Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Growth Focus Podcast where we bring together tech leaders from all across the globe to share their time, their insights, and their expertise with us on the show. My name is Gary Lafty, your host and CEO and founder of Growth Focused Partnerships, where we take tech leaders and drive revenue to their company by turning them to authorities within their field so that their conversations turn into clients and their insights turn into pipelines. On this week's episode, we're going to be talking about how strategic partnerships can be a fantastic tool to grow your company, but. But not just that, but how to do it properly and come with pitfalls that many people fall into. We're also talking about relationships. What is a good relationship, why should we do relationships and how not to form relationships, and much, much more about growth in our field today. So without further ado, let's jump straight into this episode and introduce our guest, Will. Will, welcome to the episode today. So great to have you here. Why don't you start off by introducing yourself and tell us who you are and what is it that you do.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Sure. Thank you for having me, Gary. My name is Will Mazzola. I am the chief operating officer for a company called Gratitude. We are a technology solutions company. We focus on several key areas, one of them being mainframe modernization, AI ops, ML ops, and we've recently, probably for the last year, we've been heavily in R and D building an AI platform.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, we're going to dive a little bit further into. Into that. And what is it that you do a little bit further on in this episode, but as usual, I'd really like to get to know our guests, so I'd like to dial it back a little bit. So Will, for context, share your journey from staffing and consulting into co leading three tech businesses today.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. So I would say I've always been an entrepreneur. I had a full scholarship to become an engineer in college. Decided I did not want to be an engineer. I wanted to own my own business. So I, you know, back in the cell phone craze, when cell phones are starting to become a thing, I opened a cell phone store in the city that I lived in. Funny story is I drove by it one day and I happened to stop in because I needed a case for my phone. Talked to the person who was running it. He was from Iraq. It was right around the time the Iraq war was kicking off. And you know, he, we just got to talking. He said, yeah, I'm probably gonna have to close the store and head back to my country. I've got some stuff there and I need to make sure it's safe. So didn't think anything of it. About a week or two weeks later, I had a dream about owning a store. And I drove by that store and it had a sign. 80% off. Everything must go. So I went and talked to the guy, made a deal, and started my first venture as a cell phone store owner. Partnered with six or seven other local stores. By the time I ended and sold it, I think I had two stores. We were partners in a. In a. In a warehouse. So we were getting all of our stuff and shipped and we were, you know, sharing that. That warehouse for, for all the local stores. Made my venture into real estate. Bought my first condo in a. Basically an old person's building. I was 21, 22 at the time, so I was very much younger by 60 years in some cases than all my neighbors. Got in, got in pretty cheap, fixed the place, learned how to do some construction.
Another person passed away in the building. I bought the unit next door to me. So at one point I owned three of three of the condos in that building and, you know, started that whole journey. So I've been in real estate, you know, for quite some time. I'm also a real estate agent. That's kind of a side hustle that I have. And then probably 2008 ish, a friend of mine, you know, we're having coffee and, you know, he said, what do you want to do with your career? I was thinking of. It was kind of right around the time of the. Of the crash. He said, you should get into staffing. It's something you'd be really good at. You like to talk to people. You're, you know, natural born salesman. So I was introduced to a company. When I interviewed at that company, a friend of mine who I've known for years was the manager and, you know, I hadn't seen him in years, but we, we connected. He hired me and that started my journey in the staffing. Through that journey, I've, you know, met tons and tons of people, made tons and tons of connections and great relationships that have really helped me throughout my life and my career. In 16 or 17, a colleague of Min said, hey, I'm friends with this guy. He's a c. He's a CIO at a pretty large cybersecurity company. He's looking to potentially start his own business. You should meet him.
He had an idea for a product company and he might need, you know, he might need to Hire some engineers from us later on. So he made the connection. They had met through golf.
Big golfer, I play two, three times a week. So I had that knowledge going into meeting with this guy and you know we, we hit it off right away. Business lunch turned into a cheeseburger and a grilled cheese turned into a three hour conversation, conversation about our best golf scores, where we like to play etc. Etc. And from that meeting, you know, nothing really came of it. He took his, his thoughts in a different, different direction. He decided not to do a product company. About a year, year and a half after that he reached out my, our mutual friend said hey, you know, I'm going to have this guy again reach out to you. He's looking to start a different type of business and he's looking for someone to run sales for him. I know you know a ton of people so. And we got reconnected 2019ish and he ran by what his plans were to start a solutions company with key focus areas. And you know I left my, my corporate job as he left his corporate job and we started Gratitude. He started Gratitude and hired me two or three years in. We got the. Through our partnerships, through our relationships and through our contacts and connections we thought mainframe modernization was a great space to be in. Very, very niche but very very needed and we started Gratitude Mainframe Solutions I think in 20, 22 or 23, I can't remember the year. But you know, and then that's been a great business for us through our partnerships. You know as you mentioned in the beginning, through partnerships, that's how our business has grown.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Well let's talk about this mainframe modernization, you know as you say, very niche business, very exciting business. Tell us more about that. Who are your clients and what problems are you solving for them that others in the space tend to overlook?
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Yeah, so, so mainframe modernization is a general term. It's, it's like digital transformation. It's a broad term. So there's the distributed world which is everything non mainframe and then there's the mainframe world. Mainframe is very, it's its own world.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: It's created by IBM and there are many companies that, that do stuff to support the mainframe. Our business is, is mainframe modernization through DevOps. So you know, very thousand foot view is every so often, every few years software needs to be updated or installed into the mainframe. Mainframe runs every credit card transaction, free debit card transaction in you know, banking, government.
It's a system that's been around forever and it's not going to go away. But every so, so often, every two, three, four, five years, depending on the business, the software needs to be updated. So through a process of DevOps where we're able to modernize the mainframe. So as I said, very niche, we're partnered with certain companies that have these key clients in the government sector, the banking center sector and these other large sectors. So they bring us in, we do a consultation, figure out what it's going to take, we come up with a statement of work and then we, we go to town. So that's, that's kind of the, the business in a nutshell. From a very high level.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah, very high level. Well, no, no, I tell you what I'm really excited to talk to you about is that you're launching a new AI product. What gap? You know, because there's a lot of AI, we can't have a podcast on tech without talking about AI. So what gap in the marketplace are you, are you aiming to fill and how is it different from what's already out there with the, you know, with the tons and tons of AI that's already in the market?
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Yeah, our first goal was through these, these migrations. There's a lot of paperwork that, that's left with the client.
[00:08:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: If we do something, we might leave 2,000 pages or 2,000 documents of what we did in the migration. How do we, how did we do what we did? Basically so, you know, first thought was can we, can we do this with a bot? Can we create a bot, leave a bot behind and that be the answering of all the questions, Maybe that becomes the documentation.
So it started with that sort of concept in mind and then it's just evolved, you know, what other business problems can we solve through it? So right now we haven't launched yet, where we have a target of sometime at the end of the summer, August, September, to have a beta launch with some of our key clients. It'll solve a couple different problems for enterprise. But then we also also have a, you know, SMB version of it as well. But you know, deep web search, so you know, fake ChatGPT, document analysis, image analysis, transcription, voice AI agents. So from a, you know, if you're a small business running a sales desk, I'll use a plumber as an example. If you're a one man band, or maybe you have two or three people on a company, you might not have the funds to pay for an administrative person to an AI agent. They could essentially take a call coming in, answer it schedule an appointment, take payment, et cetera, et cetera. For those type of people, a missed call is truly a missed opportunity.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: If, if I have a plumbing emergency and I, you know, miss a phone call if I have a plumbing, what happens today is people go to Facebook, their local Facebook group and page and say, hey, I've got this plumbing emergency. Who do you recommend? And you'll get 10 recommendations and then the person in the emergency calls all 10 and whoever answers usually is the one that gets the deal. But if you don't answer because you're handling some other business that's missed opportunities, that's a very simple explanation. Or.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: But it's speed to lead, isn't it? It definitely is the speed to lead today. Everything's moving at such a quicker, faster pace and almost a more efficient pace as well. And that if you don't have something and as you say, any missed call, any missed opportunity is a revenue drop for you that you know. And if you can get AI to do that, that not necessarily like you say, have the budget for a whole team member or team members, what a great to go about it.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Correct. You know, one of the use cases is, is, you know, we, we've talked to many different companies in many different industries, but one company or one industry might have a, an office hours posted from 8 to 5. Well after 5 o' clock if someone calls in to make an appointment, if there's no one to take that call, maybe it goes to an answer machine, maybe that person calls someone else. That could be a doctor's office, a lawyer's office, whatever. So there's massive amounts of missed opportunities. So you know, if you can expand your hours from 8 or 10 hours a day to 24 hours by having an AI agent answer the phone, that puts you in a much better situation. So you know, that's on the small business side and on the larger scale side, hyper automation is what our true aim is, right? To hyper automate your life essentially.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Having a bot that acts as your AI assistant mate and you know, everyday business processes from start to finish. There's a lot of cool stuff that we're doing. I don't want to say too, too much because.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well, I don't know. I can't wait to see it in action as when you. But you're saying that we'll get to.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: A better a beta version once we launch.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Can't wait.
I can't wait for that. So let's talk about and shift direction a little bit into Obviously you guys have been around for a long time now, got great rich history.
Let's talk about kind of like growth strategies, sales systems. That's really worked. Your team has clearly built strong reputation in niche tech circles. What's worked best for you in terms of lead generation and pipeline growth?
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I'd say it starts with strategic hiring.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: The people we've hired and our partners are truly the North Star. And what I mean by that is, you know, the people smarter than us that had the knowledge that are deep mainframe experts, whether it's the engineers or the sales and strategy people that we've brought into the company, our partners that have come from that world, that's really been the key differentiator. They've been able to unlock doors and create channel partners that we wouldn't have been able to unlock had we not had those strategic relationships. So it starts there, right? If, if you partner with the right people, if you hire the right people, you, you truly go above and beyond what, what the competition does.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Also knowing what your competition is, knowing what they do, knowing what their, what, what their modernization strategy might look like, it really helps you put together a seamless migration strategy for, for the end customer.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you've mentioned many times, you know, strategic partners and I'm a great believer in, in, in forming great strategic. It's a great way to grow, is using strategic partners. Can you share with us some insights in how partnerships, good partnerships have actually helped you open doors and drive growth.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, so for this specific business, as I said, it's a niche thing.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: If you don't have channel partners, you know, Fortune 1000 bank or a government entity most likely will not look at a small company.
[00:12:59] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: We're not a large company by any means. We're certainly not an enterprise level company. But they go through these large enterprise companies who will use us as a channel partner.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: So if you don't have those strategic relationships, you would not have a business. So it's all about making sure you're not. Only your, your name and your, the work you do should be able to speak for itself. Right. So if a channel partner says, hey, we're inviting gratitude, it's a good thing when they've heard of us and it's a, it's a great thing when they've heard that we've done great work in their industry and you know, we have a reference customer to back it up. So it all matters, right. Every job that you do, leaving a great impress impression for the End client, but then more importantly, your channel partner or equally as important with your channel partner. Those are keys to any successful.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: No, absolutely. I think key partnerships is there'll be people listening, people watching this again, they're nodding their heads and go, yeah, you know, I definitely totally believe strategic partnerships is the way to go. And if you're not doing it, you should be doing it. But what we also see quite often is how partnerships a great idea, but not when it comes to the execution. Very few people actually get strategic partnership. Right. You know, let's talk about that a little bit.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Sure. We've learned over the years, right. You know, you can't have all of your eggs in one basket, first and foremost. Number, you know, that's number one. Number two, your expectations of what a strategic partner might tell you might not align with their expectations. So, you know, I would say never, never count on a dollar coming in until it's actually coming in.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Because things change. Right.
When you're brought into an initiative and you're not the leader of the initiative, your control points are not as, you know, you have less control than you would if you were the, you know, one bringing the business to the table. So, you know, it's something you have to think about and consider as you're building channel partners. It's a, it's a great strategy and certainly it'll open doors. But also realizing, understand in that case you're only as strong as your channel partner.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: So the relationships you have in that and that they better be really strong and they better be able to be immutable, mutual working thing where you can actually rely on one another.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: That, that's, that's key. So with our strategic partners, where it's not like we send them an email once a quarter and say, hey, don't forget about us. We're meeting with them weekly. We're part of their sales meetings. We've been flown to their states and sat with their teams to come up with strategy and co marketing and those sort of things. So that speaks to having a really strong partnership.
[00:15:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: If you're, if you're the conversation, if you can be part of the conversation in strategy conversation, that's, that's a great sign that you're going to have a great relationship with your channel partner.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: It's almost like being a hybrid partner, isn't it? Rather than just, just.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah, channel partner is a very broad term. Strategic partner is probably a better way to say it. Yeah, I would say strategic partner is a better way to say, yeah, because.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: You'Re really helping each other grow. You're helping, as you say, being part of that conversation as opposed to one side of the fence, on the other side of the fence coming together every now and again. But I want to delve a little bit deeper.
A word that you keep on using a lot. And it's a great, I love this word. And it's, it's relationships. Relationships are so important in this, in this industry.
And what we've certainly seen post Covid is that relationships are not as strong as they used to be. Relationships are more built on transactional values. They're built on a surface level. You come from an old school version where relationships are very much long term.
Real, real, real deep relationships. And that's how you build your business from that. Let's talk about relationships then. What's your insights and importance on relationships and how do you build relationships that actually last?
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd say you, you, you know, since COVID right. The world has drastically changed, right. From, you know, I'm going to be in your area, you know, as a, as a sales guy at heart.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Hey, I'm going to Gary, I'm in your neighborhood. I'm going to stop by customer right next door. Can I pop in and say hello?
[00:16:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: If you've got a decent enough relationship. That was always a sure, come on down.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Well, since COVID or after Covid, you know, there are some companies that are back to work, they're back in an office, but there's still many that are remote.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: So the ease of picking up the phone and saying, hey, I'm stopping by. Well, stopping by where?
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: We don't have an office where we're. Now I can't go see you. I'm in New Hampshire, you're in Florida and now you're somewhere else for the summer. So those, those are a little harder to maintain, but you still have to maintain them, right. Whether it's truly being able to go visit someone or getting on a technology like Zoom.
Zoom has been phenomenal for business. Zoom and all the other video conferencing things. But you still have to do it, right? You still have to commit to it. I'm trying to with any of my key customers that I've had throughout the years for whatever business it might be. I'm always trying to be in front of them, always trying to meet with them. Sometimes it's a five minute thing, sometimes it's a text message. But the key is to stay relevant, stay, stay current and you know, the relationships that really matter. Those are the ones you want to make sure you're staying in touch with. That's right.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Yeah. It's making the effort, isn't it? At the end of the day, you can't have a relationship if you don't make the effort. And it's very easy in today's world to be busy being busy and not, not giving the due attention that relationships actually need.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: And it goes both, you know, business and personal.
[00:18:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: If you, if you've got personal relationships that matter to you, you should, you know, I've seen the, hey, he doesn't call me. If she doesn't call me, so screw it, I'm not going to call him or her. Well, that doesn't really work.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: If you're, you know, partnerships are, they should be equal.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: You should both be bringing something to the table and, and sometimes it, you know, life happens and you can lose contact quick.
[00:18:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: But if it's gotta be an equal partnership where each person is trying to make the effort and, you know, and then salesperson in the sales world, you might not have that equal. You might not be on the same footing as your potential customer or prospect. So you've definitely got to go the extra mile and make sure you're making the effort. And, you know, there's, there's all kinds of kooky ways. Hey, let's, let's sit down and have a lunch and learn. You know, bring your lunch to the, to the zoom meeting. You know, bring a water, bring a coffee. Let's sit down and talk. You know, there's many ways to get someone on the phone and have a conversation.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a company I know that does monthly pizzas and they send pizzas out, you know, to, to, to their channel partners. And they all sit, they all come together and they have pizza and talk about, you know, their channel partnerships and really build that relationship on a monthly basis. As you say, loads of quirky ways of doing things, but you kind of have to today because you can't meet in person that you used to.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, right. You know, I've worked. All of our partners come from corporate. We've all worked in corporate jobs where, you know, spending money on a flight and taking someone wine, dining, entertaining for a day, a week, a month, you know, whatever the case may be. The funds are certainly a lot larger in those environments than they are when you're working at a startup. So you have to be a little more crafty and conservative with the way you meet with People certainly spend money when you need to, but don't spend money just to spend money because you'll be broke pretty quickly if you.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Exactly. Well, that's a nice little segue into my next question for you. You've scaled and trimmed, you know, you've done really well in keeping things lean. What's a growth mistake that you've made that's taught you something in growing and running a good, lean, but efficient business?
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I mean, we're in the solutions business, right. One thing we have not done is we have not laid anyone off.
[00:20:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: To our credit in some ways, but also to our detriment.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: If we're, if we're running heavy with payroll and low on cash flow.
[00:20:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Because these deals are enterprise deals. They don't just come together quickly.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: They, you could have a gap where there's six months of no money. You know, you can forecast and say, hey, we've got X amount of dollars that, that's scheduled to come in. But it might not happen because, you know, and again, using the partner aspect, you're only as good as your partner.
[00:20:39] Speaker C: Right?
[00:20:39] Speaker A: So if, if, if your partner says, hey, we, we, we close this deal and it's going to start on this day, but it doesn't start on that day. Your control points are limited.
[00:20:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: But, you know, so one thing you learn is to stay lean, right? Don't grow, don't overgrow when it's not necessary, you know, and we've learned by that, you know, but, but that's a key thing, right? Don't overspend when you don't have to stay very conservative with your money if you can. There are certainly ways and mean, there are certainly times where you need to spend money, but just make sure you're thinking about it in the right way. Don't spend money just to spend money when you don't have.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Exactly. This is the key thing we said. We see people all the time. The term we use up here in Colorado now is leaning over your skis. Right. People are just trying too much and they're overspending for what they need to do because they are. They want to try and stand above the crowd. They want to get that visibility. They want to be heard amongst all the noise within their niche. You, however, built good visibility without the needing to expend money on booths and ads and stuff like that. How intentional has kind of founder led visibility been for your brand and your growth?
[00:21:43] Speaker A: It's been everything for us. You mentioned booth, so we do there is of a couple.
There is a conference, there's multiple, but there's one specifically that happens a couple times a year in our industry. And you know, two years ago we, we, we went, we got an Airbnb, all of our leadership team went, we got a booth, we spent the money on it. The ROI was just not great. Same conference the following year we attended, but we did not spend money on a booth. And you know, the ROI was significant. You know, this year we went and didn't attend the conference. We had one of our guys, but not the whole team.
And you know, the ROI was significant because we were able to meet with key leaders and key strategy people that we knew were there without having to attend all the sessions and all that stuff. So again, everything is a. If you're, if you're not learning from your mistakes, you're doing Something wrong, right? 10,000, 15, $20,000 is what you can spend at one of these booths. Not just for the booth, but the entire team attending conferences and stuff. That's, that's a significant amount of money. Especially when we have not, not, you know, done anything from a funding perspective. We're all self funded. So, you know, it becomes a key thing to try to conserve your cash.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to standing above the, standing above the noise, then what is really working for you guys out there? Because again, although you're in a niche, very sort of niche area and a niche market, you still need to stand above the noise. You still need to get your message heard out there. What's kind of working for you guys out there? When it, when it comes to being head and shoulders above the rest, it.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Goes back to the, to the partnerships, right in the, in the, in the, in the strategy, being part of the strategy conversations from the beginning, our, our team, our leadership team is, we try to be embedded from the, from the beginning, right? When we hear about an opportunity, we do, we best serve the customer when we can be involved from the beginning. And that's not always possible, but it is also possible a lot of times, especially if we have the right partnership. So if we can be part of the conversation from the beginning, it's, it's proven to be the most success we're going to have.
[00:23:36] Speaker C: Right?
[00:23:36] Speaker A: And that makes everyone look better. It makes the customer feel that much better. Because, you know, we have deep, deep domain expertise which goes back to having the right partners in your company. Not, not strategic partners that are external, but internal strategic partners. We have a phenomenal team and that growing, building, becoming partners with the right people is just. It's key all around.
[00:23:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: But by our people, that allows us to also be head and shoulders above the rest.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: We've proven it. The people that we've hired, our team, our engineering team, our architects, our cio, excuse me, our cto, their domain knowledge is just second to none. Right. So that, that really helps. And again, we're able to prove our value that much more to the customer, to the end customer. Once we're able to be part of the conversations. And because of we. We do good work, we've been invited to be part of those conversations more and more, which, you know, just helps everyone, you know, to be.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: It's just an amazing flywheel when you actually do it, isn't it, that you, you build good relationships. Those relationships become partnerships. The partnerships allow you to do good work. You do good work, and it starts to flywheel all over again. And it's actually understanding how that flywheel works within your company and how it affects your growth is extremely important. Talking about growth as we go, what are your top priorities and goals over the next 12 to 24 months, not just for the business, but for you yourself as a leader as well?
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good question for the business. As I mentioned, we're. We're very close to a product being developed. Right. So that's really been the core of a lot of our focus or at least key people in the. In the organization, me being one of them. I oversee operations, I oversee some of the sales aspects. Yeah. Launching a product is. Is the main goal, right. Getting that up and running and whatever that looks like, in whatever version. You know, I won't speak too much about it, but. But having something launch is our, Our, I'd say immediate goal, but then just to continue to do the work we're doing while also incorporating our product into our. Into our migrations into our business. Right. We. When we thought about building it, it was to. It was to help in our migrations, you know, and where it's at today is much more beyond that.
[00:25:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: So I think what, what we're going to bring to the world is going to be pretty cool, man. So. Yeah, so. So that's that for personal, you know, personal. I don't know. Right here, doing what I'm doing, man. You know, I really enjoy what I do.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Keep enjoying it.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Yeah, we all enjoy the ride. And that's also part of it. Like I said, every one of our partners, there's a few of us, but we all were corporate guys for years. And we all left corporate America to start this. We've talked at various times and stages, through trials and tribulations. Hey, are we doing the right thing? Should we go back and be back in corporate leadership? And the answer, we all shake our heads and say, no, let's keep on the path that we're on. You know, but, you know, we all have a corporate mindset.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: We know what that world looks like, and we try to do what we can to somewhat replicate it in our business, but also taking a lot of the corporate out of. Out of it and hopefully. You know what I mean by that.
[00:26:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I do. Well, that leads nicely into the final insights for, for this episode. What is one insight that you've learned as an entrepreneur coming from the corporate background? What is that one insight that you've learned as an entrepreneur that you wish more tech founders would have embraced earlier on in their journey?
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Say the question again. Just want to make sure.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's a, it's kind of a loaded question. I tend to ask my guests always one loaded question at the end. Coming from your corporate background and to where you are today, what is one insight that you've learned as an entrepreneur that you wish more tech founders, you know, people listening today, watching this episode, would have embraced earlier in their journey?
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Okay.
I would say, you know, for me personally, it's, it's just doing it right. If you, if you have an idea to do it, if you, if you've been thinking of starting your own business and you have a good idea and you have something that can change the way business is done, the way the world operates, you know, something positive that can, that can be left. If you can put your name on something and you're hesitant to do it, I would say do it. If you're someone in tech leadership who, you know, strives to, to leave their name on the, leave an imprint in the, in the world, I would say just do it.
[00:27:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Take the time and really do it.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
Just go in and just follow that passion. Follow that, follow that desire.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yes. If you, if you have the opportunity to do it, do it. You know, it's, it's, it's very rewarding. Certainly there's all the challenges and tribulations that come with any kind of a startup, whether it's tech or something else. But you're certainly going to hit bumps along the way. If you can ride it out and stick with it. I think that the rewards that come, come upon you are very significant.
So I'd say stay the course, if you're thinking of it, get in it and if you are having challenges, certainly stay the course. That doesn't 100% answer your question, but hopefully it's a good enough answer.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: I think it is. I think people do tend to bail or people tend to wait for the green lights all to be green before they start or before they. And it's not just starting a new business, is it? It's launching a new product or it's launching a new service. You know, just if you've got that gut and you know it's going to like. I love what you just said there. If you know it can help businesses do it in a different way, better way, faster way, efficient way, or help people do that, then go with it. Go with it and get it and get it out there. So if people want to get hold of you, will, you know, potentially learn more about what you do, potentially work for you? What's the best way of doing that?
[00:28:46] Speaker A: I'm on LinkedIn, Will Mazzola. I think I'm the only ones findable there. Our company is called gratitude www.gratitude.com I'm on social, all kinds of social media platforms under, under Will Mazzola. Yeah, be on the lookout as well. So we have a LinkedIn page for gratitude, our product. We have a name. I haven't announced it yet, but we'll have a.
Well, that will come up. So if you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll see all the announcements.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: I'll make sure those links then are in the, in the show notes so they can go straight to your LinkedIn and to enter to your website. Well, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. But more importantly, thank you very much for sharing your insights. It's been absolutely eye opener today.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Thank you, Gary. Yeah, likewise. This is a great time.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: And thank you ladies and gentlemen, for joining us for yet another episode of the Growth Focus podcast. Now if you've picked up anything from Will Today, learned anything, make sure you like it, make sure you comment so people, other people can see, you know, what ideas that you've picked up. But more importantly, please make sure you share. You know by now, if you listen to more of these episodes, you know that we all about growth. We're all about growing our businesses and our careers. So we learn from standing on the shoulders of giants like Will and the others. So please make sure that you share episodes so that other people can grow as well. So until next episode, as always, keep striving, keep working hard, but more importantly, be profitable and we'll see you on the next episode.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Bye.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Thank you, Gary. Take care.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Sam.
