Add Value From Prospect To Close

Add Value From Prospect To Close

Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a revenue acceleration series interview where we talk to seven figure B2B professional service firm owners that are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks to accelerate growth and marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Don Monistere with me today from General Informatics. Don, welcome. Thanks for taking the time.

Don Monistere
Thank you, Tim, man. I am so excited about this. I've been looking forward to this for a while, so I look forward to talking with you today.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, me too, Don. I really enjoyed our pre interview conversation. I know you are going to share a ton of value today. Before we do that, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions if you're ready to jump in with both feet.

Don Monistere
Absolutely. Let's do it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. Very quickly, what do you do and how long have you been doing it?

Don Monistere
Man, I have been in IT my entire career. I've been doing information technology since 1990. I like to tell my kids that I was working on IT before there was email and before there was internet. And of course, they always ask me, What the heck did you do when you were doing all that? I've seen a lot of changes in IT. Man, started my own company back in '93 and in 2008, sold it to a small boutique private equity company. And it's just been off to the races ever since. I've had the good fortune to work with a lot of really great folks in this industry. Overtime, I've learned so much about how to scale a business. Quite honestly, it's one of those things that I really dove into, like midway through my career. It's just been a heck of a ride. A lot of people who understand how managed services are provided to certain companies, the IT space is just ripe for that consolidation play where a lot of private equity companies come in. So, man, that's what I've been doing for the last 35 years of my career. I've got a couple of gray hairs. I'm trying to keep those out of there, but they're coming in every day, it seems like.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Hey, man, you're doing a great job. I got way more than you do. I just decided to age gracefully.

Don Monistere
There you go. There you go. There you go.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So in 35 years, what's the most important lesson you've learned in that time?

Don Monistere
It's funny and it's a great question because the thing that I see over the years and when I see these young executives come in, a lot of times they get passion and emotion mixed up. And I always tell them, hey, come every day passionate about what you do, but just be really careful about being overly emotional about certain things that might happen during the day. Because a lot of times we overreact to something that might make us emotional, and it puts us out of our element. It puts us out of the place where we want to be. We want to be passionate about people. We want to be passionate about what we do. But we have to be careful of making emotional decisions about something that really requires a lot of logic and a lot of attention to detail as opposed to becoming either happy or sad or overwhelmed for that matter about that particular thing.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's such an interesting distinction. I think a lot of people don't really think about that. But yeah, passion can be a great thing, but if you get too emotional, you can make really bad decisions. In that time, you've seen all kinds of ups and downs, and we know growing a business or running a business can be difficult. Do you have any mantra or anything motivational that you say to yourself or you share with your team to push through those times?

Don Monistere
Yeah. One of the things that we've sown into even our core values at our organization is just having that can do, will do attitude. And making sure that when we display that, we do that while acting honorably and treating others like we want to be treated. I've told people the lessons that I've learned in business were very similar to the lessons that my mother taught me growing up. It's just you want to be good to people and you want to treat them with care. And a lot of times, and my folks hear me say it all the time, I'm going to lead with my heart. And sometimes that doesn't always work out well because some people will take advantage of it. But I always want to act honorably in everything that we do and make sure that we're doing what we can to take care of our folks, because at the end of the day, my job is to put everybody else in the best position to be successful. So having that can do well attitude and acting honorably is something that we say here all the time.

Why Having a Sales Process is Key to Success

Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things we talked about in the pre interview, Dawn, was your sales enablement, sales process. One of the things you shared was, look, our close ratios are really high because that process has been so refined over the last 10 years. Can you take us through some of the key steps in that process without sharing the whole secret sauce, right?

Don Monistere
Yeah, we don't mind. You have to understand that a lot of people believe, especially in sales and marketing, that there's this magic to it or this art to it. And it's really not as magical as you might think it is. And I will admit, because I'm an ops guy, my formal training has all been in operations. I really paid a lot of attention to how management frameworks work and how you get those implemented into your business. And I noticed a lot of times when the ops manager starts whenever the order button has hit, as opposed to looking at what happens prior to that. And a lot of times when you think about problems that you have in implementations or in operations, a lot of those problems actually started with the quote process. And so we said, hey, look, we're not going to ignore the process of sales and the process of marketing and how we communicate to our customers and how we set those expectations. And so we really honed that process over the last 10 to 12 years. And of course, I've been working on this for probably most of my career. I knew there was something more than just hoping that we did a good job on the presentation side. So we started to really look at every stage in the process. And as you might imagine, the very first stage would be that introduction and that first time appointment. We are very specific about what we do in that first time appointment. And the thing that we all commit to is that we have a minimum of what we are willing to accomplish in that first time appointment. And in that first time appointment, it is they have to know what our value proposition, that's a minimum, they have to know what that value proposition is, and we have to have a clear future. Those are the two things that we basically tell our prospect very early on, Hey, these are the two things that we're trying to accomplish today in this meeting. You guys good with that? And they're like, Yeah, absolutely. That's the first step. A fter that step, there's very specific content and very specific processes that our people go through, both at the business development level, which is more of a field employee, and then at the management level. A manager is going to call that particular prospect and say, Hey, I heard you had a first time appointment with our business development manager. We typically are looking for these two things. Do you understand what our value proposition is? And do we have a clear future of what the next steps are? And man, I can't tell you, Tim, people are blown away by that. They're like, So the manager is calling me just because we had one appointment? And the answer is like, Yes. We want to make sure that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. And we tell our sales guys all the time, you have to add value from prospect to close. And so that's really important to us. And that involves everybody in our organization. And look, a lot of people might think, Well, you know what, Don? That's a little bit intuitive, right? Having that first time appointment, making sure that you have a clear future makes a lot of sense. But one of the steps that we have that's probably not as intuitive is around the... It's about a 12 step process and around that eighth or ninth step, a prospect may go dark for a little while. And we recognize that typically when that happens, they're shopping us, they're comparing our price, they're comparing our offering. And hopefully, if we've done our job, if we've gone through all of those eight steps appropriately, they have a very clear picture of what they should be asking our competition and how they can make that comparison. Because, look, I don't ever want our success to be on the backs of our customers didn't know any better. I want them to know. I want them to see if there's somebody else that is more aligned with them to provide them the service that they deserve. We really feel like, hey, if there's alignment between us and our prospect, they're going to choose us anyway. And so we let them go through that process. And when they go dark, we're not hard closing. We're not constantly hitting them with team's messages. We're not constantly sending them emails. We're just staying in contact, making sure that they have enough room to do what they need to do and just recognize, hey, we're here if you need us. And by and large, that comes back around to that step 10 and step 11. And step 12 for us is a bell ringer. We ring the bell and say, hey, we close that deal because it was the right thing for both the prospect and for the company. So we're really very specific about how we do it. And it makes it easier when you lose, to be honest with you, because you can look at it and go, hey, we did what we were supposed to do. We did exactly what we needed to do. And if we didn't have the right alignment with that client, then you look, they need to go somewhere else. That's okay.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you typically You've got a first meeting. Do you typically have two meetings and then proposal in the process? What does that look like?

Don Monistere
Yes. In fact, that's exactly it. Typically, we will have a first time appointment. Again, that's followed up with quite a bit of content, quite a bit of response from management. And then we will have a second meeting that usually will involve some presales engineering team. And then our third and probably most important meeting is our presentation meeting. And that is one of the meetings that you would look at our agenda and go, okay, these guys are really particular about how they present. They're particular about how they answer the questions that might have come up during that assessment phase. And look, if anyone leaves that meeting and they're not... We haven't addressed every single potential question that the customer has, it would be rare that that would be the case. Again, we try to do everything we can to leave nothing to chance as it has to do with making sure that the prospect understands what our value proposition is, understands exactly how we would solve their problem, and why that might be different than one of our competitors.

Tim Fitzpatrick
There is so much good stuff in there, Don. I want to pull a few things out because it's interesting. I had a podcast interview that I recorded this morning with a fractional VP of sales. One of the things that he shared, one of three things that he shared that really drives sales is having a sales process. There are so many people that are just winging it. It's crazy, but it happens. You guys have gone the exact opposite route. And my guess is because your process is so dialed in, there are a couple of things that happen. One, you stand out from the competition. You're differentiated immediately by your process. Two, your salespeople are much more confident. It's not like you're giving them a bike, going, Hey, figure out how to ride it. Here it is. It's like, here's the bike, here's the training wheels, here's the plan. I'm going to show you exactly how to get from point A to point B and give you all the tools you need to be successful.

Don Monistere
It's funny and sometimes I'll simplify it. When we're doing our training, we get a new rep in. A lot of times what they'll hear me say is, hey, if you win the process, chances are you're going to win the business. And if you don't, that doesn't always happen that way. But trust me, your chances of winning the business goes up exponentially if you win the process. And what's so much fun about our process and what I like to tell people, the gentleman that worked with me the closest through the last 12 years, perfecting this process. When I hired him many moons ago, the very first call we went on together, we pull up at this prospect's place and he gets out of the car and I'm like, Hey, man, what are we doing? He's like, We're going to go talk to this customer. I'm like, First of all, he's not a customer yet. Second of all, you haven't told me anything about what it is that we are here to accomplish and what the minimum thing that we are going to leave with. Let's go ahead and decide that. And then that was really his start in understanding that, oh, wow, man, I've been winging it my whole career. And despite that, have been somewhat successful. But now it's time to get to the NFL. I always tell people, Hey, we're pro athletes, man. If pro athletes will take the time in the off season and train twice a day and watch what they're eating and focus on their craft, why are we not doing that as professionals? And so we tell them when somebody comes here, it's like, Hey, you're going to work harder than you've ever worked, but the chances of you winning is going to go up exponentially. And we see it time and time again, Tim.

Personal Branding as a Differentiator

Tim Fitzpatrick
So speaking of, you talked about onboarding, getting them up to speed. One of the things that you teach your salespeople is to focus on their personal brands, which I thought was fascinating. I think it is a super open minded way to approach it. But can you unpack that a little bit? Because I think it's really going to open a lot of people's eyes.

Don Monistere
Yeah. So I've always been surprised when I talk to other executives and they're like, Yeah, man, my guy is just on social media too much. I'm like, Man, you're going to have to explain that to me because I don't know that's a thing. And he's like, Well, it seems like he's only talking about himself. He's not talking about our company. I'm like, Well, okay, that's a valid point. But sometimes talking about himself or herself is just as important as talking about the organization. And I mentioned it earlier, one of our mantra is add value from prospect to close. Well, how do you add value if you're talking to an individual about General Informatics and they don't know who General Informatics is? Well, then you've got to start with the person in front of you. You've got to start with yourself. And so if you're not working on your personal brand and who you want to be as an executive, who you want to be as a sales rep for our organization, it's really, really difficult to add value from prospect to close. One of my most successful sales managers when he came to work for me, he was a business development manager. It was his second job in sales. And he could tell already just in the interview process, he's like, Man, you guys are going about this a lot differently. I said, Well, look, you're going to have to start working on your personal brand. He said, What do you mean? I said, Look, we've got to start talking about what you bring to the table every day, not just what General Informatics can bring to the table. And he said, Man, I don't know what that is. And I said, Well, the first thing you need to start doing is you need to start writing a blog or start doing some video content. And he's like, Man, I've never written anything in my life. And I said, I'll coach you through it. We'll get through it. And the first blog he ever wrote was about a topic he knew the most. He was a college baseball player. And so he wrote about how difficult it was to understand what it takes to be a shortstop in a Division 1 college baseball game. And it was fantastic. And the article was fantastic. And I said, now, take that and compare that to what our prospects are looking at when they're trying to execute in their business. I said, You know more about business than you give yourself credit for because you've had to compete at the highest level. And most people are competing at that level. And he has been one of the best providers of content at our company. And he started out going, I can't do this. I don't know how to do this. He actually made a joke. He goes, If my English teacher knew that I was writing content, she would be so upset because she told me from time to time, from day one that I wasn't going to be any good at this. But he was fantastic at it because it was important to him. We started to work through it. Now, he does a lot of video for us, for GI, for himself, and we promote it, man. We want to make sure that all of our guys and girls are doing what they can to promote who they are, what type of executive they want to be. It just takes care of itself. We don't ever have to lean in and say, Hey, you need to speak a little bit more about General Informatics. They want to because they recognize, Wow, GI is supporting me to do this. Don is willing to comment on something that I've posted about something that I'm passionate about personally, I'll support that because I want those guys to really bring their value to the table. Because if they don't have that value, how are they going to get those first time appointments? How are they going to get folks interested in even talking to them? Man, we do everything we can to get those folks out there, for sure.

Tim Fitzpatrick
The other thing is you have what, 15 to 20 salespeople?

Don Monistere
We have about 17. At this point, we got 17 sales folks.

Tim Fitzpatrick
You have 17 people putting out content, not one coming from the company. You're getting exponentially more content out there that is helping people just become aware of you. Your sales guy putting out something about what it was like to be a D1 shortstop, that's going to connect with other people that are into baseball. And they see it and they're like, oh, that was a great article. Who is this person? And these things just, it develops, right? The relationship develops.

Don Monistere
One of my guys, one of my guys started doing content and he called himself the IT guy. He kept saying, I'm the IT guy. I'm the IT guy. I'm the IT guy. Then I go out and go work with him one day. We're going to go visit clients. We're going to go visit prospects. We walk into lunch somewhere and somebody goes, Hey, man, it's the IT guy. And I thought, See? That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what makes the difference. And if you can get people to recognize you just by walking into a restaurant because they've seen your content, then you're doing something right. And it's because we have a marketing department, they love it when they come here and they go, Wait a minute, all 17 of these people are dropping content every other day? I'm like, Yes, they are. And so it's really fun to watch that because these guys used to get told by places that they'd worked in the past, Hey, don't do that so much because that's not about our company. That's only about you. And I'm going, No, do it more. Do it more.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's again differentiating you. Your sales process is differentiating you from the competition. How you approach onboarding and what you want your salespeople to do is differentiating you from all the other people that they might be looking to work for.

Don Monistere
Yeah, no doubt.

Growth Through Acquisition

Tim Fitzpatrick
Man, I love that. Look, man, I'm all about revenue acceleration. What can you do to grow? You guys have been experiencing hyper growth the last couple of years. What are some of the top drivers that are getting you there right now?

Don Monistere
We are private equity owned, so we are going through that normal consolidation process that happens in the MSP space. Technology companies are primed for that type of growth model. But we were very specific, and I have done this in the past before. One of the things that we failed to do in the past was, hey, what does organic growth look like in each one of those acquisitions that we do? So we were very particular about who our targets were of who we acquired. We wanted to see what their organic growth path looked like. And then the best acquisition to make is that company that wants to organically grow but maybe doesn't have the resources or the funds to do it. And so we target those folks first, and then we overlay our sales process because a lot of folks just don't have that mature approach to selling. And of course, it started with GI. I got here roughly two and a half years ago, and the founder, Mohit Veej, who is a fantastic engineer, he's still on our board, he looked at me and he says, Hey, man, you're going to have to revamp the sales process. I'm told that you're the guy to do it. I was like, Yeah. I'm like, That is definitely in my wheelhouse. And so we did it here first. It was fun to see that transition and how, man, our bookings just up and to the right. Private equity, obviously, was really excited to see that. It fueled them. They were like, Let's go make more acquisitions. Over, let's call it 30 months, we've acquired seven companies. We are going through the integration process now. I always say it's easy to buy somebody, it's harder to integrate them. We're going through the integration process. We should have everybody on the same tool sets, the same PSA, etc. By the end of the year. But every single one of our acquisitions run the same sales process from the start. So it's the first thing that we do when we make an acquisition is we have a gentleman who is in charge of all of sales enablement, and he has training every Monday morning. And every one of our sales reps are involved in that, as well as our customer success managers because our CSMs are the next face that our customers see when they get on boarded. And look, we want to make sure that the CSMs know exactly how we set expectations and what promises are made by our teams because, look, we know our guys do a fantastic job in service delivery. We're going to pound our chest about it, and we should. And so the customer is predisposed to really hold us accountable along the way, and that's the way we want it. So that's really what's fueling growth. Obviously, we're in a high growth industry, and one of the things that we stay really focused on is ushering innovation into our products and services as well. Tim, sometimes that innovation is just a different way to deliver it. Sometimes it's a more efficient way to deliver it. Sometimes it's just a more efficient way to communicate it. I think our prospects see that, so we tend to close business at a higher rate, and our customers see that and recognize, Wow, there's a lot of things that I used to have to go outside of my technology company to get, and yet GI has that opportunity to provide us those services as well.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Don, I want to pull a couple of things out because there was some, again, some really good stuff there. First off, when you're growing through acquisition, which as you pointed out, there's a ton of acquisition going on in the managed service provider space. Where you guys differ from what I've seen, and this is not the case across the board, but it does surprise me how often this happens, where there are people growing through acquisition, but they don't have a sales or marketing engine to plug those acquisitions into. You've got this sales engine ready to go when you acquire... It's like strapping on a turbo to an engine, right? You're buying this new engine, you put the turbo on, man, it goes where it wants to that much faster. Because you've got that sales enablement and sales process in place, you just bolt that on and that acquisition can get you much, much better return than what's happening with some people who just aren't prepared for that. The other thing that you said that is so easy for people to get people to overlook. You talked about getting customer service involved with the sales process, right? The way I view it is you have marketing, you have sales, you have customer service. They're all three distinct departments, but damn, if they're not on the same page, you got serious freaking problems.

Don Monistere
That's exactly right.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And so many people just don't... They do marketing in a silo, sales in a silo, customer service. No, there's a handoff. Marketing hands off to sales, sales hands off to sales, sales, hands off to customer service, and we all need to be on the same page. Frankly, we can all learn from one another as well. And so I love the fact that you're super open with that and there's consistent communication there.

Don Monistere
To that point, our customer success managers are definitely part of the sales process. We want them communicating because at the end of the day, the prospects recognize, well, these are the people I'm going to be talking to every single day. So that's a big part of our whole process in our sales process.

Marketing Takes Time

Tim Fitzpatrick
So one of the things that you shared with me was that you guys had outsourced Lead Gen for a while with just mixed results. You're not the only person that ever gets mixed results with sales, cold outreach, marketing. Describe what happened during that project. I know you had some learning lessons from that, too. I'd love to pull those out.

Don Monistere
The first thing I'll state is I still don't think we have exactly the right mix, and I would take 95 % of the blame for that. This is not something that we had done in the past. Everything that we had done from a lead gen perspective before that was all organically done internally. And again, with mixed results, that's one of the reasons why we said, Hey, let's see if we can outsource this. Maybe there's some expertise there that we're just missing because we do a really good job of brand awareness. We do a really good job of our demand generation events. But lead gen was always something that we were okay at. I always say the salespeople, if you give them 200 leads in a year that were qualified, they tell you everyone of them wasn't. So we are very careful not to be overly critical of that whole process. What I would say that I learned was we had too many people engaged in the weekly meetings with the outsource organization that we use. We had multiple sales managers and multiple territory managers who were involved. The really difficult thing about marketing, and sometimes I feel sorry for marketing professionals, is because everybody thinks they know how to do it. And the barriers to entry and definitely the barriers to opinion are very low. And so everybody's got an opinion. And I felt like even our outsourcing was going back and forth. And finally, their CEO called me and said, Hey, man, we got to reduce the number of people in that meeting. I was doing it mainly because we engage our team. We want their feedback. We're asking them for ways to hone the message and ways to... Because you never know when you're going to get that gem. But he was right and we really just did not approach that correctly because there was just too many things during that meeting and during that whole process that was, Hey, let's try this and see if it works. And if there's one thing that I've found is that if you're going to do lead gen, you need to tweak, tweak, tweak, find what works and then drive that hard. And look, it's a bell curve. It'll be effective and then it'll start to wane. And then you've got to tweak, tweak, tweak and then drive hard. And so you've got to be really attuned to when it works and when it works, making sure that you're recognizing the signs of when it's on the other side of that Bell curve. And we never established that. And so our second attempt at that is, hey, let's find the thing that works and stick with it until we start to see those signs on the back end of the Bell curve and then see if we can tweak it. And then if tweaking it doesn't make a difference, then we change as opposed to changing every third Thursday because somebody had a new idea.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. Lead Gen, frankly, anything from a marketing standpoint takes time. I think most people think too short term and they give up before it has time to actually work. So I always encourage people, man, if you're going to invest in certain marketing channels, you have to approach it from a long term perspective. You have to go into it knowing a lot of this is not going to work. But the stuff we do that doesn't work as long as we're measuring it and tracking it can help guide the decisions and the tweaks that we need to make so that we can figure out what is going to work. Like you said, this is not like, set it and forget it. Once you figure it out, it doesn't work ad nauseam for the rest of eternity. We've got to always be cognizant, like you said, of the numbers. Are we seeing things starting to go down? Why? Make those tweaks and test. But it's, man, so many people give up too early. I'm sure on the sales side, do you see this, too. It's like, oh, man, we just hired this sales guy. He's not selling anything.

Don Monistere
It's been six months. Why didn't you close anything?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it's been 60 days. Why haven't you closed your first deal? We go into it with unrealistic expectations. When we do that, we're not doing what we need to to support that person or to support that particular tactic or channel. We got to go into it with an open mind and a long term mindset.

Don Monistere
I want to bring this up, the one thing about marketing and Lead Gen specifically is very similar to our security practice. And I'll make that connection. The security practice, we've been telling people for 10 years, we can make you secure, press the secure button. You're always going to be secure. And yet we watch the news every night and everybody's getting hacked. So it's like, Wait, what is not making the connection here? Well, to a certain degree, when you're looking, I get an email every single day about lead gen. We can give you 70 qualified leads in 15 days. And it's like, no, you can't. And all that does is make it more difficult for the reputable vendors who can provide a really good source of leads. And it makes me an impatient CEO. And so to your point, we bailed too soon. And by the way, the reason why we came back was because we closed three deals that came from a Lead Gen process that we had done four months before. And I'm like, Okay, well, wait a minute. That was more successful than we thought it was. And so you do have to stick with it. You got to be prepared to stick with it. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So that's so interesting. So you did it for a while, stopped, and then realized four months later, Oh, my God. We just closed multiple deals from these efforts. So that is a perfect example of why we need... That doesn't mean that you go at it forever if it's not working. But you do have to set some time frame where you're like, Hey, we're going to do this for this period of time to at least start seeing traction. And if we're seeing traction, then cool. We're going to ride it out for a little bit longer. But just setting those mile markers is super, super important. I want to shift gears a little bit, Don. You are a three time author, which, by the way, congratulations. I've never written a book, but I know people that have, and it is a ton of work. You've got your enhanced series of books.

Don Monistere
Yes.

How to Leverage a Book to Grow a Business

Tim Fitzpatrick
How do you leverage your books to help grow the business?

Don Monistere
Yeah, it's a great question. One of the things that I was always mindful of is I want to write content that can stand the test of time because you can reuse it, as you well know. I felt like when I started this whole journey of writing, like a lot of authors, it just happened on accident. I was doing some training with a gentleman, and he's like, Hey, man, all of this stuff you're teaching me, do you have this written down? I'm like, Yeah, I got it here and there. I got some sticky notes. He's like, Dude, you should write a book. I tried to and couldn't and it just didn't work. Then my 18 year old was going into college and he's like, Dad, you seem to have everything all figured out. And do you have any of this stuff written down? And I'm like, Yeah, I got some sticky notes. But I recognized my son was asking me the very same thing that executives were asking me, which was, Hey, how do you do this? And how do you execute at this really high level, whereas other people are not doing it like this? And I said, Well, I have a very specific life framework. I have a very specific framework that I run as an executive, and I have a very specific business framework. And I thought, oh, wait, that sounded really cool, and maybe I should write something about that. But I focused on the enhanced life performance first. And it was really more about how do I put myself in the best position to be successful? I started writing with the idea that I just need to give something to my children so that they can see, okay, this is how dad did it and he did okay. So maybe we can follow in dad's footsteps. And man, it just started to happen. The content came out and I started writing and it lasted for about eight years. I published three books. The last one just came out in November called Enhanced Corporate Performance. And really it's enhanced life performance is how do you put yourself in the greatest position to be successful and execute at a super high level. And then you take that enhanced process and say, All right, now how do I put that into my job? How do I do that as an executive? And then, okay, now that I've got all these really high performing executives, how do I put that into a management framework so that the company can just hyper scale? And that content obviously is really in demand. I mean, there's a lot of people, our prospects, they ask me all the time, Hey, can I get a copy of your book? I'm like, Yeah, as soon as you sign a contract. Now, I'm kidding. I always share the content and people are really appreciative of it. And it's back to that, we got to add value from prospect to close. So if I'm handing somebody some content that can help them, even if they choose not to do business with me, they're going to remember us. And so we use that on a regular basis. My BDMs, my sales reps, they're really keen to inviting me in and saying, Hey, this guy asked about your book. I really think you should talk to him about it. And it's been great to have that as a tool. But I will tell you, that is a lesson in patience, man. It's not easy to do. I'm pre Chat GPT, so I didn't... All my content is totally me.

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's right. Yeah, you did it as a robot. Didn't do it for you. This has been awesome, Dawn. You've dropped some serious value here. I want to ask you one more thing before we wrap things up, which is knowing what you know now, anything you do differently?

Don Monistere
Man, God, I don't like to do regret. I've always felt like when you look back, you got to believe that the things that were put in front of you... One of the things, and I talk about this in the book, is that if I put myself in the right space mentally, then the Holy Spirit is going to tell me exactly where I need to be. And sometimes that's not fun. I don't usually look back and go, Wow, I wish I'd have changed this. I wish I'd have done this differently. I will say that about midlife, so let's call it mid 30s, I started focusing more on my career and what I wanted to accomplish as opposed to focusing on how I could help other people. Tim, it was amazing how things just slowed down for me. I kept wondering, hey, when does Dawn get to be successful? When do I get to have that level of my career that I've always wanted? And it just seemed like because I wasn't in alignment with what I was supposed to be doing back to what my mother taught me, right? And focused more on other people. That's really when my career really changed. I should have just stayed with that. I started my career that way. I got lost a little bit along the way for about three years, and it slowed everything down. And then when I embraced that and said, you know what? This is more about other people than it is about me. And if I can help other people accomplish something, and I know it's a little cliché, and I listen to all the greats growing up, Jim Rhoam and all the folks who used to say, if you help enough other people, you'll be able to help yourself. But it's true. And I would change that. That was the three years of me wandering around lost trying to be an executive. And what I found is that you should try to be a human. That will create the executive that you want to be.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Don, this has been awesome, man. I appreciate you taking the time. Where can people learn more about you?

Don Monistere
Well, it's showing up on your screen right there, geninf.com. And feel free to email me, guys. I get a lot of email, but love to read it and love to respond. It's donm@gininf.com. And just go check out our website. There's quite a bit of information. Guys, we have 11 locations. I've got over 200 employees. And if you fill out the contact form, it comes to me because I want to make sure that the people who are communicating with us, I get to see who those folks are and I get an opportunity to talk to them.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Don, thank you so much. Super impressed. Thank you. There's been a lot of great info that you shared today, so thank you for doing that. For those of you that are watching, listening, we've been talking all about growth, accelerating revenue. If you want to know which of the nine revenue roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can find that over revenueroadblockscorecard.com. You can also always connect with us over at rialtomarketing.com, which is rialtomarketing.com. Thank you so much for watching. Until next time, take care.