Episode 147: Winning at Business and Life with Sean Marzola

This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, Please tell me who you are and what you do.

Hi, thanks for having me on. First of all, my name is Sean Marzolla. I'm the president of Accelerant. Accelerant is a company that sells software as well as other services and business— I'm sorry, products to the small to medium-sized business section of the industry.

Sean, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?

I think it's probably got to be helping small to medium-sized businesses. You can't, you can't get enough joy out of really impacting your own business except when you can impact somebody else's. And a lot of times small to medium-sized businesses don't have a great place to go to get, you know, decent advice at either in forums that they feel safe in or prices they can afford.

That's great. I love it when you're able to help several different businesses in different industries, and it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing.

Yes, sir.

Question number 3: I have a famous book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?

I need to think about that for just a tiny bit. Okay, I think I want to divide that into existing businesses and startups. I think for existing businesses, hands down, the cash flow chapter. Hands down. I think cash flow is so important for existing businesses to understand. And it's something a mentor of mine taught me when I was— I think it was my first real job out of university. For startup businesses, I would say customer acquisition. Cannot do anything without it, and I think sometimes we get caught up in new businesses or especially tech startups in developing. So customer acquisition for startups. There's my answer.

I think it's a good one. Question number 4: Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, What advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?

Yeah, I thought, I thought, I thought about this on numerous occasions in my career, and I think it's tenacity. I started off trying to become a CEO early in my career. I was probably only 27 years old, and, and I, you know, I'm not young, so this is a while back, and it was in the Northeast suburbs of Philadelphia, and it was very much frowned upon for anybody of that age to try to go out and be CEO. So I got a lot of, "You can't be CEO." You know, it's generational, it's cultural, it's, you know, we've changed a lot since then, naturally. But I remember the best, and it's a great story. Fred Best was a very exceptional venture capitalist in the in the general sort of Philadelphia area and very well known. He published actually this thing called 25 Entrepreneurial Death Traps, and it's actually really great to read. I still sometimes refer to it. His office was hysterical. Vultures in taxidermy form inside the lobby. If this is not intimidating, you know, for a new entrepreneur, one who's already been told you can't be CEO. It was brutal, right? So Fred was extraordinarily direct, and he, after a couple meetings, said, okay, we've decided we're not going to invest in your business. And I said, okay, well, thanks for the time. He goes, would you like to know why? And I said, yeah, it'd be great. He said, well, we like you and we like the business you're after, but we think you're lacking some of the hardened skills that a true seasoned CEO would have. And I, you know, I walk out and I look at the vultures one last time and I thought about it for a while. And I don't think he's wrong. I thought it was excellent advice, in fact. 7 years later, I think it was, I actually reached out to Fred and I just said, you know, that was just the best advice ever. And I don't know what it did to me inside, but it just made me break through. I just decided, okay, well, I'm going to just forget about all that stuff and I'm going to figure it out one way or the other. And I think I've just approached a lot of problems like that and it is very difficult to do, but, um, I'm, that's my version, I think, of, of, of what I would relay to people. Cause you, you are often as a business leader, uh, faced with things that your average rank and file is not faced with. And it's, it's often very difficult to get through.

And I love how you took us to the story there too about it. It really hit the mark very well.

Thanks. I can envision the vultures to this day.

Good. And I could visualize them as well.

Awesome.

Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?

Is it one or is it several? I can't remember. What's your format? What do you like?

One, maybe a couple, one in particular, favorite one. Favorite?

I don't know that I can do a favorite. I think I can do one though that's really good. I think I would do John Vigna. John's one of my mentors from way, way back. I adore him. He's currently running, he's the CEO of an architectural survey company in the Northeast. And John just done so many things for my life. I can remember the very first time I met him. So it was a, it was a great meeting, and I knew he was going to mentor me from that moment on. So there you go.

Perfect. I'll reach out to him. Thank you for that referral.

Sure.

And our final question, question number 6: Please tell me about your first job.

First job. Yeah, I think I'll, you know, I'll skip the fact that I was on my dad's job sites in his general contracting business from age 7. I think I'll skip the dishwasher gig and I'll skip the pizza tossing gig, although I did get pretty good at that. In high school, I worked at Kinney Shoe Store in the mall in sales, and it was an intense program. They actually tracked your performance You had a number, everything had to go in. You were graded by not only what you sold in terms of shoes, but accessories. Really big deal. I latched on to it. I somehow got ranked nationally, and I— it was just a great foray into making certain I was probably gonna go to college and then, and then carry on, you know, with a big business career.

And it's interesting, those retail jobs, it's amazing what you learn. I had one with, with Radio Shack when I was in high school and college. And even though it was, as you said, a real challenge for me as well, but I learned a lot as well.

Oh, so cool.

Yeah, it was. So Sean, thank you for being on the show. How could people find you?

Well, I'm on LinkedIn, that's for sure. Uh, I think my contact details are on there as well. So, uh, feel free to reach out to me there.

Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.

Thanks, Pete.