwhat you're doing is working, and reacting
to things that aren't working and doingthings a little bit differently. So maybe
that leads to a good question struggleschallenges, maybe two questions in one.

(30:48):
Chris, who do you typically workwith at the client and does it vary
by size of company? And whatare some struggles or challenges or hurdles that
you guys deal with on a Idon't want to say on a regular basis,
but just the nature of doing marketing, communications agency brand type work is

(31:11):
that they're going to be some pushback, right, So why don't you talk
a little bit about that if youdon't mind. Sure, So, whenever
possible, we prefer coming in ateither the CEO or oftentimes even the board
level. Sometimes we're referred by aboard member, and if not, we're

(31:34):
usually coming in at the president,CEO, CEO or csuite level. That's
an ideal scenario for us, youknow, And oftentimes, depending upon the
size of the company, we areworking with cmos or CRO chief revenue officer,
chief marketing officer sometimes you know,again we're working with some very large

(31:56):
customers that you know, their VPor direct levels are in charge of a
very large you know, national orinternational budget or segments. They just don't
have the title to support that,but they're very large and what they do.
So, you know, it's interestingbecause in all of those cases where

(32:16):
we find where we get the besttraction, the most momentum, we're really
getting to the heart of the matteris working with the CEO and specifically.
Sometimes the board members typically they're lookingat things a little bit more long range,
more holistically. At a high level, the chief marketing officer or chief

(32:38):
revenue officer, they tend to getmyopic at times in their approach and view,
and maybe rightfully so because they're tryingto hit like specific objectives. But
I think an effective CMO and evena CRO has to kind of think bigger,

(32:59):
go bigger, look at things alittle bit larger like the CEO does,
and be aligned a little bit morewith the with the C suite.
And oftentimes they're not they they're they'recoming in, you know, thinking that
they're solving a problem specific to salesand marketing, but they're not connecting the
dots to how's that really supporting thebusiness? So we come in in some

(33:22):
cases we will undo certain marketing communicationsprograms where we're just simply not seeing any
ROI. They're they're they're either notbeing measured or they're simply spinning wheels.
And you have a lot of peoplespending a lot of time and resources to
an advance a brand, build demand, hit specific objectives, but it's not

(33:49):
tied to the business. It's notwe can't even identified as a top ten
business driver. It's not even it'sso, why are we doing it?
So we ask a lot of whyquestions. We'll ask why sometimes seven times
or five, six, seven timeson a singular question to get to the
root of the matter, and weask it in different ways to really understand.

(34:09):
Okay, but again, why arewe doing this? And really really
question a lot of that excellent answerthe question, I think. So,
I mean, it sounds like there'soften some pushback or difficulty in dealing with

(34:30):
individuals that have established some aspects ofcommunications or marketing within the company that you're
struggling to understand the connection that theyhave between those expenditures and corporate goals and
objectives that have been laid out,and so when you bring that up sometimes
there's a little bit of internal pushbackor conflict. Yeah, and keep in

(34:53):
mind to the average tenure of chiefmarketing officer is I think under two years
now, So you have folks movingand it's the high rate of turn turn
in that position is a problem.And it's difficult for any C suite level
executive to come into a situation wherethere's legacy marketing, communications people, platforms,

(35:16):
programs to get an orientation and thenmake a difference because again, they're
kind of coming into established status quolegacy and a lot of them will run
status quo marketing and that's not goingto that's not going to make it any
longer with the types of technology andinnovation and disruption happening in the markets place

(35:42):
almost on a weekly monthly basis.So you know, we're we're we challenge
a lot of these executives we workwith, and they like that. They
don't want us to be a yesagency. They really want us to kind
of come in as being that thirdparty, unbiased opinion maker because even internally

(36:02):
they sometime sometimes um we'll have conflictsinternally where one has one set of assumptions,
another group has another, and they'lloften come to us and say,
we need a ruling, we weneed an unbiased get awkward. You know,
it's it's very tough to navigate thosewaters internally because you know, we

(36:25):
could end up in the wrong endof that that fight sometimes. But you
know, we always say we lookfor what's right for the business and let
the cards fall where they may.If if we ended up, you know,
for one reason the other being shownthe door it's not because we felt
we were doing for what's right forthe business looking forward rather than zigging zagging

(36:47):
to the left or right. Yeah. I've known Chris for a long time,
as I said at the beginning,and one thing you are as a
straight shooter. Um, so Iappreciate that. And so with Faciland,
you do get that that integrity andcandor two more questions cross will take them
in whatever order you'd like. Onehas to do with I often ask our

(37:08):
guests to share something about a personalor professional ambition, dream, hope,
objective, and so that's one question. And then the other one just has
to do with the concept of whatwe do with Strategic Growth Counsel. So
this is a peer advisory roundtable formiddle market executives that are looking at growth,

(37:32):
looking at acquisitions or potentially selling thebusiness, and we bring those people
together from different industries to talk aboutgrowth challenges or growth opportunities, dilemmas that
they're facing in their business. Andit often helps to bring people together that
are from very different industries because thecross pollination that happens in a round table.

(37:54):
So the second question has to dowith those peer advisory roundtables in any
obvious benefits that you see and eitherbeing a part of that or your your
clients being a part of that.So again, whichever order you'd like.
Sure, maybe I'll talk about thepeer advisory and go back to via the

(38:15):
first question. So, um,I'm a huge fan of peer advisory network
groups. A lot of times wewill establish partner ecosystems and advisory boards for
our clients. That's along these samelines. So I'm a big believer that

(38:38):
many minds make lighter work. Andin terms of knowledge sharing, you know,
you know, you force a levelof knowledge sharing and collaboration that can
advance any cause or any business whenyou have the right group of individuals in
a in a room that are thinkingabout a similar cause or again problem or

(39:04):
issue. And so I welcome it. I just think that the amount of
insight intellect um, you know,ideas that are often shared, um,
you won't get if you try tojust tackle that yourself or even internally.
So and and a lot of leaderswill I think they tend to look inward

(39:29):
they should, they tend to tryto take it upon themselves, um.
And they don't look for that help, they don't look for that support when
it's it's there. You just sometimeswell I think, yeah, yeah,
yeah, Chris a right to interrupt. I just the DNA of an American
CEO is is never to say Idon't I don't have the answer. That's

(39:50):
just not in their DNA. Soit's difficult to share. Hey, I
have a problem. I have adilemma. I have an opportunity, and
I'm not sure how to how togo after it in a public setting.
It's just not in our DNA.But I just read a great Harvard Business
Review article that talked about leadership andone of the most important tools a leader
has is asking questions, asking questionswhen you know the answer, but also

(40:15):
asking questions when you don't know theanswer. And it's that power of asking
the right questions that gets to theanswer. For in other words, in
a group setting, somebody might say, here's my dilemma, I don't know
what to do with the employee three. Well, if the right questions are

(40:35):
being asked, then the answer isgoing to come immediately, and the group
is going to have asked all theright questions, and the person who asked
the question is going to have theiranswer much more efficiently. And the answer
was often going to be a moreeffective answer than they would have arrived at
on their own. But the importantpoint is so much more efficiently as opposed

(40:58):
to having that issue way on themfor oftentimes days, weeks, months,
even years. Um, all right, Chris, you're up. So back
to the tough question, the questionabout ambitions, dreams, hopes, aspirations,
objectives personal or professional. Sure,well, I guess this is more
a little bit more on the personalside, but I'm going to try to

(41:20):
translate it over to making a goout of it on the business side.
Um. But I'm proud to saythat I'm a cancer survivor, so I
was gonna if you hadn't said that, I was going to bring it up.
So yes, so you know,I you know, I went to
a pretty pretty arduous, difficult cancerscenario five year battle. Thankfully i'm cancer

(41:45):
for you today. But it putthings in a whole new perspective for me.
I think I think I was prettygrounded before. You know, I
had my faith, my family andmy business and the right priorities. But
when you are read last rites andwhen you are triaged multiple times, and

(42:06):
you know, really, you know, at that point where I was pretty
close to moving on and have tobe able to come back from that and
move forward and come through the endother end. It does kind of change
you a little bit. You know, I do things a little bit differently.
I look at the world a littlebit differently. I prioritize things a

(42:30):
little bit differently from that that perspective, And every day for me as a
bonus, truly, every day Iwalk, I wake up, I put
my feet on the ground, andyou know, I thank God that you
know, it's a bonus day forme, and I try to make the
most out of it. So youknow, I'm pretty energized every single day
that you know, the folks andyou know, fifty plus fascinators that see

(42:52):
me, they wonder why I'm alwayssmiling, why I'm always happy? You
know, how do I do whatI do in any given day? And
so I'm I've reached that point whereI started to kind of look at what's
happening in just the world at large, and there's so much negativity with you
know, pandemics, you know,wars, rumors of war, and you

(43:15):
know supply chain issues and all ofthese different global problems that you don't see
the positive, you don't hear aboutthe positive any longer. You know,
journalism is now become weaponized in somerespects, and you're not getting the objective,
unbiased you know, stories that youonce used to get. So I've

(43:38):
started toying with the idea of creatinga good network simply good, all about
good and delivering good and businesses thatare doing good, highlighting success stories around
the concept of good. And ifyou think about it, that it's it's
one of the largest markets you couldever possiblebly want to go after. And

(44:00):
surprisingly you look at publishing, broadcasting, any numbers of industries, they're not
really focused on good, well,not just that concept. I love it.
I love it, Chris, andI'd love to be a part of
that if and when you get thatthat network together. Thank you for being

(44:22):
you. You've always been, asI said, a straight shooter, but
also a positive light and U andI think everybody in the world that knows
you appreciates that. And you know, I wanted to say, of all
the folks that I know that areas positive and optimistic and good as you
are, I think about that thatgroup, and many of those people are

(44:45):
cancer survivors. How about that interestingfood for thought. Well, thank you
Chris, I appreciate your time andcollaboration. Any final thoughts or comments from
you before we wrap up here?No, I thank you time for the
time. I'm kit Um. It'sa great discussion, so hopefully it can
come back and we can have adeeper dive on some other specific topics.

(45:07):
How can our listeners find you?Um, fast Lane dot dot co.
So we're fasclating dot co dot dotcom and FASc Lane. Last year we
acquired several businesses, so we haveNexus Group. Nexus dot com is a
licensing group we acquired. We alsoacquired Sports Business Institute, so we have
a number of companies that we haveacquired last year that are all under the

(45:30):
fast Lane parent company and an umbrella. But I think thesiest ways of just
going to fast Lane dot cont dotcom perfect. Thanks Chris, and thank
you to our listeners, and remembervisit not only fast Lane dot co,
but also visit our sponsor at Claropartnersdot com and of course please visit Strategic

(45:52):
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