Tommaso Mastrocola - Vero Group

Fasten your seatbelt and put your seat in the upright position. Look at us. We are already where we're supposed to be. It just never ceases to amaze me that I can do this. OK, welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, conversations about making a better living and a bigger impact by defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. I'm Scott Perry, Encore Life Coach and author of The Art of Encore Living. Now, if you're ready to make a bigger difference Play your game and live your legacy. Visit creativeonpurpose.com to get started today. Let's meet today's guest. Tommaso, welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can people go to learn more about you and the difference you're making.

Thank you very much, Scott Perry. My name is Tommaso Mastrocola. The difference that I'm making right now and the impact that I seek to make is after 28 years in the professional world of the CPG space, I'm looking to dive into uncertainty and be much more involved in purpose and in guiding purpose-driven brands across the chasm to a respectable scale that they can believe in.

Love it. Well, there's a couple of things there that we should probably unpack for the uninitiated. So I think most of the people that are tuning in either live or on replay will be familiar with this idea of a purpose-driven brand or purpose-driven work. But crossing the chasm is not something, even though the diffusion of innovation is pretty well known, it's not known to everyone. When you say helping these purpose-driven brands cross the chasm, tell us a little bit about what that means. What's the chasm and how do you help them cross it?

Perfect. And thank you for that. So in any startup, there are, or there were, two clearly identified phases. One is exploration. So it's akin to, you know, on the edge of the cliff with the flag, here we go, follow me, everybody's on board, ragtag team, let's roll. And that's great. And a lot of times it identifies, you know, in a corporate world, white space or areas of opportunity, right? But the problem is there's often what you see is there is a drop-off between that early adopters and that, you know, making that initial impact and actually putting the proper processes and systems in place to have a sustainable company, or even if you choose to, to build a company to a point of, of sale. So, you know, it was always identified as the exploration phase And then it moved into, you know, exploitation phase, which is horrible as it seems, that it even sounds that way. And a lot of times what you would have is these, you know, innovators, these, these outside-the-box thinkers, and then they believe, they believe that what they have to do is they have to follow the script, they have to follow the roadmap, they have to go and they have to seek outside capital. They have to scale their business. They have to become ubiquitous. And a lot of times, you know, it came through in the numbers. So I think in a 3-year span, McKinsey reported that more than 50% of the growth in the CPG segment came from 20,000 brands below the top 100 in size. Yet there was a 78% dead rate on arrival for those brands lasting more than a year. So what does that tell us? That tells us that these brands are— our choices are limitless, and we get these wonderful opportunities to embrace and encounter these brands. And somewhere along the way, they stop being deliberate, and they stop doing the things that started them with a dedicated audience, a dedicated, you know, rabid group of fans. And they think that they need to do what everybody else is doing, and So where I'd like to insert myself, and I've built a transformational roadmap, is what they are now calling the extrapolation phase. And they've identified this. And it's that phase in between where you could essentially— the way I put it is that through 4 steps, what I could come into an organization and do is help them to identify what's going right, identify greatest areas of opportunity, And then put the template in place, put the pieces in place in a collaborative manner to help them to get to where they want to go.

So awesome. I really appreciate that. And, and just for clarity for myself as well, when you say CPG, are we talking consumer packaged goods?

Yes. Okay, perfect. Predominantly for the audience, I should, I should say that I have come into what I do kind of backwards, the way, the way I believe that Steve Jobs actually meant his keynote when he said find your passion and go all in. Well, the thing that leaves a lot of people, you know, searching is that it's hard to just identify your passion and then make— a lot of times there's a lot of serendipity there, okay? So for me, I was in college, but I was an absolute, you know, performance nutrition and training, you know, like devotee. And I took a part-time role working with this group of entrepreneurs out of Denver, Colorado, who became Experimental and Applied Sciences, which was the most meteoric brand ever in sports nutrition. And that was my first job coming out of school. So, and then I went through a process of working both in the natural channel, working with brands and functional foods and helping startups. And working in the performance nutrition sector and segment. So yeah, so I've been fortunate enough to be involved in the sales and marketing and now leadership silos to be able to really do what I love to do every day. So at the end of the day, when, when I sit on the sofa and I turn things off, I'm scrolling my phone at brands and at reports that's, that is talking about trends and things that we're seeing in what I do, not because I'm looking at it from a a professional perspective, but because it just interests me. So it was kind of cool.

I, so I appreciate that context and that little bit of your origin story for how you came to be doing this work. And just to dive into this idea of, you know, everybody's inspired by Steve Jobs' message, find your passion and go all in. And what, what the statistics show is that very, very few people are able to identify when asked what their passion is. And I totally agree with you that for many of us, it just, um, it happens through what appears to be serendipity. We, you know, we're trying a lot of things. We're kind of following the script that we're given in terms of like, go to school, get good grades, go to another school, get good grades, get a job, and so forth. But along the way, some of us are lucky enough to trip over or collide with something that really lights us up and we are able to navigate our way into, um, something that, um, feels more like a vocation than just an occupation. But at the same time, there are many people, and I know this because I work with a lot of them, who have done— played the game of life by the rules that they were given and have played it to the best of their ability and in many ways are winning in terms of, the promise of the pursuit of happiness, but they are profoundly unhappy and have not achieved, um, you know, the promise of, uh, you know, what they were told the pursuit of happiness would give them. They've got all the stuff, they've got all the status, they've got the salary, but they don't have, uh, anything that's really lighting them up. And so how, how do you, you know, when, when you're looking back on your journey, your passion initially puts you into an occupation. But now, it appears that you're transitioning into this vocation where you're, you're going to be doing your own thing.

So it's funny, I'll give you a little aside. And, you know, I wrote notes prior, and I always do this. And, you know, a couple things that came out to me was, you know, the life-changing experience with Alt MBA, and, you know, a term on the hook. Because you're accountable to others, right? And something that Seth talks about, which is, you know, enrollment, all right, and being committed to something. I think that, you know, Barry Schwartz talks about this in The Paradox of Choice, which is when given limitless choice, we always have buyer's remorse because we've gotten better. Could we found a better mate? Could we bought a better car, right? We're always— could we order something better on the menu? So it's always there. So having the, you know, having decisiveness in our choosing, in our selection is key. But what a beautiful opportunity because we get to reinvent ourselves. So anybody who's been doing and playing by the rules, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm quite sure it came from somebody else. But the quote that I've been carrying around with me is at some point, if you don't like the results that you're getting, change the game you're playing. And change the game you're playing. And another quote that pops into my head that Seth brought up when he was on the Tim Ferriss Show was, um, you know, let's get real or let's not play. Okay, so anything that you do, let's get real or let's not play. Why are we doing what we do? Okay, if you're in a sales meeting and you're talking about opening a new key account, okay, Let's get real or let's not play. Why are we going there? And can we support this business? And does it mean enough, enough for us to be on the hook? Are we on the hook? Because you know what, I think a lot of times when I go into an organization, they like the frenzy of the hyper hive mind and having everything available, because then nothing means that much. If you say on the wall there 5 accounts that you need to line up and support and drive to make it successful, and you miss one, it means a lot. But if you have 100 or limitless on the wall and there's always activity, doesn't mean so much anymore. And who wants to live a life at the end where there's not meaning? So my aside, and I, I, I beg you, let me tell the story because it actually happened this week, was, you know, for the past year I got to know very well an amazing coach, mentor, and friend named Steve Daley. Um, he really helped me lean into fear, imposter syndrome, and vulnerability. And, um, last Wednesday I had an amazing conversation with Steve. I sat in my church parking lot and we talked for an hour and a half. I didn't know it would be my last conversation with Steve. Mm-hmm. See, last Friday at 6:00 AM, while he was practicing what he preached, out working with a client in Sarasota, riding his bicycle as he did in the mornings at 6:00 AM, Steve was struck by an automobile. And after several attempted heroic, um, you know, surgical procedures, Monday morning he passed away. And it feeds me into even deeper, even deeper, like, you know, it's in the past month with the Song of Significance, with, you know, with a book that I'm reading called Henry at Work, digging into Thoreau's perspective on making a living with this, with this podcast, with my career choice, the words enrollment, commitment, and being deliberate come to play. And, you know, It was a beautiful thing that our last conversation reinforces the path. And see, being deliberate means making an educated decision. That decision means being decisive. Key, key, be decisive, right? You're gonna go. But here's the cool part: when we make a choice, it informs our actions, okay? And the actions create results. Good or bad, it's a learning or growing. And ultimately, those results resonate in beliefs. And guess what? That beliefs is a fun thing because it cycles back and you become more confident in yourself the next time. So, you know what, you may stumble and you may, you know, if you're on a path where you're unhappy, you know, my great uncle used to say that You know, if you go to work and you're not happy, go the next day. And if you're still really miserable, walk out. I mean, I know, and I'm saying this because I know responsibilities, but at the end of the day, nobody sits in their last moments thinking that, you know, I wish I would have done an extra hour or I grinded a little more. And on the other hand, nobody that you're working and you're doing your actions for wants to be hustled. Nobody wants to be hacked. Nobody wants to be manipulated. You know, intentions matter. So, so for me, you know, helping brands with purpose and, you know, the whole adage of teaching them, like teaching them, stopping myself and teaching them for 28 years to let's get real or let's not play. Where are we going? And you know what, having the poison, the confidence sometimes to walk away. Because you know what? I'm sorry that what I'm saying doesn't resonate with what you want. I'm sorry that I don't have a map that's going to guarantee get you to that evaluation and sale. But you know what? But what I'm offering is going to be something more. I'm going to help you. I'm not going to do it for you. I'm going to co-create it with you. And if you get there, you know what? You're going to treat people like people and not cogs. All right, you're going to celebrate this win. We've been part— we've been— we've been part of a system that is broken. We both know this. You've been there, and I bet we're both— we are both brothers in this. We know. All right, our mentor says it very well, and people need to listen more. Like, the man is doing it now today, and I'm referring to Seth, and he's doing it out of love, and he's doing it for the right reasons. But it's broken, and our children are indoctrinated. We were indoctrinated into a system where you had to be rounded off at the edges, just compliant enough. And you know what? It was a bargain. You go to work, you do— you keep your head down, you do your work, you get jerked around, and at the end of the day, you can have a white picket fence, your house. And you know what? If you're lucky, you retire, have 4 years of retirement, and die. But we're— but we're better than that, right? So, so yeah, so I put together this little thing called the Roadmap, and You know, for brands that, that care enough to really want the help to, to, you know, stay connected to why they do what they do and to really, you know, not outsource everything for costs and look for, for work that's, that's remarkable, then you know what, I'm a fit. But, but for the others that are looking for road map, then I'm sorry that I'm, that I'm not the guy for you.

Well, I think that that's, you know, well, first of all, just Brian is saying it, and I want to amplify it. So sorry for the loss of your friend and mentor. And appreciate that you see this as such a powerful reminder that none of us know when the end will come. And, you know, obviously in my line of work, I'm working with people that, that just by virtue of their age have probably lived at least half of their life. But none of us know how much, you know, I'm always saying, let's make the most of the time that we have left, because we don't know how much time that is. But the other thing that you were kind of talking about that I think is, you know, so profound is this idea, like this idea about around decision-making. And one of the other things that I've heard Seth say that he really, I think, lifted in part I can't remember her name right now, the woman that wrote Thinking in Bets, that, that's a friend of Seth's, uh, is, um, decisions are not outcomes, right? That idea of, you know, when we make a choice, we immediately have buyer's remorse because we think, oh, we could have chosen something else and that might have been better. But if you are strategic about being decisive, number one, all you've done is put yourself in a situation where it's time to make the next best decision. And the, uh, and, and the other thing that I'm hearing what you're saying is we live in this moment where lots of people are trading on mindset. Like, I'm going to help you get your mindset right. If you get your mindset right, then you're going to be able to make better decisions and do the right thing and find the right thing. But what you and I think both know is that posture informs mindset, not the other way around. You don't get a new mindset until you actually do something.

Yes.

And have that growth or learning process.

The law of inertia is real.

Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. So when you are doing this work, and when you are helping people, you know, navigate crossing the chasm and, and scaling their brand, it sounds like a lot of it has to do, uh, more with, um, or at least as much with personal development as it does with professional development.

Honestly, a lot of times you'll go into a situation and, you know, helping entrepreneurs— entrepreneurs tend to be like very fast, very, you know, mercurial in how they think, and they want the results today. Um, helping them to implement the processes a lot of time or what reinforced patience. Because, you know, you have to be respectful and mindful that there's a process. That's why they say trust the process. But at the end of the day, truthfully, the biggest part of this is that the longer that— the longer my timeline is in doing what I do and, you know, the bigger scope of responsibility I garner, it's managing. It's always about managing expectations. Okay, it's managing the expectations and managing, you know, I've seen and I've been part of what on paper and on spreadsheets is absolute success, and it's embraced with absolute failure. So when I say managing expectations, it's not making assumptions and not taking your own opinion as the way. So for me, when I work with the brand, I really want to get into the weeds of where they want to go and why they want to get there. And then it's trying to teach them what's necessary and what's unnecessary. Because what I see a lot of times is that we are in— we're in a flux. And, you know, when you go through economic strife and things the way they are, you know, everybody— we're all imposters, okay? And none of us know. You work in sales and it is— it is absolutely, you know, It is bipolar, to say the least. You're riding highs and you're, you're crashing in absolute depression in the lows. And I've, and I've rode those things for many years, those sales cycles. And sometimes you can't put a finger on it. Some people will tell you that they know how to read them. And I think that when people try to take more credit, I think that that's just reinforcing something that they already know, which is they're an imposter.

And we all are.

Um, so You know, again, you, you, you study trends, you study market, but managing the expectations of the people— from, from my perspective, what I do is managing, you know, the perspective and trying to work with them. And the word is co-create. You're trying to co-create, you know, here's where you want to go and these are the steps that we need to get there. Do you, do you like this? Do you like this path?. And then it comes down to something that Jocko Willink talks all the time about, which is, you know, he calls it the debrief. So instead of having meetings for the sake of meetings, what you do is you set these, you set these, these, these, you know, these KPIs in place, you set these standards, these processes in place. And then what you do is on a regular cadence, you brief and debrief what's working. Like Coach Steve used to always talk about, like, it doesn't need to be this complicated thing. It could be as simple as looking at the months and how you ended and saying, where do we hit? Where did we miss? What are we seeing? Is there an opportunity to step on the gas and go? Or are we seeing something here that we should probably retreat from and save ourself and mitigate risk? But we're not having these conversations because everybody is so siloed, um, that in a lot of these situations, you would— it— what, what would absolutely, like, puts me in absolute disbelief with, you know, startups oftentimes is how they don't understand that their superpower is speed. And the fact that you're bigger, you know, your conglomerates, your bigger corporations with hundreds of different silos cannot turn on a dime and jump on opportunities like they can. And the minute they see a reasonable bit of success, the first thing they want to do is go silo themselves out and hire all these people, put somebody in there. And then what you have is you have a bunch of clashing egos and what helped you in the beginning now doesn't exist anymore because you cannot move and get out.

Yeah. Well, I love that. And that's a really great insight into the strength of startups is this idea that they, they can be fast. And, um, you know, one of the other things about most startups that I've, you know, people that I've worked that are, that, that are engaged in or leading startups is speed works for them because they have, um, because they, they have a vector. They, they know where they're headed. And so it's not just speed, it's velocity. It's speed in a, in an intended direction. And you, you cir— You alluded to this earlier, and I want to circle back to it because this idea of commitment, you know, we live in this very litigious culture where if you make a promise, you have to keep your promise, even if it no longer serves you or the person that it was made with. And so this idea of having a reserve clause, like, yes, this is what I intend to do, and I will do it unless circumstances, situations, or opportunities avail themselves that indicate that there's a different path that we should go, go toward. So I just think that that's a really brilliant insight that, you know, you need to make your commitments as few and, and as, and leave room for that reserve clause so that you can, you can go where you're supposed to go, not where you said you were going to go before you knew better. We're starting to already come to the end of our time. And you and I are old friends in digital years. And we both, we both are showing the fact that we've known each other a while. Tommaso, you've already delivered a ton of actionable insights and wisdom from your experience. But this is a show that is dedicated to people who aspire to be or want to advance in an endeavor like yours that is purpose-driven, that is tapping into their innate talents and aligning with their values and putting them in a situation where they can work with people who share their values and need their talents to enhance their lives and enable them to make the difference only they can make. If there is just one final piece of advice, an exhortation, a maxim, a quote, a principle that you had for someone that, like you, would like to fly a little bit higher in the difference only they could make? What would you share with them?

I, you know, I kind of would just go back to something that I, that I said earlier, which is, you know, the quote that I, that I got from, from Seth, which is, you know, let's get real or let's not play. Decide what the game you're playing is. I guarantee most of the people are listening to this If you put them on the spot and ask them, what is the game that you're playing? We are in an age where, again, everything seems limitless. So in every avenue, you know, we overindulge. Okay, we overcommit. There's nothing wrong with saying no, pushing back from the table and saying no. That's really what I would leave with is that, you know, have the confidence to realize that you're not the only one and, you know, Understanding and feeling like an imposter means you're on to something. Okay, that's the resistance. Steve Pressfield, we're both a fan. Steve talks about it, but that's a resistance. And you know, the problem with the red pill is when you swallow the red pill, as Morpheus says, you can't go back to being asleep. So, you know, you're on the path. All I'll tell you is you're on the path, and follow the law of inertia. Keep moving. Small actions do build. And just get yourself into a habit. Habits.

I love it. Well, one of our catchphrases here at Creative On Purpose is "play your game." You're referencing that in your— what you said. And I love the reference to Morpheus because none of us can— once we see something, none of us can unsee it. So I love it. And this idea that there's nothing wrong with saying no. Absolutely brilliant. Really appreciate that final insight, Tommaso. We really appreciate all of you who are tuning in. In. And appreciate the gift of your time and attention. We hope that today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility and the difference only you can make. To go, keep go-go going, defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make, visit creativeonpurpose.com. If you're watching on social media or YouTube, please leave us your, your takeaway, an aha moment, or a question or comment about this broadcast. If you're listening as a podcast, please give us 5 stars and leave a written review. It really helps more of the people collide with the wisdom being shared by my guests. Now, take the insight and inspiration from this conversation and play your game all in and full out. Thomas, Tommaso, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience with us today.

Go make a ruckus.