287 - How to Thrive in Business: Technique to Understanding Client Needs with Altitude B2B's Jonathan Stacey

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Jonathan Stacy, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder and CEO of a consulting company in Toronto, Canada called Altitude B2B consulting and the website is altitudeb2b.com. So let's just start off with a little bit about your backstory. How'd you get into the business?

First, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. Definitely very excited to speak with you. Just to give you a little bit of background myself, I like to think of myself fairly young, but I was just, I had a pretty great career, 10+ years in the banking sector here up in Canada. I became a director of a $3 billion department by the time I was 27 through a, not just hard work, but helping manage a team. And then I became actually working with directly with the VP of Wealth Technology for TD Bank, which everyone's very familiar in the US. It's one of the largest banks here in Canada and also in the US. I worked with them until it was a similar story with many people in the world. Mid-pandemic, people were locked down. I was working 16-hour days and I just said, something's got to give, something's got to change with just my life. And I really wanted to make a change, not just with work, but how I was growing, how I was living my life. So I basically quit with a no real game plan in place yet, but I said, you know what, I'm going to figure it out. I've always been very entrepreneurial. I've always had some sort of side gig going on since I was like 14, 15 years old. And my fiancée at the time, and now wife as of this year, said, she said, hey, I will support you. You do this. I believe in you and we'll figure it out. So that was back in 2021. Since then, I started Altitude B2B Consultants. We've definitely made a few pivots, but we've worked with 150+ clients over a 3-year time span. And really from there, we've done everything from helping them get access to government grant writing. To acting as fractional COOs for them. And now, as of most recently, because my wife joined, who has a marketing background, we're really trying to help clients with a marketing SEO focus and helping them drive revenue, drive organic traffic to their sites, to their business. Just because a lot of businesses are saying, hey, I can't pay for a fractional COO because I need to drive more revenue. So we said, how do we drive more revenue? We got to get more people in the door or online. So that's where we're really focusing with clients. And we've made this transition early back in 2024. It's been absolutely fantastic. We've helped a few clients with that and we're continuing to grow. So we are technically, I would say, in a transition mode right now, but we've been rebuilding our business as we grow. And definitely this is our niche that we found has been working out. And I'm always super excited. I've been doing working for myself. For now 3 years, I would never turn back. And I'm always happy to just talk with clients, help them out, find out what problems they have, and really build a tailored solution for them. So that's where I've really found my, call it life's calling. And so happy I've been doing that.

So you go from a career, a very successful career in banking to then quitting and becoming a fractional CEO and then figuring out that's not working because people can't afford a fractional CEO. So now we're going to pivot to Internet marketing, helping people with their websites, driving traffic, hopefully traffic driving revenue through organic SEO content.

Exactly.

And all that stuff.

Exactly. And I had some great clients working as a fractional COO. I helped clients like startups in Canada, the US, the UK, but really with those, that kind of business, you're selling your time for money, which was not a problem, but I only have so many hours in the day. Instead of working corporate, you're still selling your time for money. Here and what can I build that I can still help clients out, but build something that's scalable too. So that's where we've made that, that pivot. But yeah, we've helped lots of clients out from small to medium-sized businesses, to law firms, to restaurants, to manufacturing. And it's been absolutely fantastic.

Yeah, you began to answer my next question. What kind of, what industries are your clients in? Just mostly small business in the, around North America?

Definitely North America has been our focus. Obviously US market is 10 to 20 times bigger than Canada. We've helped science in the US, Canada mainly, but we're definitely not opposed. The principles, we always say Google runs this, runs this world these days with their search engine. So until someone beats them, we're playing within Google's world. The same principles apply across the world really at the end of the day. So we're putting in principles that have worked. We actually have use cases of previous clients that we can showcase, hey, after month over month growth, this is what we do. But yeah, to answer your question, we've worked across every single industry. Right now we're focused more on professional services. So law firms, veterinarians, doctors, because one of the big issues there is they have a super high pay-per-click. So if they're doing like paid advertising, they're paying $45, $50 per click, which is insane. So we're trying to say, guess what? You can still drive organic traffic without paying thousands of dollars per month. We try to be cheaper than that and show you why. And Of course, what we do has long-term effect where pay-per-click is just once you turn it off, you're done. Right. So that's where we try to build that long-term solution for clients.

So you, how did you, how have you educated yourself in all this? So it sounds like it's all new SEO stuff is all, and content marketing is all pretty new to you. So it wasn't in your initial wheelhouse. How do you go about learning all this stuff?

Yeah. So great question. So one of the good things is obviously my wife had the marketing degree before. I've always been more of a financial operational. Person just by nature, but I've also been like highly motivated. I've learned many businesses inside and out through literally just looking them up online or through my fractional COO work. The good thing about the world we live in these days is that you can find anything you want online. If it's YouTube videos, forums, Reddit, there's no excuse these days. You can learn whatever you want these days. And that's what we did, right? We built out our procedures or processes for clients. We built out our SOPs on like how we can help clients out. And each client is still unique in nature. So even though we have built out processes, sometimes we're still learning on the go as, as we help out clients. But the reality is they just don't have the time to do this. So it's like they pass it over to us to figure it out on their behalf and we figure out the solution. Every single problem has a solution and luckily we can just pull out our phone and figure it out. That's where I've learned and to really grasp that knowledge, but between me and my wife, we've been figuring it out and she's really been driving the needle forward here with this business.

So I'm, I am, what's the word I want to use? I suspect that the basic process remains unchanged and that is that you'll get a new client in, you'll do an analysis of what the client provides, what their services are, who their perfect audience is. Then you do a competitor analysis, who are the competitors out there on the internet?

Yep.

You'll go to a search tool like Keywords Anywhere, do a keyword, long tail keyword search, find out what the cost is, what people are searching for, hopefully find some buyer's intent, and then start creating content around those keywords to see if you can't start driving traffic to the website. Is that the basic, kind of the basic—

No, you definitely hit it on the head there. And that's where we definitely do that from like an SEO perspective. And then we get into like content marketing for them. If social is something that makes sense for their business. And we say like a lot of businesses these days almost need to be their own influencers because especially the next generation, like Gen Zs are always like on their phone all the time. And if they want to go to a restaurant or look up a new dentist, guess where they're going to be? They're going to be on their phone. So how do we drive that traffic? So really we're like helping businesses out that sometimes are not tech savvy and they just don't have the time. I don't have the time to be like posting things on Instagram or TikTok or whatever you have. But if you want to drive new traffic, especially from the younger generation, that's what you need, where you need to be. So definitely a very different business model than even 10 years ago, what it was. Definitely having that digital presence and online is super key for continued business success for our clients.

Right. No, I agree. I have a huge digital presence in it and I do a lot. I do outsource a little bit of it, but I do a lot of it. I do a lot of it myself and it is time consuming to do it well. Interesting. So what is it that gets you up in the morning now that gets you excited to, to do this work?

Yeah, honestly, definitely seeing results for my clients is the reason we continue to push forward. I always had a vision and a mission for this business to be like that one-stop shop for clients to help them with their business, right? And that's my business is to help them with their business. Usually we're helping them more than what we put into our own business. So sometimes we help clients install or set up a new website, set up their SEO, set up CRM. You name it when it comes to that marketing perspective. And sometimes I don't work on it myself, but seeing the results for our clients time and time again is the reason we continue to push this forward. Because A, we know that what we're doing is the right approach. We're definitely being very ethical, especially there's a lot of ethics when it comes to search engine optimization. I'm sure every single one of your visitors and, sorry, viewers and yourself, you probably get daily emails about, hey, I can get you number one on Google every single day. Everyone gets those emails. Even I get those emails. And the approach they take is not actually, it's very unethical from like Google standpoint. And you might look great for 30 days and then Google finds out what you've done and then you get like super deranked. So definitely like everything we do is super structured. It's the right approach. Google changes their algorithm every 3 months. We stay on top of that, figuring out how we can rework it with clients, especially their latest release with Google SGE, which has an AI algorithm based in. We kind of say, how can we make sure that we stay on top of this for clients, build a strategy for them? And that's where that makes us wake up every single day and know that what we're doing is absolutely amazing for clients and they're seeing positive business results.

So Jonathan, what do you think is unique about you? That you brought to the table that makes all of this successful coming from the banking industry, then to being a COO to now being involved in SEO?

Yes, great question. And definitely it seems like, John, you've done so much and you're all over the place. What's going on here? I always like to say, I just like to wear many hats from marketing, finance, operations. At the end of the day, as I mentioned, I like to help businesses grow and thrive. Definitely with my wife as like a marketing expert. I like to think of myself as a marketing expert, but she's definitely the marketing expert. But we find like what a client needs and help them grow. I like to think too, like we're the, the Ferrari of services for the price of a Cadillac, right? You're not going to get the cheapest car per se, because it doesn't always work, but you're going to get a car that's nice, that you're going to get forward. In it and you're going to look good doing it too. Maybe not always the best analogy, but I like to think that like we, we definitely provide like a very valuable service to our clients and we like to think our clients' price point, they can't afford tens of thousands of dollars per month. That doesn't make sense for them. So we definitely try to build it within a threshold that works with them. And it's also a lot cheaper than working with hiring a full marketing person per se. And we provide 4 to 5 different roles within our packages for them. So they get 4 or 5 different resources for price of half a resource. It's always like a fractional, fractional engagement also. That makes us a little bit different.

Right. Are you guys hybrid, remote, or all in person?

Yes, obviously with being in Toronto, Canada, we are definitely, most of our work is remote, but definitely some of my local clients, like Toronto is a fairly big city, 6 million people. We've gone to clients' offices all the time. We're working with clients across Canada, across the US right now. I do always like to say, especially some of our clients that we've been working with for a while, like we need to go out there and just visit them in person, fly out. It's not crazy to do that. And that's what I'd like to do, especially, you know, if people are in like nice warm areas like California or Florida, obviously not now in Florida, but you know, soon in a few months, obviously you would love to visit people more so, but we do, I would say 95% plus of our work remote. And especially in this day and age, video calls are very smooth. There's no need to necessarily be in person. We can get access to everything they have remotely. And perform their work here. Not a problem, but of course, you know, I like to see people in person too.

So your team is all remote too?

Yeah, all remote. So again, primarily me and my wife. We have other resources in Canada and then we have a few like virtual assistants actually in Philippines that more help us with our internal work. But like everything that's being performed for our client would be within Canada.

Ah, okay. Let's pivot to listening. This show is called Listening Without Leaders. I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker. And I teach people 21st century listening as opposed to 20th century listening.

Okay.

Which is active listening, but that active listening doesn't work. It never has worked. So I teach a form of listening that allows you to validate what another person is saying so they feel deeply heard. I'm curious about how your listening skills have evolved over the years, starting out when you first got into banking and then moved up the ladder and then got out and now as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, no, definitely very interesting. And as I mentioned to you earlier, definitely listening is absolutely critical to my success in my career and business and life in general, right? I would say open communication, especially now I'm recently married, is definitely going to be critical to our sustained happiness. But definitely, luckily within my career, I learned very quickly. I became a manager of a team. I'm trying to remember about 8 people. Early, like I was probably 26 at the time, to manage people that were older than me, that were younger than me. How do you manage that? And definitely listening is absolutely super critical there. And then when I got promoted again, working closely with $3 billion department, there was 1,200 resources, learning very different personalities, very different people, working with the CEO of Wealth Technology and people right below the CEO of TD. You had very different levels and hearing those opinions, you have to listen because not only do people, everyone has a different experience in life and a different opinion. And by taking all that in together, you get to find, okay, what, how do we solve these problems? How do we move forward the best way possible and get agreement? So I definitely never think that I'm the smartest person in the room. You can never think that. You have to listen to everyone's opinion and then work together as a team to move forward, as I always find the best way possible. So that's how I've used listening. To not only get quickly advanced in my career, but definitely throughout growing a business, working fractionally, and then in life too.

So you ever run across people that don't know how to listen?

Oh, all the time, all the time. Or they just want to talk and I have to listen.

There you go.

Yeah, so there's definitely a few situations that, you know, all the time, more personally than like in business, but even in business, people have different personalities and they might not agree with you, or they're just like hard to work with in general. And that's where you gotta see, okay, you have to listen. You have to figure out like, what's the best way to work with this person? Even if your personalities are clashing naturally, how can you make this work? And sometimes it is tough for sure. But definitely if you don't have that open roadway of communication, like it's never gonna work. It's always gonna be broken. So I always have tried to keep it open and open-minded for sure.

If you were talking to a young person, say 18 or 19, who's just out of high school, maybe going to college, thinking about a career, a business career, what would you tell them about listening?

I would definitely say, and I could go back, like, how did I think when I was 18, 19? But everyone thinks that they know everything getting out of school. And definitely the real world is very different than school. You learn twice as much, I feel like, being out of school, but I always say, keep an open mind, definitely always stay positive and ask for advice. People have been in, if you get a new job or you're looking for a job, ask around. If you say yes to everything, then the doors will open up, right? And even jumping on conversations or podcasts or networking groups, by you keeping an open door, those are going to open up all of the activities and people want to do business and want to work with people they know and they like. So. How do you do that? You gotta get in front of them. You gotta be positive and, and, and then work with them. That's my advice to them is especially job market's starting to get a little bit tougher out there, but I always say there's a lot of opportunity. There's always opportunity in any sort of market. You just gotta be looking for it and you'll find it.

So where do you see yourself in 10 years?

My, my parents always make fun of me. They say, oh, you'll be selling mattresses in 10 years. I'm like, not like they'll jokingly, because they're like, because I keep on changing my career path from banking to fractional COO to working with like startups. And it's honestly been a great journey. And I've also had so many different side gigs as I was growing up. Definitely what we find is what our offerings have been super successful lately. So this is definitely the path we're on. Definitely building this agency out is our goal, our, um, and keeping remote. So definitely one of the reasons why we started a business is to have that work-life balance, right? Everyone always talks about this work-life balance, but do people actually have it? So that's where we can grow, shrink, do whatever we want. And definitely if we have 5 clients and we say that's enough, we can just stop it there. Definitely no issues from us. And being in charge of your own destiny is a great feeling to have. And where I'm going to be in 10 years is my goal is to be in the exact same spot as in I have control of my destiny and I can do what I want and hopefully travel, see clients, go on vacations when we want and live life. Yeah, maybe from a personal side, things might change with like kids and getting houses and all those things, which would be obviously fantastic. And, but you never know where 10 years are gonna, where you'll be. But I think we'll definitely continue to help businesses grow, succeed in any sort of market. So that's definitely our goal and what we want to achieve for our clients.

Yeah, it's pretty clear that your passion is doing that, helping businesses grow and succeed and thrive. No matter what the underlying economic conditions are.

Exactly.

And it's interesting that you develop a unique set of skills that allows you to be successful. That's why you're successful. How many marketing people spend 10 years in banking looking at businesses inside and out, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So it gives you a unique insight, I think, that a lot of other people in your business don't have. One more question, then I'll let you go, Jonathan. What's one thing about yourself that we'd never know about unless you told us about it?

Hmm. Good question. One thing that no one would know. I always like to think of myself as like an open book. I definitely like to be social. I like to be social. I like to be a little bit outgoing, but like at the end of the day, like I'm shy too. I try to be outgoing and I just learned that everyone, especially like in networking events or meeting people for the first time, you know, I don't know you on a personal level, but I'd like to, and everyone's thinking the same thing, right? By putting yourself out there and starting a conversation, trying to keep it going, you get to learn about people, you get to befriend them and hopefully do business together. Or at worst case, we're just good friends. I have a lot of good contacts that live in Colorado, live across North America, California, Florida, and we've never met in person yet. We have like monthly calls together just to catch up. How's everything going? How's business? What can I do to help you? And sometimes we just help each other out and that's like a network that I love and people wouldn't realize that sometimes I'm a little bit shy. That's maybe a good secret to release. But yeah, honestly, you go back and say, oh, that was like tough, but I'm happy. I'm happy what I did and happy that I could converse with Doug and with all your podcasters. And that's amazing.

Well, good for you, Jonathan. I've really enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking time out to tell us about you and your business.

Perfect. Thanks again, Doug, and appreciate it. And, uh, yeah, wishing you best of luck with everything and hope to talk with you soon.

Get out here to California and visit Yosemite.

Sounds good. I love it.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast. Doug Noll, D-O-U-G-N-O-L-L.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.

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