Mark C. Winters of RocketFuelNow on InspiredInsider with Dr. Jeremy Weisz

What I got you can't buy it resides between my eyes Walk through the fire Came out better on the other side.

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Wise.

Dr. Jeremy Weiss here, founder of Inspired Insider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders like the founders of P90X, Baby Einstein, Atari, many more, and how they overcome big challenges in life and business. Today we have Mark C. Winters, co authored with Geno Wickman the business bestseller Rocket Fuel, the one essential combination that will get you more of what you want from your business. He's been a leader and Entrepreneur for over 25 years and has worked with companies ranging from multi billion dollar enterprises like Procter and Gamble and British Petroleum to to Raw startups originally drawn up on a napkin. I love the word raw startups. Mark, thanks for joining me.

Thank you, Jeremy. Nice to be here.

So, Mark, I always ask, since it's Inspired Insider, what's been the lowest point in business for you and how you push through?

So, I mean, the lowest point, I can remember that one when we shut down Cyber Explorer, that was a, that was a pretty low point. And the thing that pushed me through that was really, I was learning a lot, so I was very optimistic. And even though it felt like the walls were crumbling down around me, I had gotten a tremendous amount from that experience. And I just had this feeling inside that learning that knowledge was, was going to help me do that next thing, help me not make those same mistakes in the past, but actually open up more doors, more pathways, more opportunities for me to explore and kind of build on in the future. And so I think that future view, not the just kind of stuck in the now or the looking back and thinking about what could have been, but just look at all the nuggets I picked up, all the gold I picked up in the process. I don't remember, you know, getting the dark cloud that I logically, rationally should have maybe had at that point in time.

So right after that happened, were you just right back thinking of what else you should do or did you need a little time?

Yeah. So the way it happened, I mean, I literally was in operation mode for how to sell all that stuff. I mean, so we had the logistics of this big Internet online auction and.

Do you still have pictures of the, of the space?

Yeah. Yeah, it was cool.

I want to post one on, on the bottom of this if you have them.

Yeah, see if I can find one. I'll see if I can find somewhere there's videos. Somewhere there's videos of the like vhs probably. Yeah, probably. I don't know if they're still. They may have melted by now, but you know, where the news crew would come through and do an interview or whatever on site. So there's some of that footage out there, but yeah, so. So I was busy. I mean, I was never kind of stalled for something to do, so I was busy in. Great. How do we wind this down and go through that? And then I quickly. I mean, it was very, very short time gap before I was in that entrepreneur in residence role with Amoco. So it's like, almost immediately I went from when we landed that one to, boom, I was on into the next thing. And it was a nice blend for my transition because it kind of. For my wife's benefit. It had the security of, okay, he's got a job, but it had the, you know, feed my entrepreneurial appetite kind of nature, too. So that's not a. That was a pretty rare and special opportunity that I got to do that.

Yeah. So on the flip side, what's been one of the proudest business moments?

One of the proudest business moments. So there's been a lot of those. I.

You can say more than one if you want.

Well, I'll tell you, one of the coolest ones was, you know, that. The prediction analytics business, when we sold that.

Yeah.

So the way that deal went down, you know, I told you, it took a really long time to do it. And it was supposed to close on a certain date, and I had a vacation scheduled to take my kids to Disney World on the. On the other side of that date. Well, it ends up dragging out. Big surprise takes longer. And so we literally end up. I'm at Disney World trying to finalize this. I'll never forget. The kids are on the Dumbo ride, going around and around, and I've got my cell phone up to my ear, my finger in the other ear, and I've been over a park bench trying to work out the final details on a 401k plan transitioning because the hurricane came in and all the documents got blown away, something crazy like that. But it finally closed. And so about halfway through the week, I'm sitting in the hotel room in bed with my wife. I've got my laptop open, and I see the money move into the account, and I know it's done. And it's all done. All that work, all that build up the creation of value, the finally closing the deal. And it happened. So everybody won that was involved in that. The whole team won. And then I Was able to just shut the computer, turn off the phone, put that stuff all away. Didn't answer the phone for the rest of the time. So that felt really great.

So how do you celebrate that? Once that happens, what do you do?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the celebration there was with the, was with the family. And then we had another celebration when we got back to the. To town and could be together with the team.

Love that.

Yeah.

A lot of hard work, long nights. I'm sure.

That's right. That's right. I mean, some of the things that my team did, our team did, we were just absolutely insane. You know, the coming back from, you know, what looked like the thing that would put us out of business countless times. Not countless, but you know, maybe six or seven times. You'd think, wow, you know, that thing that could kill us. And then they would figure out a way, the team would figure out some kind of, you know, way just kind of out of nowhere to navigate the maze and we come out the other side and keep going. And those moments are really proud. Really proud.

How long of hours were you working at the time? It seems like some crazy technology even now back then.

Yeah. So the, the crazy thing, Jeremy, is my fuel used to be Diet Coke and peanut M M's.

Really?

Oh, yeah. And so I literally would have, in my desk drawer, I'd have, you know, a bag of peanut M M's, like a three pound bag.

I like those.

Do you? Yeah. And I would be drinking, I'd drink a 12 pack or more of Diet Coke a day.

Wow. Holy cow.

I would be, I would go for, you know, 24, 48 hour runs. I mean, just stretches without sleep. So I would just.

Are you serious? Holy moly.

And so, you know, that's just sort of back then and I'm not that way anymore by, you know, intent. But I was kind of a sprinter, right. So I would go until I hit the wall, then I would crash and I'd have to kind of recover and then come back and I would just push and push and push and push and push. And I could do that over, you know, kind of a, kind of a meta arc. And that was just all kind of part of the startup routine. So now I don't do that now I don't pull all nighters now. I don't live on M and Ms. And Diet Coke, thankfully.

How'd you even survive on that?

It was crazy. You know what was weird, I would lose weight too. Figure that one out. I would drink Diet Coke and peanut M and Ms. By The pound and lose weight in the process. Maybe it's a new diet. Yeah.

I mean, it's the Mark C. Winters diet.

Yeah.

Forget Paleo. Just drink Diet Coke and peanuts.

The problem with drinking that much Diet Coke, though, is you can't stop or you'll have the headache of all headaches. Oh, the caffeine withdrawals are brutal from that.

Wow. So what about mentors?

Yeah.

Who have been some of your mentors. And some advice.

So early on, you know, when I was in the Procter and Gamble Army, I had a great. A great mentor that he was a Marine Corps major. He got actually when he's coming out of college at Wake Forest, he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers to play football. He was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates to play baseball. And he was drafted by the US Marine Corps to go to Vietnam. And so that's where he went. And he was one of my managers at Procter and Gamble. And he just taught me a lot about leadership and how to work in a team, how to navigate kind of the different agendas that other people can have in business. And just I think a lot of wisdom when I was really young for kind of thinking further down the road. So that's one of them. The guy that was my partner in the prediction, the rocket scientist, he was a mentor in a lot of ways and a lot of wisdom in different things that he told me through the years. And just again on how to deal with people, how to think bigger and really see the future and look at the landscape for what's next. Geno. He's been a fantastic mentor. Gino. I give a tremendous amount of credit for allowing me to get out of the kind of that startup full on dial, turn to 11 all the time mode to more of a mode where I have way more control over how I spend my time and the percentage of my time that I spend in my unique ability, that LCD that I talked about before, it's an extremely high percentage. And I don't. Except for a rare interview that I may do at sort of an odd hour. I mean, you know, nights and weekends I'm with family. I mean, and that's. That's free time. And so I've got way more structure and control over my time than I've ever had before. And I give him a lot of credit for that.

So what's Gino's score assessment?

You know, I don't know.

I mean, if you. You probably know, like as far as just qualitatively.

So here's, here's what I would tell you is I think, I think he's one of those rare both.

Oh, really?

Yep. And you know, I think he's. I think he is pretty high on both of the indexes. And in my working relationship with him, I can see that his integrator score is definitely going to be higher than mine. But you know, the visionary conversations, the conversations that he and I get to have like that are. They're extremely fun and we both get a lot of energy out of that. So in fact, we were in. Actually we were in your town last week.

Oh yeah.

Okay. And got to spend a little time, you know, one night kind of playing. Playing future and thinking out on the horizon. And I mean it was just, it was just fantastic. Fantastic.

So I have one last question. Mark. Thank you so much for your time on this. This is very valuable. Before I ask it, where can we point people towards. I know you mentioned rocketfuelnow.com they can check it on Amazon, Rocket Fuel and Audible. Anywhere else that we should point people towards to check out.

Yeah, I mean, so for the book, it's available everywhere, you know, and check out the Audible edition for sure. You know, the. If you want to track any information down on rocket fuel, rocketfuel now.com is the place. The. There's a Rocket fuel channel on YouTube. You're going to be able to get to that through the website.

There's a lot of good, like three minute videos that you do.

Yeah, I try to put out a three minute video every week that basically is. It's triggered by questions we're getting from the community. So we have a private group. So folks that own the book, that want to talk to each other. There's really interesting conversations going on in that private group. We actually have people posting. This is interesting, Jeremy. So they're starting to match up. Right. So we'll have integrators that come in there and they sort of raise their hand, say, I'm an integrator looking for a visionary. We have visionaries going, hey, I'm a visionary looking for an integrator. And we are actually having matches made inside that community, which is fascinating to me.

What are they looking for? Just to like start a company.

Yeah. So. So literally it's. It's a visionary that has a company, has a business, they've read the book, they're like, gee, I want an integrator. So yeah, they, they just use that group as a channel because there's all kinds of integrators in there.

Yeah.

And visionaries in there. They just use that as another part of their connection process to try and put the word out and, and, and see if they can find somebody there that's going to be their match.

Yeah. So there's two things to end on, Mark. One, I need to hear the future, what you see, what you're up to, what you know, if I can be a fly on the wall, you and Gino's conversation. But the second thing is I want you to talk about first is the influence. Your dad has a really interesting story influence on you. Can you talk a little about what he did and his influence?

Yeah. So my father was a physician, family doctor. I tell people if they're old enough to have ever watched Marcus Welby, that was dad. And you know, he had these wonderful relationships with his patients. He took care of multiple generations in a single family. So he would deliver the kids and then he would end up delivering their kids and maybe even that next generation's kids. He's delivered probably thousands of babies over the course of his career. And what was funny, people would, after they were delivered, they'd bring pictures to him. He used to have these massive frames, all these pictures of all these kids that he had delivered. Before there was digital photography or you know, I mean, so there's all literally prints anyway he had that, he was a caregiver and so he had this deep relationship with his patients. And you know, medicine has changed, healthcare has changed. And so fast forward to my older brother who's a physician and the world that he's got to live in is a much more transaction oriented world. Right. So he doesn't have those, those kinds of long term relationships. The, the landscape doesn't allow for it.

Yeah.

And so the pressure in healthcare away from that, it creates this really, really kind of funky dynamic. And so I look at the healthcare landscape, having grown up with what it used to be like, and then I look at what it's like today and I find it extremely frustrating and frustrating as a, as a user. So, you know, I'm always looking for opportunities. I think healthcare is a very rich field of opportunity that is totally jacked up and it's absolutely huge. And so we work on some things that are trying to sort of level the playing field, if you will. If you think about the major players of the physicians, you know, the hospitals, the, the insurance companies and then the employers that are involved, all four of those parties are pretty deeply involved in the landscape. And it's really been driven of late by the insurance companies and the big hospitals. And so the physicians are getting squashed down. They're totally at the mercy of those other big players. And so, you know, we're exploring solutions that put them back in control of that. They touch the majority of the money that flows through the system. If we can put them in a place where they can control that and direct that, not only for the good of the patient and quality of care, but for the good of the overall system, we've got an opportunity to really change the game there.

Yeah. And what does Mark do? He creates a software company to do that. So we didn't even talk about the Revelation md, which you started to. That kind of works to solve this problem.

Yeah. So, you know, I can't take credit for starting that one on my own. I'm a co founder. But there's some really good team that have a really wonderful vision around that opportunity as well. But, yeah, that's my personal connection to that whole project is, you know, I mean, it's really come a long way from where it used to be and it needs to change.

Yeah. So on the future side of things, what's exciting to you? What can you tell us about what you're working on lately and in the future?

So a lot of work around the rocket fuel offering. And really we want to help solve the problems that the entrepreneurs value most. I get up in the morning because I care about the entrepreneur, and I want them to experience the freedom and that they were after when they started that business in the first place. Right. So you heard some of these stories about businesses I started, and I landed in a totally different place than what I was shooting for. I didn't get that freedom that I wanted every time, but there are times when I've gotten it. You know, freedom of money, freedom of time, freedom to work with the folks I enjoy, freedom to make the difference I want to make in the world. So if we can use that rocket fuel combination to make that happen, I want more of that. So the book is helping people learn about, you know, the possibility there. We're looking at solutions that help them get together, help them get paired up, help them get matched with their integrator or visionary counterpart, as the case may be, and make that relationship great. So we've got some, you know, some training offerings that we're working on. We want to help basically create great integrators that can work with these visionaries and help make these companies go. And so that's really the next thing. The next thing is, is the set of tools, the set of programs that an integrator can go through that will prepare them and then help us match them up to make more of these businesses winners.

Mark, I'm going to be the first one to thank you so much. Everyone should check out rocketfuelnow.com it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

Love it. Jeremy. Thank you, man. Good to talk to you. Yeah.

What I got you can't buy it resides between my eyes walk through the fire Came out better on the other side like a peach if you find the sand Right now I'm feeling like a hundred grand.