Foundational Principles - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 015

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Today's guest has a consistent record of achievements, including some time playing football for my favorite college team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. He's an influential thought leader, proven track record, and an innovative disruptor. He's president at LiquidMind. And I'm excited to hear more from Brian Speltzer. Brian, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it. Great to be on the show today.

Yeah, great to have you. Well, let's just kick it off. I know we talked a little bit about this the last time we met, but I ask every guest, from your perspective, what do you see that C-suites might be missing out on today? What are the opportunity or opportunities that you see that the C-suite might be missing out on?

Well, and talked about a little bit last time, Joe, I see the opportunity is really a lot of times intangible. A lot of people look at tangible things. Financials and product. And what I look at is getting down to the ground floor from a cultural perspective in the company, you know, inspiring the team, being passionate about what you're doing, ingraining that on a day-to-day basis, being committed to it, being authentic to it. And all the companies and brands that I work with, it's interesting because I don't see the C-suite in many instances, especially the larger the company gets, the less tangible they are to those underneath them. And the team many times needs that tangible CEO down on the ground floor with them locking arms, but also probably more importantly is instilling a culture in the company. A lot of times with companies and brands, they don't necessarily know who they are. And a lot of times that drives not only internal passion, but external passion as well. It's a lot of what drives equity in a company. And I see that as a big myth many times. And many times I go and I talk to CEOs about that. It's a little bit of that dirty work that they have to do, but those that are passionate around the brand and the company don't mind doing it. So usually it leads to the fact that they're not a brand or a premium company, which there's nothing wrong with that. And if you're a commodity, it's a little harder, but nonetheless, you still have a culture and that's one thing a lot of them miss out on. Yeah.

You know, I was just talking to a business owner, it's kind of a second generation just yesterday. And, uh, they're struggling with culture and accountability. And I started just asking simple questions like, you know, how clear is your executive team on core values? And how do you, you know, communicate those to your team? And we just had that conversation around simple things that should be done but aren't always done. How do you think that's been impacted by the pandemic? Has it made it worse or better?

I actually think it's been worse. I think that the issue that you get to come across is that either you lead or you follow is the first thing. And then either you're passive or you're proactive. And those that are proactive in making sure that the team is comfortable with the situation of the company, because what I found many times, and I'm sure you did, Joe, with the pandemic is that There's this disruption with not just product, it's a disruption with your day-to-day. And the day-to-day is affected by are we going to still be here tomorrow? And so I find that during this pandemic that the culture and being in contact with the team, making sure they understand what your company stands for, as you'd mentioned, but then also where the company is going, anchoring kind of what I call the foundational principles of the company and where they're going in the future and ensuring that everybody's on board with that and they're passionate about it because that bleeds out to their community and the community wants to know what they're doing as well. A lot of times I call it the ostrich syndrome. It's these CEOs that, you know, put their head in the sand and, you know, eventually they come out hoping things have changed, but it's actually gotten worse. And so you don't want to avoid it. You want to take it head on and be very proactive, not passive with it.

Yeah, for sure. The pandemic certainly put some people's head in the sand, whether they liked it or not. So you've got a new book coming out.

Yeah, I think you're—

You've got a book coming out called Visionary Brand. I'm curious how that— so I think you would've been writing it or drafting it during the pandemic. Before we get into kind of the guts of the book, curious how the pandemic affected your writing writing of the book? Did things change in your vision for the book itself, or fundamentals were steady throughout? I'm curious how that whole thing affected your writing process.

Yeah, thanks. So I actually started the book, interestingly enough, in 2019. And so in the beginning of 2019, so it's been this labor of love for 18 months. And You know, the principles that I laid out in the book, these, what I call these foundational principles of a visionary brand, hold true whether it was a pandemic or whether it's just regular course of business. And the reason I say is because what I've done in the book is I've actually analyzed generation, what I call generational brands, the ones that have been around forever and they've gone through these ups and downs and cycles in the, in industries as well as the economy. Those that stick to the foundation of who they are, how they run their company, this whole principle around building a foundation that will take this company not only for years, but also generations. And kind of the foundation I built that off of when I was writing the book was that how this failure rate of startups and, you know, the understanding of how did these brands, these Apples and Nikes of the world, how do they withstand this crushing blow that these small companies have to deal with on a year-to-year basis and stand generationally and still have people passionately embracing the company and their products after generations? You know, they just don't seem to grow old. You know, they're, they're still youthful brands. And I found that very intriguing and interesting. And you'll find And that's a great example. Apple is a great example of never changing your foundational principles of what built your company and your brand. It's a passion around elegance. It's a passion around simple sophistication. It's a passion around building premium products that aesthetically are pleasing, but also simple to use. And so these are all things that still hold true even through the pandemic. And looking at their last financial report, obviously it's held pretty true and they've done very well.

So yeah, and, and I always, I'm curious how studying those iconic brands, what are some of the tangible takeaways that, you know, a less iconic business, you know, even a mom-and-pop kind of retailer can take away from to help improve their business today? You know, it's hard to think you can look at Apple and, and as a lesser-known company, be an Apple in your own way. But certainly there's some fundamentals that you've laid out and discovered that make sense and are true to any business today.

Yeah. And I feel the first thing is, you know, the positioning around the company and your brand. And when I talk to companies, and in the book I outline that section called positioning, but I also talk about market Driving versus market-driven. It's an interesting concept because, you know, you get these, I call it, you know, being an innovator, not an imitator. It's kind of the very same thing as market driver versus market-driven. Market-driven is the imitators and market-driven are innovators. And so any, any company, you know, and the book was meant to be not specifically around a particular brand or product. Anybody can apply the principles that I put in the book. And I actually put a graphic up there, which is these pillars of a foundational visionary brand. And what I say kind of visually, which helps a lot of people, as you take away one of those pillars, guess what happens is the foundation starts to crumble. And, you know, building your foundation on rock versus sand and, you know, making sure that in tough times that you're not blown away, but you can actually stand. And I think that's a lot of what retailers, brands, companies are dealing with in this pandemic is they don't really have a great foundation. They don't even know who they are. They don't have a passion around the authentic positioning of their brand. And they haven't put in place, which is very important, and probably the most important thing, and I'm going to talk specifically about a product, is just having what I call product innovation pipeline, having a pipeline of innovation, which is year after year, month after month, quarter after quarter, always having something that's generational, its impact to the marketplace in your particular category and growing that. So There's a lot of areas that I would say specifically on the takeaway is that the positioning of the company be market driving versus market driven. Have a process in place that allows you to create this product innovation pipeline. And for a retailer, for instance, they can do that as well. You know, you've seen this transition with Amazon and, you know, how do you, how do you, this whole, I also have in the book as well where you talk about this purchase lifecycle. You know, put yourself in the position of being a consumer when you're purchasing your products. How do you make their purchase cycle simpler? How do you build this loyalty loop I talk about? Don't— traditional marketing, as we know, Joe, is you go out there and you have the P's of positioning and purchasing the product, and then you kind of spit the customer out the back end and move on to the next one. It's a different world we live in now. Retailers and consumers and brands and D2C all have to have this loyalty loop that they never had before. Is it embrace them when they do purchase and after they purchase is when you need to start engaging even more. So, so there's a lot of principles I put in there which are beneficial to any type of company that may have the, may not have these in place now, or what I call a little bit of that old school of not feeling comfortable. I put it in a very layman's term on how to do it and what a visionary brand looks like. But even if you have some of those principles, You've kind of gone down the path of where beyond where you are today to kind of taking that next step towards being a visionary company or brand. And, and I think that's an important aspect for people not to lose sight of.

Yeah, I like the idea of a generational kind of innovation and not just an incremental change, but something that's making a change for the next generation. And that's That can be done not just with products. You can, you know, I look at our business, we're a fractional CMO business and we built a system, but we're always looking at how do we improve the system to either be better for our CMOs so they can have a more successful practice or better for the clients and get better, more repeatable outcomes. And, you know, we look at small changes that we make, but we hope it has a lasting long-term effect, not just a 90-day boost. And that's, that's an interesting way of having that conversation because I don't think a lot of companies think about innovation that way. They just think of more along the lines of optimization, optimization. How do we make this a little more efficient or a little more better? And really challenging brands and companies to think of these generational innovations. That's a really, really clever way to do it.

Yeah. And I, you know, I feel In this environment that we're in now with COVID a lot of this transition to D2C that companies weren't prepared for, you know, in the start of the pandemic. And those that took advantage of it, I talk again, I talk to many CEOs and I give presentations to corporations where I say, don't put your head in the sand. I said, the storm's coming. I said, it's a matter of how severe it's going to be, but the fact is the storm's coming, so you need to make some changes. And what I found is that for the companies that we deal with at Liquid Mining is that The strategy of implementing something that can adapt to change is very important. And those that adapted, look at them today, they're very successful. Those that chose to wait and see were either run over by the train or hit by the storm and weren't able to recover. You know, some were able to recover a bit, and not adapting either lost market share or weren't following through on an innovation pipeline or changing the way they do business on a daily basis. And I think it kind of goes towards what you were saying, Joe, is just, you know, adapt or die is what I say in the book. And, you know, make sure that you're always being proactive and not being passive, waiting for somebody else, you know, do things that you need to do in order to make your business better.

Yeah. I'm curious. Kind of on the same genre of branding, a lot of times we're thinking of that externally and how a company looks to its customers. How much of your book talks through or applies to more internal, you know, authentic branding from a recruitment and retention standpoint? Because that's probably one of the bigger challenges companies are facing these days is how they position themselves to recruit good talent and retain that talent.

Yeah, I think for me, when I looked at companies and while I was, when I was writing the book, the company and brands that I've been with and, you know, what people would classify, unfortunately, I was lucky to have worked with them in executive roles, Oakley and Kate Spade and TaylorMade and Adidas. And I found a lot of curiosity with those brands. You know, how do they do that? How do they continually succeed with great products year after year. And here, what I'm getting at though, is that it goes towards the team. It goes towards the people around the brand and the company, but it also goes externally as well. They've built this culture. Culture is— and that's where we go back to what we talked about at the very beginning is when you talk about retaining employees, you talk about building teams, you talk about those contributing from top to bottom inside of an organization. Understanding what the brand stands for and what the company is building authentically. You know, in this environment that we're in right now, people want to feel like they're part of something and they want to feel like the thing that they're a part of is authentic and it's not imitating. And so what I find with these, at least in the experience that we have with Liquid Mind, is that these big iconic brands that we work with, people are banging down their doors to go work for them.. And it's not necessarily that they've got better product. It's the fact that they position themselves with a culture people want to embrace. People nowadays are very picky. They're choosing where they can go. And so as a result, they look for companies where they've got a great culture where they can thrive and they can be a part of something that the outside world embraces and they love as well. You know, there's nothing better than to say, hey, I work for Nike. Oh, actually, I love Nike as well. I got my Nike vertical outfit on today, my shoes and arrow, my hat. So, so I find, you know, companies and I put this in the book as well. I, you know, I called it the culture and the user experience and those being blended together are very important because they in the outside world want to know that the internal brand cares. And so when the internal brand cares, external people realize it and everybody wants to work for them. Companies that understand that culture side of it, the positioning of their brand and their company, and I don't care if it's a, like I said, it's a consumer product brand or a tech brand, whatever it is, look at the ones where people are beating down their door to want to work for them. And they've got a certain culture, they've got a certain attitude, they've got a certain positioning that people want to be a part of. And they have no problem getting employees. And I think a lot of people can embrace that and understand that through the book. And I put that in there as well.

Yeah. As you mentioned at the outset, it's a very intangible concept, but did you discover any insights into some tangible ways that companies are able to decentralize this culture and have it be embraced by all? Because that's the hardest part when, and especially as you grow and get larger and larger in scale, how do you keep that culture at the ground level, at the user experience level, and at the employee level?

Yeah, I've got a couple points that I noticed or I put in the book and I actually noticed with the companies that I had worked with personally as well as LiquidMind are just a couple things. Is the first, I'll kind of take them in order here, Joe, but the first one is really what I thought is interesting enough. I call it the vision paradox inside of companies. And what I mean by that, and I'm sure you've dealt with it with with your company as well, Joe, is you walk into these companies and an operations person wants to be a designer. And if you want to talk about disruption inside of a team and a company, that's a problem. And I think those that recognize their strengths and improve their weaknesses and are humble enough to say, I'm not doing that, versus those that want to do it for the sake that they think it's cool to do it. Are all the better for the brand. So the first one is this, having everybody play in the right roles. And I call it this, I've got a lot of quotes in there, which actually had some nice comments with on the, on the book was this orchestration of the team. If you can think of a company like an orchestra, and if everybody's playing that's harmonious together, everybody has their instrument, everybody knows how to play it. Very well on the same skill level and you're working together as a team, it's beautiful music. But if you put somebody that doesn't know how to play the trombone or the tuba or whatever it is, you can imagine that one person, how bad a beautiful orchestra sounds with one person that doesn't know how to play an instrument. And so when you talk about internal disruption on companies and brands, I would say that's where the biggest one is, Joe, is that make sure number one, everybody knows their role and everybody works together like an orchestra. And I think that to me is a big portion of where you talk about, hey, how do we build the team chemistry? How do we build this passion around the company? And it's just this artistry. I have a section in the book where I call it the artist. And it's really taken from Steve Jobs and Apple, a lot of my inspiration on that. Was that he hired artists, he hired poets, he hired the, you know, he called them the crazy ones, you know. So that's the ones that more companies need to hire, but they're also the ones that build the culture.

Yeah. Did you discover anything unique about the leaders, speaking of Steve Jobs, of these organizations? Did they have any similar characteristics or approaches to leadership? Because leadership styles can be very different from one organization to another. I wonder what was similar, maybe different from the organizations you studied.

Yeah, I mean, my next book, actually, I'm doing a triad here as a visionary leader, so I kind of have some insight on this as well. So it's, you know, what I found at these companies is that the thing that separates these visionaries from just traditional leaders is the fact that they have foresight. They can see the future before anybody else. And they can tangibly interpret that future to those on the team and have them be passionate about what that future looks like and that destination, getting to that destination step by step. And they've got not only a vision, but they have a plan on how to execute it. That's the point of difference. Leaders just have something written on paper that's tangible and they take that step by step. And not to say that they're not successful at it, but they're not visionaries.. And those that then come down to a level that have that vision also set the positioning of the company and the brand and what it needs to stand for and is authentic about it, sticks to it 24/7. The other big difference also is that there's what I call no leaks in the dam anywhere. Once you've built the dam as a brand, as soon as you start compromising that brand, let's say for example, Nike's built their foundation off of being premium, premium price points, and all the competitors on the good, better, best level have been underneath them on a price point. As soon as Nike starts building products to compete with those on a good level, they damage their brand equity and there's leaks in the dam from a branding perspective. So all of those things are visionary leaders that come from the top. And Those that have those tangible qualities are the ones that set the difference. And what I found in my experience, those are the generational brands that stick forever.

Yeah. I was having this conversation with someone recently about visionary leaders and how many visionary leaders can you have on the same team? Have you seen or thought about that? Because when you have competing visions, it can be quite positive when it's collaborative and, or damaging when it's just bumping heads.

I found, Joe, that with the companies that I studied as well, that I've been with, is that there's usually a visionary and that's why there's so few of them. And, you know, I could count on my right hand probably how many true visionary leaders there are, the ones that actually created an industry, you know, and I go all the way back, I go way back to John D. Rockefeller and Carnegie. I mean, these are people that just invented an industry. I mean, that's a visionary. Something that's never been created or never used before is someone that's not just disrupted an industry, but created it all by himself as a visionary. I mean, you have incremental visionaries, I call them, one to take something and make it a little better. I mean, that to me is not necessarily a visionary. But inside of companies, you'll find, and that's why I go back to the vision paradox where, you know, people think they're visionary, but they just more often than not think they're a visionary and they're not, and they cause disruption. So the successful brands, companies, those that are generational have all had a visionary at the top. And it's usually somebody who, you know, seems a little bit of a He's a little bit of an outcast himself because these visionaries are ones that instill this passion behind the brand and what it can do and where they want to take it, you know. And Elon's another one where he didn't create the industry, but he's got a vision of doing things differently beyond what he's got today. You know, hey, let's go to Mars. Okay. But it's a vision and people get behind that and they have a passion with it, whether he creates it is up to him and he has to have the right team and he understands that. So those on the team are the supporting cast to the visionary, but there's usually a visionary at the top and those that think they're visionaries eventually find out that that's a weak point that they don't want to take on or they can't do.

Yeah, for sure. How stubborn are visionaries to the future they see or how open are they to changing that vision along the way?

Well, I'd say, you know, adapt or die. And you have to pivot as a leader. But the thing you don't ever pivot off of, and I talk about it as well, is this foundation of what the brand stands for. You can pivot as a premium brand and company and the vision that you have. It's almost in every case that somebody's had to do that. You know, is, is that, hey, we've gone down this path and even the big guys and a lot of these brands I mentioned, because everybody knows who they are, Nike made a lot of mistakes. Phil Knight made a lot of mistakes in the beginning and started out with something that was completely different than where he eventually landed, but he had a vision of where he wanted to take Nike. And, and then he eventually got there and he didn't change the positioning of Nike one bit. And so, so there are more often than not visionaries pivot, but don't change the foundational principles of what the brand was built on. Every brand has had, every brand has had a positioning statement. Every brand has had what they stand for, how they're authentic, the product they create and how they create it and the process behind it that doesn't change. And so that I think is an important aspect of why they're so successful. Let's say you want to create chaos inside of a brand, change your positioning, change what you stand for, change your products, you know, change something that you're also not very good at and try to find a way to be good at it and fail. You know, we did that at Oakley. We're very good at eyewear, but not very good at apparel and it damaged the company. And so that's a, you know, that's a situation where you have to be very, very careful with pivot relative to where you want to take the brand from a vision standpoint, but don't change the principles.

Yeah, that's great. Let's pivot a little bit, to use your word. I know you told me earlier that you do some work with universities and their accelerator programs, which is the opposite perspective, right? You got the big brands you do a lot of work with, and then you've got these startups, which are usually a visionary or a technician, and they're just trying to figure it out and start from scratch. Tell me about that experience and how you got involved in it and what you enjoy about it.

Well, over the years, as we get older, Joe, we know we've got a little more gray hairs, you know, starting out in the industry when we first started. So I'm very blessed and, and I want to give back was one of the main— was the main motivation behind getting on with some of these accelerators. And so my first accelerator that I reached out to was a group down in San Diego, San Diego Sports Innovators, and it's predominantly consumer product accelerators. And since then, I've also joined the board of University of California Irvine Field Center of Innovation Entrepreneurship, and then also UCLA's accelerator, venture accelerator program. And then we've also got another group that's a takeoff from UCI, it's called the Code Schools of Applied Innovation, which takes what we do at UCI Innovation Entrepreneurship Program, and then what they call take them to the next level. So it kind of incubates them. So it's like an incubator. So it takes the accelerator to the next level. So for me, it was important to give back to these entrepreneurs because I wanted them to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that we have all dealt with in over the years in building and growing our own company. And I felt that I could also relate to them as well because I found that almost every— it's interesting when I talk to universities and I talk to companies and I talk to these young entrepreneurs with these great ideas, and I say ideas because that's obviously the first stage of building and developing a company, is that I've helped them evolve that idea into concept and then commercialization. And I just find that the tangible touchpoint with me is that that I do keep up to date, obviously, with where things are, but I've also worked with companies and brands that they want to have insight into. And, you know, how, how do I, how does Adidas do it? What's the process that Nike has for creating the shoe? And so those are all things that, that I can lend support to. But also I felt that from my background and experience of having been an entrepreneur, You know, I started my own brand and I own an apparel brand, ran it for 10 years and sold it to a VC company before joining these other iconic brands. So I can kind of touch both sides of it with them. And, and I found when I was running my company, and it kind of goes back to your question, Joe, is that I was looking for mentors when I was starting my company. I was all of 27 and didn't know anything about the industry. And I would have loved somebody who had no ulterior motive to help me avoid a lot of the pitfalls. Not that I wouldn't have hit many of those, but just to help me kind of avoid some of those that I may not have had to run over in the first place. So, so this, this whole accelerator program, it's really interesting. I'm also part of Stadia Ventures mentorship program. They're more sports tech-based, where SDSI is more consumer products, UCI is kind of a UC system. But the ideas that come through these accelerators are just so refreshing. These young entrepreneurs that are like sponges that want to understand, how do I commercialize this? How do I build this product? You know, how do you make it into a multimillion-dollar idea? Um, you know, and the other side of it, the other side of this too, Joe, is that I'm not the Shark Tank guy. Um, I give these kids, and I think you and I talked about it a little bit, I give these kids a reality check of what it's going to take to be successful. It's not enough people that either understand how to successfully start and grow a startup, but also ones that aren't realistic with these kids. To say, listen, the odds of you being successful on this are very low. So only spend what you can afford to lose and be careful about who you associate yourself with and the time spent because all you have bandwidth-wise is yourself. I'm sure we've both been there where you're stretched to the, you know, you're stretched beyond your means and you have nobody else to support you. Both financially and personally. So, so it's a, it's a fun, it's been a fun experience with the, with the universities, but also more importantly with the entrepreneurs and helping them along the way.

Yeah. Well, thank you for doing that. It is so important that young entrepreneurs get that experience from someone who's been successful, but it's not afraid to tell them the pitfalls along the way, give them that reality check. And it's so easy for them to miss that piece of it until it's maybe too late. So I'm curious. So I've got two kids in college and they're, you know, not certain they want to follow their dad in entrepreneurship. But the other day, my, my daughter did ask me, like, what is— what's it take to be an entrepreneur? What's my first step, Dad? And, you know, I kind of stumbled a little bit with that answer. I'd be curious, what kind of advice do you give somebody who comes up with, you know, I've got an idea, How do I start?

Well, I would say first, and I go back to, I don't know about you, Joe, but when I was first starting my company, I had a lot of those, your daughters coming in and sons coming in going, oh, how do I start an apparel company? How do I, this looks so glamorous. And I'd say, don't do it. And they go, well, wait a minute, you're discouraging me. I go, no, I said, I'm just being a realist. So the first thing I would say is you need a person who has skin as thick as an elephant. And what I mean by that is you're going to have so many ups and downs as an entrepreneur and being able to understand all the different areas that you need to be good at to be an entrepreneur is the first step. And 99% of the time when I'm dealing with, um, very similar in age to your daughter, Joe, with the universities, almost every group in accelerator program that I speak to, they're either good at ideas, they're good at marketing, they're good at maybe finance, they're good at, they're good at something, but not everything. And so what I would say is you don't have to, you have to be a little bit of a jack of all trades. And be good at everything, but not be so good or great at everything, but understand finances, understand marketing, understand so you can talk to people that are eventually going to work for you. Because that's where these small startups many times fail, is that if you've got somebody at the top leading the startup that doesn't understand marketing, they can't afford to hire someone who understands marketing. They can't speak to those that are going to help them build the brand. So it becomes a detriment to their success. Yeah. So I would say for me, I get a lot of that, Joe. My first thing is, is don't do it because it gives them a little bit of a reality check of, you know, well, why not, dad? And I said, well, because you need to understand, number one, the failure rate, number two, the amount of time, effort, money required. And someone who's actually been there and done it to help you along the way, just as a mentor and somebody that's there. And that's why those accelerators are so important.

Yeah, that's good advice. I think what I did, it was a few weeks ago, my memory's fading fast these days, but I believe I told her my stories of this is the first business I started and here's how I did it. Here's the ups and downs. And I kind of just went through my, my lineage of businesses and tried to impart some of my experiences. So hopefully she can pull some ideas around. But I did, I do remember telling her that the one characteristic, there's actually, there's two characteristics that I see successful entrepreneurs have. And the most important is grit. It's just stubborn determination just to keep moving through. I've heard this, I've heard the quote, you know, when you're When you're in hell, just keep on going or something like that. I mean, like you just have to have this stubborn determination or grit to keep on going. I think I see the successful entrepreneurs, at least I know, have that. It's been forged maybe over time. They might not have had it when they started, but they certainly have it now. And the other thing is I really think it's sales skills. I think the most successful entrepreneurs I know either intuitively have good sales and communication skills or hone that over the years because that's the one skill that as an entrepreneur, you're always selling. You're selling your product, your service, you're selling your company, you're selling to investors if you need to raise money, you're selling employees if you need to hire them, sell them to if you need them to stay. And, you know, that has a bad connotation sometimes, sales, but really it's that ability to understand people, Know their problems, share your solutions, create that trusted relationship. That's sales in my mind. And good entrepreneurs have that most— more often than not, at least in my experience.

Yeah. And I would say on top of that too, Joe, is what I call business development. And it's a, you know, I cut my teeth not only with my company, but, you know, I was a little bit of a glutton for punishment with the brands I went to because almost every brand was Oakley, for example, started a new division inside of a brand. So, you know, that's a whole nother level, trying to bring these resources together that are already stretched and now going to start something new. So, so you're right. I mean, it's, it's being able to, I mean, presentation skills are probably the most important skill set, the ability to present, the ability to present a cohesive idea. Ability to inspire people. Those are all things. And, you know, and I also look at it too, Joe, and it kind of goes back to post being an entrepreneur is the word entrepreneur for me is thrown around way too loosely. And I say, you know, it isn't when you start with $10 million and you make $15 million, it's when you start with a penny and you make a dollar. You know, I wasn't born with a golden spoon in my mouth. I grew up in North Dakota, blue-collar family, came out here by myself and kind of made it on my own. And, you know, you take a lot of pride in that. And it's just one of those things where, you know, people that are starting out at that level, being able to relate to them, what they're going through, as opposed to someone that says they just throw another million dollars at it. Well, yeah, be realistic with these kids. They don't have that money. And being able to raise this money easily is sometimes thrown around really loosely as well. So I agree with you that Sales is a very important skill set for an entrepreneur. Um, business development for me is kind of that all-encompassing skill set for an entrepreneur. And then what do you mean by business development? Well, business development means being able to, to have that presentation skill set and inspire people with the idea that you have, that it is going to be successful and you can lay the roadmap to doing that. And you're going to find the resources along the way. And find a way to make it profitable sooner rather than later and build value on the back end and be able to, to be able to sell it to a VC or PE like I did. So, you know, not a lot of companies are able to do that. So fortunately, I can kind of relate that experience, but it's a small company experience. And then I went to the big companies.

So yeah, you've got a great background to help mentor those young entrepreneurs. So in addition to helping out the young entrepreneurs in the world, the next generations, What do you like to do for fun?

Well, I'm a mountain biker, avid mountain bike rider. I also ski and I still ski on sticks, I guess, which is coming back in style. I've had some young kids tell me, I guess, that that's kind of going back from the snowboarding back to the sticks again. So, you know, I live in Southern Cal, I can drop into a mountain range, I think I told you, in 5 minutes. Um, so that's a really nice thing to have. Um, and then I also, I actually, in addition to Entrepreneurs, I have a real soft heart for entrepreneurs, Joe. So I also, uh, started up a, um, a Christian entrepreneurial, uh, leadership ministry. Um, which is kind of near and dear to me as well. So it's one where, um, I felt there was a real need out there for those entrepreneurs for resources that they couldn't afford. In a volunteer effort. So we were able to build that, which I'm really, um, very blessed to have some very talented people that have joined me in it and offering our services up for free for those who are in need. So, um, it's with Saddleback Church out here in Southern Cal. So that's another thing I, my wife says, yeah, well, now what are you doing?

Yeah.

What's next? Um, but, but that's another volunteer thing, Joe, where I think it's just really important for those that are in a business that are struggling and, you know, don't have the resources or answers, both personally and professionally, that that's another thing that I'm passionate about as well.

Yeah, that's great. It's so important to be able to give back, especially if you can know where your talents lie and how you can put it best to use. That sounds like an amazing way to give back and volunteer. Do you have a particular—

Yeah.

I think it seems like there's underserved communities from an entrepreneurial standpoint. There's usually, it surrounds like, you know, economic areas, the lower economic areas seem to have the less resources to create opportunities and jobs and businesses. But those are the ones that probably could make the biggest difference if you just could tap into some of those more underserved economic areas and instill some entrepreneurial seeds, I think you could see probably a bigger change in that community than you would in other areas of Southern California.

Yeah, it's a, it's, that's a great point, Joe. I'm very much on the same page with you with that. I'm, you know, I look at Shark Tank and I'm going, the amount of effort, time to try and get to a Shark Tank appearance. I had two people that we worked with that were on the show and The amount of effort to get there is just crazy. And it doesn't really breed entrepreneurialism, like you said, from the ground, the roots level of who knows, you know, what brilliant idea is just sitting in the street somewhere that nobody's discovered yet, but yet nobody's trying to uproot that. Yeah. And it's a very, I understand it's a very challenging having, having been there and trying to get something. So very, as I'm sure you said, it's a very challenging thing to do, but very worthwhile, assuming, you know, considering all the other things that we're funding that may not be necessarily productive for economies or environments, like spending $50 million to see how quickly ketchup flows out of a bottle on a government study. You know, it's like these are kind of different things that you'd think the money would be better spent somewhere else. But yeah, I think it's, that's why I love these accelerators. And we were able to uproot, you know, those that have an idea and those that have started an idea and now are just stuck and kind of being able to push them to the next stage is a really important part of what we do.

Yeah. Well, great. Well, in your own way, actually in many ways, you are a visionary and You've shared a lot of that vision today. I appreciate your time and I'm excited to read the book. What's the best way for people to access the Visionary Brand book?

Well, you can go directly to my website. It's bryansmeltzer.com, B-R-Y-A-N-S-M-E-L-T-Z-E-R.com. And then also through LiquidMind, which is liquidmindsite.com, S-I-T-E. And then virtually, Joe, Any retailer, Amazon, Barnes Noble, Books-A-Million. It's being globally distributed through Ingram. And so all— it will be available this week. And so hopefully everybody has a chance to peek behind the COVID We've got it in ebook version as well as hardcover.

Great. Well, we'll make sure we'll put all that detail in the show notes, and I'm not sure when this will make it on market, but probably when it does, the book will be out there and hopefully a bestseller by the time this airs live. Perfect. Well, great. Well, thanks again for being here.

I really appreciate your time. I appreciate it, Joe. It was great to chat. I appreciate your time as well. Yep.

And thanks for our listeners. Appreciate all of you. And if you want to reach out to Brian, check the show notes and grab his book, Be the Next Visionary, Visionary Brand Yourself.

And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by YorCmo, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at YorCmo.com. YorCmo.com, spelled wrong on purpose.