Matt Rizzetta, CEO of N6A | Entrepreneurship & Running a Leading PR Firm

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. Without further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. All right, thanks again for joining me. I am sitting down with Matt Rosetta, who is a founder and CEO of North Six Agency, otherwise known as N6A. It is one of the leading public relations firms in the United States. Matt founded the firm at his basement in 2010 and over the past decade, has built N6A into one of the fastest growing PR firms in the United States, under his leadership. N6A has been named as one of the 50 most powerful agencies in the United States by the observer, PR weeks best places to work, and as one of entrepreneurs magazines, top company cultures in America. To this day, N6A remains 100% founder owned and operated and has never taken any outside capital. Rosetta is known for being one of the most innovative leaders in the area of public relations, marketing, and corporate culture. He is the leader behind N6A's pace point program, which is the first incentive program that enables employees to customize their rewards and the outcome relations model, which is challenged to public relations category head on bylining PR with KPIs specific business needs outcomes, not just high level. So he's really, he's really delivering for brands. Rosetta is the author of two books, the death of a relevant PR outcome relations is the new public relations and embrace the pace, the most 100 most exhilarating lessons learned in a decade of entrepreneurship. Rosetta serves on the board of trustees at the marketing edge and on the alumni board of directors at his alma mater, Iona College. She resides in Rochester County, New York with his wife and three daughters. Thank you so much for joining me, Matt. I really appreciate the chat. I'm excited to sort of unpack your career, what you're doing at N6A and dive into, you know, you dive into the book, 100 most exhilarating lessons. I'm a big fan of it and I like how you framed sort of your experience because every podcast I ask people for life lessons. This is basically a book of life lessons, excuse me, but yeah, thanks so much for coming. Yeah, thanks. Gotta appreciate the background and have been a big fan of the program for a long time. So it's an honor to be here. Appreciate, you know, I appreciate you coming on and before we speak about N6A and before we speak about some of the lessons that you've learned over building one of the best and most profitable and fastest growing prolific PR firms in the U.S. and the States, let's speak about your career. So walk me through, walk me through the map, Rosetta, origin story. So yeah, so just, you know, I grew up about 20 miles or so north in New York City. I went to a American high school, I guess, you know, and described my childhood as I did. You know, I had two great parents. They complemented each other perfectly. My dad was more of the pragmatic kind of discipline one, a man of integrity and principles. My mother was a little bit more of a dreamer. She really taught me how to change who's very inspirational, she really believed in me. And they both together shared an unconditional love and support for me and I had a development we disabled sister as well. And it was just a great balance of pragmatism and idealism that was my background. Then both parents, you know, were very present in my childhood, then you throw in my grandparents into the mix, you know, who were also very present in my life, hard working, immigrants, you know, never really spoke our language. They made incredible sacrifices for future generations like myself and parents, and they were also very present in my childhood. We wound up naming our company then after my grandparents' success agency after the success of Avenue, which is the street to which they immigrated. And anyway, it was just a great childhood, you know, filled with lots of love, food, support. And it really built a nice foundation for me to dream and to aspire to build something later. Obviously, when I launched N6A, you know, a lot of that had to do with lessons. And was N6A the first thing you did? Did you work for companies before or were you just like, you know, had first, I want to be an entrepreneur. And I want to start this and it was successful because most entrepreneurs I speak to, they've had a lot of like screwed up a lot of shit before they get something that works or, you know, they've worked in a company that I can't work for somebody. So what's the story of, you know, your professional background? Yes, I got out of, you know, you mentioned once I own a college, which was about, you know, about five minutes from where I grew up, got out of college, you know, had been used to working hard my whole life. I was an amateur boxer in college, I worked, you know, all jobs at college. So I was kind of used to hard work and once I graduated, my goal was really to become a sports agent. That's why I need to simply be a sports agent, CAA. I did, yeah. Yeah. I had my dream job at whatever time for myself. And that's what I, that's what I wanted to do. So I got a job out of my own working for Sony BMG. I worked at nine to five in the parking department. I would take the train down to the town Manhattan, fight my way through midtown traffic and up to Sony BMG's office, 43rd floor. And I worked in the parking department, I'd find a five and literally I would rush home and front the hours of about 7 p.m. to like 2 a.m. every night. I would represent athlete and I would try to get them jobs overseas, basketball players. We also represented some entertainers well and my goal was really just to build a client base and revenue stream where I could afford to go out and do that on my own full time. Anyway, I learned some hard lessons along the way like many young entrepreneurs do, being a sports agent at least that my experience wasn't all that it cracked up to be. But you know through those lessons, it taught me a lot about how to build a business, taught me a lot of lessons about how to serve, you know, how to operate a service in a services environment. And then four or five years later when I started in, say, took a lot of those lessons with me. Two left. Sorry. Well, second, I'm just, I'm going to, I'm going to clip it so don't worry about that. I just wanted to get my, my background lighting going. I forgot to get my whole, it's early for me, you have to give me a break, man. It's very early. It's blue. Yeah. Well, listen, I can change it too. But right now it's maybe blue. That's not my team. Don't worry. It's like, I think they had about the same winning streak as the Rangers right now. No one's doing that hot in the original six. So there you go. Very good. So, so that does tee it up. So you know, you, you worked in marketing. You worked as an agent. Now what made you want to go into PR and what, what was the first iteration of N6A? Yeah, so, you know, fast forward then about four or five years later after my failed experiments, that I experienced trying to be a sports agent, 26, 27 years old. My wife was a public school teacher in Brooklyn, FPS 205. I had, I had moved on to another agency or two, kind of was working my way up to corporate banks and PR and marketing. And I, you know, I got the entrepreneurial bug. I just, you know, like many entrepreneurs. I looked at the agency environment and I just thought I could do it a little bit better. My naivety and stubbornness kind of brought me to start the business. I'll never forget it's in my book. The first lesson is never forget your survival days. I'll never forget January 29, 2010. I just turned 27 years old. I'm sitting there at a diner in Yonkers, New York, with my wife who was about seven months pregnant. I'm with our daughter, Yonna, we know it's three. And I literally was, you know, begging and pleading with her to let me, to let me start my own firm. I'm 6A and she looked me in the eye and she said, you know, Matt, should I believe in you? I believe in, in the vision and she let me do it. And we started the agency the next day out of my basement. I had no money at income and clients. My wife was on maternity leave. So literally at zero, zero money. And the rest is history, you know, we started it out of our basement, just worked our butts off. And then here we are 10 years later, you know, we've been in business for a decade. We've had a really great run, but I've never taken any outside capital, as you mentioned. And it's just been a great, great journey, but it all started, you know, right there in Yonkers diner 10 years ago with a crazy plea of it's life. That's some, that's risky to say the least. That's not, that's not, you know, some people when they, when they start a business, it's a little bit safer if they have like a great, great income or, you know, they're a little bit more comfortable or their wife isn't seven months pregnant. And they're on maternity leave. So that's, that is very risky. So walk me through as, as you built your business, I understand at a high level what PR does, but let's just tee it up for people. When you say you're a PR firm, what problems are you actually solving? What's your niche that N6A solves for? Well, what we're trying to do is we, you know, historically PR has kind of lived as the footnote Scott in the marketing stack where it's been very difficult for brands to measure, right? And they brands kind of feel like they need a PR firm or they need some sort of PR presence, but they're not really sure why they just know that they need to be positioned in a certain way in the marketplace. Obviously, brand perception, especially nowadays is, is incredibly important, probably more important than it's ever been, but it's always been very difficult to trace the value of PR to some sort of tangible business outcome. That's where, you know, that's where our model is a little different and we're really focused on helping brands actually align PR with a specific business outcome, that business outcome could be a revenue outcome like we, it could be a recruiting outcome, you know, getting talent to want to work at your company, it could be an M&A outcome, you know, transactionally speaking, it could be a liquidity event in the form of an IPO, it could be a competitive outcome where you're just getting, you know, your butt kicked for whatever reason by your petition and you need to leapfrog them. So that's what our model is focused on. It's really kind of tangible, measurable PR aligned with business outcome to not PR just for the sake of PR. And do you find that that has been somewhat of, like, are you sort of paving the way in that regard? Like you are the one of the main firms that actually does that? Yeah, I mean, looking at you, when you go into a meeting with the CMO and CMO's meeting with tons of PR firms and PR professionals and every one of them is telling them that they need PR because they have to invest in their brand, but they're not making business for it. You know, we're going into those meetings and we're saying, we need PR not because you just have to invest in your brand, but you need PR because we're going to fight for it on the P&L. We're going to demonstrate, you know, where it's going to lead to incremental outcomes, right, on the P&L. So that, you know, that really has kind of differentiated us in many respects. It didn't just happen overnight. I mean, it was, you know, it was a 10-year journey for us and at about year six or seven in the journey, the light bulb went off and we were sitting in front of our buyers. TMO is a marketing CEO's and they were like, yeah, PR is great, but how can we, how can we show that it demonstrates some kind of business value? And that's when we started to go through the greater and disciplined of trying to create a model. Again, with PR, you know, PR in our mind is the most valuable asset in the credit in the marketing stack because it's credibility. PR is credibility, right, and you can't do anything without credibility if you're a brand, you can't recruit talent, you can't sell your company, you can't sell your products. So our argument was that PR is the most valuable component of the marketing stack. It just wasn't getting the credit. It deserved because these PR practitioners weren't finishing the race for their clients. They weren't taking the credibility assets and then, and then aligning them with some sort of business outcomes. So that's been our approach to, you know, certainly over the past three or four years and we found it to be successful. So I appreciate that and I think that that makes a lot of sense and I think it's also very important in the age of transparency and the age of cancel culture and all of these things that are going on that businesses are very much above board and in line and in sync with what the market is saying because if you're not, you know, social media is a mother right now, they don't give you much mercy, right? So and we're seeing that more and more especially especially what we're living through right now. And you know, that's a whole other, the whole other conversation and it's a great, it's a great point, but I also really want to dive into it. I'll give I'll let you decide, but I would love to go into some of the actual tangible lessons that you've built out because when I when I actually read your book, that's what that's where I saw a ton of value. But I was just curious because you're in it. Do you have any thoughts on like best practices for businesses that are trying to understand and climateize and acclimate to this cancel culture? You know, all of this social media pressure to do this thing, that thing, it seems like everything, there's an every day, there's a new thing that businesses are supposed to be doing to stay in touch and in tune and sensitive to to topical issues. So how do businesses sort of ride this wave? Because it's very difficult, I find. I saw, you know, we're speaking about, we're speaking about obviously George Floyd protests and how businesses are dealing with that. And I saw something that was just horrible. It was there was these influencers overseas. I don't know if they were any in North America, but they were, they were in solidarity of the black community painting blackface on themselves. And it was just like this, basically a PR disaster. And like that's what I think businesses don't understand. They don't understand how to deal with all of these trending topics. You're not agile enough. And then you saw these influencers. This is just like obviously the worst possible case of trying to do something positive, but the outcome being negative. And it's just a point that I read last night. That's why it's top of mind. It was just insane that I saw that and they people actually thought that was okay. But how do businesses cheap up with all of the social pressures as a PR firm? What would you recommend they do? I guess the entire PR firm, but yeah. I think, Scott, I think the, I think the first thing is you have to stay true to your core values and you have to live and breathe those values in the form of actions, right? Not in the form of words. And I think that that's sort of the golden rule for businesses, I believe, and to your point, I've been running a business for over a decade now. And look, it's a lot. There's a lot more peer pressure. Everything is under a microscope. Everything is much more public in terms of how you manage your business now than it was a decade ago. So my advice and counsel to business leaders right now is just to stay true to your core values. I think corporations to your point earlier, to your point earlier, corporations can be a platform for impact and change. And I think it's on corporations to do their part to impact change by doing just by saying. And if you're a corporation, I can just speak to, you know, to our company at NSX ASAP. Corporations can, you know, do in three ways. There's three ways I think they can do. Number one is through time. Number two is through knowledge. And then number three is through money. And I think it's incumbent on corporations to do their part, you know, in each one of those areas. Time, you know, time is at least on the services business. Time is our most valuable resource, right? So we can donate if we can give our time to impacting social change, you know, that's part of the responsibility, I believe, of a corporate citizen today. Number two is knowledge. So all of us as corporate leaders on behalf of our entities can lend something to help impact change in the form of knowledge are, you know, my businesses domain is PR and marketing services. So we have a specialized skill that we can contribute in some way to impact social change by our knowledge of marketing or PR or whatever it is. And then money, which obviously depends on, you know, the size and scale of the operation, but in some way, shape or form, I think to the extent that, you know, companies can contribute their financial resources to impact change. They should do that. And that's been our whole thing, not just with the recent environment in which we're operating, but, you know, all along over the past 10 years, you know, I always said to our employees, got, you know, we really want to be a company that backs up our words with actions. We don't want to be a company that just says things we want to be a company that does that. That's important. Yeah. Sometimes we have to, you know, we have to avoid the temptation of peer pressure and to be the first one to post on Instagram or LinkedIn. But we're going to be the first ones to meet as a team and discuss how we're going to do things to actually impact change. I'm, you know, I'm good with that. Yeah, I think that's a smart, I think it's a smart way to look at it because I think there's a lot of, like, I think you, you know, thinking through a lot of these, these things that companies are doing are knee jerk and they're not actionable. So it's all great to be talk on social and be the loudest. But in six months, what have you, what change do you actually invoke in your organization or for, you know, the community? I appreciate that. I, you know, I don't, I don't want to go too much into that. But I just think it's relevant because that's your, that's what you do. So I think that it's something that if somebody's listening in their inner business environment, I think it's valuable to understand from a P from one of the leading PR firms experts point of view is like those points you mentioned, but be, be, be in line with what your core values are. But there's other ways that you contribute, but make sure that there's actually an action and outcome. It's not just a spur for this or like high level or, you know, a vanity, a vanity action, right? You want it to be true and impactful. I'd rather be, you know, I'd rather be the company to that point. You know, I'd rather be the company that you never hear about that does things than the company you always hear about. Yeah, very well said. Very well said. Okay. So let's, let's break down. Let's break down some of the points in this book because, and I want to say this, when somebody writes a book, a lot of people write books, books are great. A lot of people write books, but sometimes, sometimes it feels very salesy if I speak too much about the book on the podcast. And that's, that's honest. And I don't like speaking too much about the book. I'd rather pull out the value and the individual and then that they've written a book like people are listening or watching whatever, they can go get that book. And that's cool. But I really do want to focus on some of the things that you've mentioned in the book because the book is literally a list of lessons that you've learned over your career. So I don't care if you had written it in a book or not, I still want to get that out of you because that's what you've lived and those are the struggles that you've, you've dealt with. So, um, so I guess, you know, there's a, there's a few really, really strong points that I really enjoyed. One of them being working for your eulogy, not your resume. I want to, that's a very strong statement. What does that mean? In your words, how can people use that to impact their own career, their own business? Sure. So Scott, um, eulogy over resume is one of the lessons on the 100 lessons that book, as you mentioned, and I learned that one, and it's one of the most meaningful ones to me, you know, after a little journey, I learned that one. It was about 2014, 2015. I was about four or five years into N6A at the time. And you got, first of all, to understand, you know, where I come from, and I mentioned my upbringing and my background and, you know, I was very blessed growing up to have a family that totally supported and loved me. And I was really showered with all of, you know, this amazing unconditional love. But, you know, we never and my wife too, you know, we never had generational money, you know, so to speak. And so this, this N6A entrepreneurial journey, like, you know, when we were making some good money the first couple of years in business, I mean, we achieved success. I would say pretty quickly in our, in our journey. So around 2014, 2015, we were approached by some firms, larger firms and strategic investors that, you know, wanted to buy us or invest in us in some cases. And financially, I would have represented a significant, you know, really life-changing event that wouldn't have been Hart Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. But, you know, for where I came from, you know, it was, it was certainly life-changing money. It would have changed the trajectory of, you know, my family, my children. And it was the first time in my career where I was dealing with something like that. And obviously, it's a good thing, right? Because you're showing the kind of validates that you've built a great business and other people now are looking to invest or buy, you know, by the firm. So obviously, that was incredibly, you know, exciting for me. But it also created this, you know, almost identity crisis, because I loved the business. And I didn't just want to give the business up and, you know, become, you know, become a vice president to the senior vice president to an executive vice president to the COO. And, you know, like that, it wasn't really something that I was incredibly motivated by. And so I had these two things pulling at me, you know, one was the law of financial security. And the other was the fact that I would have to give the business up and our identity and, you know, all of all of that. And at that time, as I was literally, it was like sign from above in my mind, you know, at that time I heard a TED talk by an author he might have heard of me, David Brooks. And David Brooks was talking about in his TED talk the concept of people who lived for their eulogies and people who lived for their resume, two different types of people. And the vast majority of people tend to live for their resumes where they're living to set the next job up, the next opportunity up. And then there's a rare minority of people that live for their eulogy where they live, not to set the next job up, but they're living today based on how they want to be remembered when everything is set and done. And he was talking about it in much more of a spiritual kind of personal context, obviously, as an entrepreneur, I sort of applied it to my business journey. But I remember hearing that speech and it really changed my life. And I remember saying, that's how I want to run my business. I want to run my business based on the eulogy based on how we're going to be remembered when all is set and done. We don't want to be a brand that kind of fades into oblivion. And unfortunately that comes with some really difficult sacrifices and decisions. In my case, it's been turning down the law of investment capital and money many times. But I believe it's the right thing to do. And when I'm old and gray sitting on a porch somewhere and smoking a cigar or whatnot, I really want people to remember a company built something that's significant, that doesn't just fade into oblivion. And that's kind of the eulogy concept. And I think we've been pretty true to that. Obviously, there's always difficult to live and breathe that every second you kind of have to remind yourself that you're in it for the eulogy. But I think we've been on a pretty good job as an organization of living that as long as we possibly. I love that. And I think that, you know, it does something else. And you've mentioned, live for your eulogy, not your resume. I also think that that's more of a long-term vision. Obviously, that's a silly thing to say. But it's more of a long-term vision. But that long-term vision, what I mean by that is it's driving an authentic outcome over the long term as opposed to a short knee jerk reaction to a potential upside. You're doing something for some longevity, right? If you live for your eulogy, if you live for what you're passionate about, if you take that and you compound it over years, trust you will have that resume portion as well. You will have success. But I think that keeping that in mind, I think that that sort of frames up how you should focus all your efforts, all your initiatives, they should be long-term and they should be something that you aren't trying to capitalize on in the short term. And I think that that almost runs counter, unfortunately, to a lot of the way business is done today. But I think that the people that are most successful and happiest are people that have that patience and do look towards building something long-term that they can enjoy was if you have that, you know, I think it's been propagated by Silicon Valley, you know, short-term returns, high ROI, get in, get out quick, you know, make 10X what you put in. That mentality is toxic to a lot of entrepreneurs. And that mentality, not every entrepreneur, of course, it's nice to have a big exit, of course. But it's not the reality for most people. It's like if you look at the, if you look at the subset of entrepreneurs that actually last 10 years, it's very small, and the ones that turn into unicorn exits. It's like it's infantile. It go by lottery ticket. It's much easier than starting a company. It's going to go turn into a unicorn. So I think that having that mindset just sort of frames your expectations of the work and the effort that you have to put in. Because if you work for your eulogy, then you're no longer, you know, again, it's the age old saying like it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, right? But it's the same thing. You're just taking it long term. And I like how you framed it because it's not only not only it's not a sprint as a marathon, but it's, it's, it's, it's not short term. It's long term and meaningful. Yeah. I totally agree with that. In fact, those, you know, you're speaking to a couple of other lessons in the book. And by the way, I, I just want to, um, practice this by saying that the book is a hundred lessons learned, which implies that I made mistakes. I mean, I made mistakes to learn all hundred these lessons. So how about the eulogy approach, you know, when, when I was 26 or 27 years old, you know, I got punched in the face a lot along the way to learn these lessons. But you nailed it. I mean, look, and these are other lessons in the book. I think consistency and longevity are the most overlooked qualities in any one's career. And that's another lesson that I've learned. The hard way I've been surrounded, you know, I've been blessed to have been surrounded by so many clients and friends in my network that have have really successful exits, you know, short term exits. And it took me about nine or 10 years to realize this, but that doesn't necessarily define success in one's career. I've seen, I've seen a lot of companies have short term successful outcomes, you know, successful quarters, successful years, you know, hit, hit the, um, the perfect, you know, timing, my comfort bubbles and BC capital investment. Um, and in their own right, they've had incredible, incredibly successful outcomes, but that's not necessarily in my mind what would define an successful career. I think the ones that have achieved consistent longevity, you know, consistent success, incremental improvements, and they've done that year over year over year over year for a very long time and played the long game in my mind, those have been the ones that have been the most successful. And you know, that, you know, that's kind of been my experience. You know, the other thing on that is I have three words that I found are the sexiest in the business in the entrepreneurial dictionary over 10 years. Number one is discipline, number two is incrementalism and number three is accountability. And the reason I say that for sexy is because they seem like the least sexy words, right? Like when you talk about discipline, you know, people want to want to vomit when you talk about incrementalism, people, so I don't even know what that means. And then when you talk about accountability, that sounds like coach speak, but it doesn't sound like it's actually practiced. But as I've learned in my journey, the entrepreneurs who are disciplined, they have a rigor in place, they study, they take, they put the time in, they put the road work in, they truly focus on bringing the level of discipline and rigor to the way they operate their businesses are the ones that are able to achieve the most long-term success. The ones that focus on incrementalism too, it's not about you can't go from being, you know, a new entrepreneur to a great entrepreneur overnight. The way you go from being a new entrepreneur to a great entrepreneur is through incrementalism, through making incremental progress, it's through holding yourself accountable, looking in the mirror, you know, plugging holes, doing that year after year, day after day, and over time, you'll build a really special career, and then, you know, on those along those lines accountability too, you know, it's on me. I'm running our business. Ultimately, every decision that the business makes, some in some way share perform is a reflection of me, it rolls up to me, and that's true of all entrepreneurs out there, and they need to be very comfortable with that level of accountability. If you hire somebody, that person makes a mistake, well, guess what? You know, by extension, you are accountable because you hired that person, and it took me a little bit of time to get comfortable with that level of accountability, but I think it's really important anyway, you know, those are sort of the three most, the three sexiest terms in my mind, and it runs counter to what a lot of entrepreneur books might tell you, but that's been my experience just in journalism. I think those are great. I think those are, and the way you explain them are, I think that sort of frames up why they're so important. That's actually a word that I've never heard used before, incremental, incrementalism, incrementalism. So when you say it, it makes sense, but I've never actually used it. I've never heard it used as a word that describes the way you should approach business. So it's a very valid. I like that a lot. I like that word a lot. I'm going to start using that to be honest. I'm going to take that because you always hear about the passion and the grit and all these other types of entrepreneurial words, but incrementalism, it tees it up. I just say it because I just never heard it, and that's why I love it because it just, again, it's about framing expectations. And if you can frame expectations as an entrepreneur properly, suddenly the whole process doesn't seem so scary. And I think that that's probably the best takeaway. And even in both of these, the sort of the same thread is like patience. It's patience and understanding and celebrating the small wins, baby steps, incrementalism, working for the long term. Like all these things, I'm starting to see a theme that is what's driving the success. And I think that some people, some entrepreneurs, you know, if I look at the people that I know and they're not tack entrepreneurs or they're not marketing entrepreneurs, they could sell like a, they could sell a very boring product. They could sell. And I did air quotes because, you know, it's their life. But I mean, they could be selling something like, I don't know, like just like a very like not nothing too sexy. And if they stick with it and they celebrate the small wins and they they manage that for, you know, 10 plus years, you start to see that they they have massive amounts of success. And it's just because they've kept with it over X period of time. And they didn't expect anything, you know, anything monumental. And I'm speaking about like very that, you know, tactile widgets, like if you're selling, for example, I knew I used to work for guy who sell a soul phone systems. I used to work in telecom. And he sold phone systems and he did that for like 20 years. And now he's massively successful, very, very happy. But it was just like, it was grind. It was grind, grind, grind, grind. And he did that for his, you know, for 20 years since he graduated university. And he's a really, really smart individual. But there was no major wins there. Like he actually, he writes about some of the struggles and the stresses. And, and, and he didn't, he didn't frame it in the term, you know, incrementalism or, or any of the things that you're mentioning now. But it's definitely, it's definitely a, a common threat with a lot of people that have seen success over like, you know, X period of time. Yeah. So, so, so, right, I remember Scott just to put that into context. I remember when I started at six a, I actually looked, I have the business plan that I developed, started at six a, and I looked back on it once a year, just as a, actually the same day on end six a day, again, here, 29 a day, decided to start a firm. I looked back at the business plan and I kind of laughed because I look at the superlatives I used to develop the business plan. I was 26 years old. Like these were, these were the words I used that I thought were going to define success. It was sprint. It was fast. It was quick. And really, you know, when I was 26 or 27 years old, starting my firm, I was, you know, naive. And I believe that we were just going to achieve immediate success. We're going to flip it. We're going to get, it was totally the resume over the eulogy mindset at that age. And now I look back at that 10 years later. And I laughed because when I was set and done, when my career is over, I want to be defined by consistency and long depth. I don't really care if people, you know, I don't really care about short sprints and, you know, having a really successful outcome over a quarter or a given year. I want people to look back at my career and say, you know, that was a guy who did things the right way. He learned from his mistakes. He achieved success on a consistent basis year after year, got better and promoting, improved incrementally. And I'll be good with that. You know, over the course of, I'm 37 years old, you know, over the course of, you know, the next 30 years, if you just focus on making incremental progress year after year, you know, you can build a hell of a career. And that's really where my mind is at. That's a really, that's a smart lesson to learn. Another point that I saw that was really good. It's not, it's not personal, it's business. Why is that a lie? Why is that as per your experience, why is that a lie? It's good luck telling any entrepreneur. It's not personal, you know, it's, that's true. I remember, I remember hearing when we started the business and I have a lot of very smart people who advise me in my network, some of them, family members, some close friends, some of them, business executives. And, you know, a lot of times you'll hear, Matt, you can't, look, it's not personal, it's business, it's not personal, it's business. But the truth is, there's a connection, you know, certain Martin Surrell, who used to run WPP, you know, he said, there's a founder's connection, something we could call a founder's connection. He said, was the closest thing that a male could fail the child for, you know, which is if you're a founder of a business, it becomes, you know, the business becomes a living breathing organism. And it's on right. So how can you possibly grow, nourish, cultivate a living breathing organism, which really is what, which is really what a business is founder and not have a personal connection to it. So, you know, rather than just sort of pretend that business is impersonal, you know, I try to embrace it. And my business is very much a personal reflection of who I am. It's a personal reflection of my values. It's a personal reflection of, you know, how I want to treat people. It's a personal reflection of, you know, the mistakes that I've made in many cases. And, you know, I've just kind of come to terms with that. And obviously, I've done it in a way, I try to do it in a way where it doesn't compromise my ability to make discipline business decisions on behalf of the enterprise. But I'm not afraid to share our personal beliefs about core values because frankly, a lot of times, those are the reflection of the founders that started the company. And then as the company scales, the cool thing about business is that, you know, success is best when it's shared. So, as you scale your business, other people join. And then you learn from those people and then the personal values and the personality of the business becomes about more than just the founder. Now, it becomes about the people who have joined you on the journey. And that's really what, you know, what we've learned. And when I talk about business, not being, you know, business being personal, that's really what I mean. It is a personal reflection of my mind, who I am as an individual. And many of the people who have chosen to join me is crazy, but on journey over the past. I love that. And I also appreciate that, like, the understanding that it's personal because I think that if somebody ever said to me, it's not business personal. It's more reflection of the fact that they want to mask like a behavior or an action with like a broad stroke of, you know, I don't really care. I don't really care about you, but I'm trying to win on my end anyways. And I'm being selfish. So I listen to businesses rough. And there's going to be people that are going to try and screw you over. And I'm sure you've experienced that many times in your career. Yeah, you learn it very quickly. And one take away, I work with a lot of, I used to work more, but I still get a lot of entrepreneurs reaching out. And just for advice on this and that and the other thing and how do I take my product to market? And I'm looking for a co-founder and I'm looking, you know, I don't want to bootstrap. I want to get some VC money. And the best advice, you know, that I always give them is to look for, make sure you align with the right people. And don't jump into bad people too quickly. And that could be co-founder. That could be wrong VC. It could be, you know, it could be dumb money that's not going to help you. It could be people that are a little more predatory in their view of how to build business and exit like people, people drive business and people can room business too. And I think that as a first-time entrepreneur, you're probably a little bit more naive to it, to how stressful or I don't want to say, you know, bad people can be, but people can be very bad. And if you've only ever worked under the umbrella of a corporation before, you'll never realize it until you go out on your own and try to build your own thing. So, I totally agree with you. I would say about 98% of the mistakes I've made over the past 10 years have to do with people. And specifically it has to do with one of the four following areas. People I hired, people I didn't hire, people I fired, and people I didn't fire. You know, so what's the common thread there? It's people. And then, but I handled myself in any one of those four examples, one of those four categories. You know, that's that the greatest mistakes and regrets usually have to come with, you know, usually revolve around people front and center. And that I'm sure that that is the experience not just with myself, but of the entrepreneur. Listen to this, I think you also hit on a very important point and has to do with cynicism. And you know, that's another lesson that I learned quickly. I have a lesson in my book called the man who's left in the conference room. And it has to do with cynicism. You know, I was like a month or two into business. And I found out that there's some bad people out there in business. And you have to, you have to sort of scrutinize things a little bit more closely than, you know, then you're used to, you have to vet things properly. And, you know, the man who's left in the conference room, we had this guy who, you know, who positioned himself as like a super, super successful titan of industry, you know, out, out in Europe. And he was working out of the shared office we were in at the time. And anyhow, long story short, I totally fell for his pitch, you know, hookline and sinker. And he convinced me to provide pro bono services and get behind him and all this philanthropy. He was doing anyway, long story short, it turned out that this guy was a total fraud. In our conference room, they couldn't even, he said he had this big penthouse on the upper side of the cat and it turned out that, you know, he couldn't even afford rent, he was sleeping in a conference room and all these kind of crazy things. And it just taught me a valuable lesson very early in my business career that there's more, there's more than meets the eye, right? And you know, that properly and people who say they're on top of the world sometimes are not and you really need to do a good job making sure that you're vetting. Yeah, very good. That's a, that's a crazy story. I've never, I've heard of, you know, you know, you get into bed with the wrong founders or people don't work as hard, they'll pull their way. You know, you have some bad VC intentions or but I've never heard of somebody sleeping in your conference room. I don't know. Because we were, we were working rent free out of this shared office space in Midtown. And with an amazing gesture that one of our early clients did, he was, he was like, Matt, you know, keep your overhead down with that tons of office space. Come work out of our shared office. So he was incredibly grateful. And then another guy who was working out of this office was this guy that I mentioned earlier and, you know, he, he immediately positioned himself as the super successful tighten of industry had like three or four exits and the billions of dollars and all this kind of crazy stuff. And he used that to really, and I was the first time, very impressionable first time used that to, uh, convince me to provide services for free. And then anyway, turned out that we wound up, something didn't pass the sniff test about a month or two after all this happened. Part of the research found out he was a total fraud. And then when we were moving to our first real office downtown in Midtown, we were cleaning out the conference room and there was like this, one of my interns actually saw this pillow and it was like pajamas or something and one of the nooks and conference tables and what the heck is that? And we opened up the nook and it turned out that it was the, the clothes of this guy who said that he was so, so successful and we found out later that he had been sleeping in the conference room. There you go. That's, uh, interesting. That's, you have to be careful, man. You have to be so careful. I've never, you know, you have to be so careful. I've never experienced anything like that before, but like I was doing some independent consulting and and you have to, because I can't, I don't want to talk about me, but I did come from big business and I experienced that when I went in on my own and it was never that extreme, but it was definitely just like, it was more like to do with, you know, you have to manage your expectations. How do you, how do you get people to pay their invoices after you've done the work? Like the things that you don't have to worry about, like that, people don't, don't respect you as a, as a consultant or a business owner. Like these types of regular business-y things, you know, it's just, it's just operating a business and you expect that everything should go easily. If you set up a project and you do the work, if you have, I guess that's why people get prepared and whatnot, but as a new entrepreneur, as somebody just going out on my own and doing my own thing several years ago, that was an issue that I ran into and had to, had to value my own time properly because, you know, you jump out these deals and then you do the work and then people aren't paying. And then that's just, that's a small, a small fraction of somebody, you know, committing fraud and sleeping in your conference room and whatnot. But still, it's a, these are things you don't deal with when you work for somebody, right? You just, it's not, it's not your problem. You have people that take care of it, especially when you work in like, you know, a large company. So, yeah. You know, it's an interesting point that you bring up to on that is that I think that underscores the silver lining and all of this is that when you find good people, hold on to them. And that's another lesson that I've, you know, there's a lot of bad people in business, unfortunately, and you're right. A lot of what you just hit on are signs of value. You know, do you pay your vendors on time, right? Do you, you know, do you, do you treat people the right way? You know, are you diligent in follow-up or do you only follow up with people when you want something from them in return? Like, all of these are usually signs of character and ultimately some sort of connection to the values of the entrepreneur. Well, business is personal because it's usually a reflection in some way shape of the personal values of the collection of people who are running those in. But the silver lining is that there's also some great people out there. And when you find good people, hold on to them, keep them. And a lot of the mistakes I talked about the mistakes I made in my career usually have to do with people. A lot of the mistakes do have to do with losing people that were good people that, you know, I wish I could have kept if I would have done a figure two, probably differently. And, you know, good people lead you to great places. That's very true in this, that's very true. And I think no matter where you are in your career, whether you're an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur, surround yourself with good people and there's a lot of bad people there. So when you find a good one, hold on. I love it. That's a good good takeaway. And the last point that I did want to, I want to touch on gone through a ton of stuff in the book and a lot of really good stories. I appreciate it. But there's one more point. You mentioned entrepreneurs are never self-made. What does that mean? Because that's going to, that's going to piss off a lot of people that are saying, yeah, I did the work. I made myself, you know, I built myself up. So what do you mean by that? And I understand, I understand slightly what you're saying, but I want to hear from you. So what do you mean entrepreneurs are never self-made? So I learned that, you know, I was, again, when I started our business, I was very naive to that. And one of my goals was, and you know, it's very personal. A lot of the lessons in the book obviously are very personal. It's a journey for 10 years of my entrepreneur experience and all the mistakes that I made and whatnot. And when I started the business, you know, I thought that I was going to build myself into this self-made millionaire very early in life. Before age 30, that was one of the goals I had set for myself. You know, fortunately through, you know, hard work, I was able to achieve, you know, my financial goal before the age of 30, which for me was like a huge, huge accomplishment. And it meant a lot. And I remember thinking to myself, well, like I'm a self-made guy and here I am. And then I heard a speech by Ken Languom, you know, who was the founder of Home Depot. I was about 30, 31 years old or something like that at the time. And he talked about how there's no such thing. And he's a billionaire. Home Depot. Home Depot. Yeah. Yeah. The, you know, the, you know, the, um, kidney of the American dream. And he talked about how he didn't view himself as self-made. And I was like, well, how is that possible? This is a guy. Here's a guy from Long Island, you know, right around the area. I grew up, working class family built himself, you know, into all of this success without really, you know, any kind of head start in life. And he doesn't view himself as self-made. And then he explained why. And when he explained why I was like, absolutely, that makes perfect sense. The reason you're not self-made is because you're the byproduct of so many people in your career who have helped and they paid it forward. And they might not necessarily pay it forward in the form of money. But they pay it forward in the form of something that's much more valuable than that's time, that support, and that's care. And that's sort of when I, you know, that's when the light bulb went off and any sort of, you know, small level of success, I had achieved at that point in my career. I realized it was not the result of my own doing. It was more the result of just being blessed with great people around me that believed in me, supported me, donated their time, contributed their support. And that's why I was self-made. I wasn't self-made because I had any kind of brilliant, you know, brilliant formula. I was self-made because I was just the byproduct of always great people who believed. I think that's an important lesson. I think it should help any entrepreneur, anyone who's on their career journey, keep things in perspective, any success you achieve. Obviously, you know, it's on you to get there, but you're not going to get there unless you have the support of them. And I think that the one thing if I can add on to that is to keep that in the back of your mind, so you stay humble too. These do stay humble as you grow, because you mentioned like it's people that drive it. It's people that drive your success. And if you ever forget that, that's when that, I think that's when you could make poor decisions about people that are good people, because you don't understand how these people got you to where you were. And if you do want to ever get to the next level, it's still going to be those people, mentors, employees, peers. It doesn't really matter. There's a whole bunch of people that impact and help you success. I think that those people do have to. Yeah. Look at what we were talking about earlier about the survival days. I was sitting in that diner and yonkers and I asked my wife for her blessing. She said, business, I wouldn't, she would have said, no, there goes my, there goes my dream, right? And she hasn't contributed, my wife has contributed everything to me since this whole thing started, my journey started, but she hasn't contributed any money, but what she contributed to my mind, the important gift of all, which is belief and support. So how could I possibly be self-made if you didn't make the decision to let me start? Very good. So those are really good lessons. I hope that people that are listening, if you know, if they are entrepreneurs, or like I said, you know, entrepreneurs people looking to grow in their career, could have a side hustle, could just want to, you know, get to the next level of their career. I would suggest reading this book because these are all very, very personal stories and I've worked with, I've personally worked with a lot of entrepreneurs, but I've also, you know, gone through different stages of my career and I can say that a lot of the books will, a lot of the books will speak about, I guess, the tactics or the high level, but they don't get into the some of the negatives or the, I guess, the parts of being an entrepreneur or business or life that are a little bit less fun to deal with. And you can learn a lot of a strategy and tactics and a lot of books that people, you know, write about, you know, marketing and sales and culture and management and leadership, but they don't always go into the negatives because that's something that's hard to write about and it's very personal and a lot of people don't like to share those stories. And you only see, sometimes you only see those stories shared when somebody's like already like, you know, a billionaire and they'll write a, write a memoir of all the things they've gone through in their life. But I really, I really appreciate that. And you know, this book is, is really good for highlighting the real life experience of an entrepreneur. Actually, another book that I've actually read that is similar to this is like the hard thing about hard things, which is also very much like a raw. I guess the best word is raw. It's just like, it's not, it's not bullshitting. It's not, you know, it's not fake. It's not phony. It's just like, this is what you're going to have to deal with. If you want to go and really achieve greatness, there's a lot of benefits, a lot of positives, but there's a lot of things you have to keep in mind. Not drawbacks, not always negatives, but just things like you have to keep in mind. This is what people have been through before. This is what you're going to have to deal with. And I think that that's really probably the most valuable lessons you can ever give someone, just like the reality of what it is to build your own thing. But anyways, I wanted to, I wanted to, I've been speaking way too much on this podcast. So I apologize, but I get, I get really excited about some of the topics that you're talking about. I wanted to, I wanted to give you the floor. Is there any other lessons inside this book that that you thought would be really good? You know, we sort of spoke about a ton of stuff, but is there anything else that you sort of learned that we didn't touch on that you'd want to bring up? Or is this, is this good? It's your, whatever. Or is yours, man? We still have about 88 lessons to go. So when, when, when we're all, you know, pandemics over, like New York's like my second home. So we'll do like, we'll do a sit down and we'll do, we'll do an impersonal goal. We'll have like a series of, you know, going through your life, going through these lessons, probably understanding all the shit you went through that just said that you, it's going to be a little bit traumatic for you, reliving all these experiences again and speaking through them. But I think it's really good for people to hear out. I guess I'll just share two real quickly. You know, one is a practical, one is sort of a practical tip that I learned that I think your audience can apply in their day to day, whether they're entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs or just sort of figuring out what they want to do in their career. And then one is a little bit more personal. The tactical one is I, I call it foul shots. And I've been taking what I call foul shots for my whole career. And the concept of foul shots is based on, you know, the late Kobe Bryant, I remember hearing about his just incredibly insane work ethic. How he would stay after practice every day. And he would shoot hundreds and hundreds of shots. And he wouldn't allow himself to lead practice until he did. I think he was like four or five hundred shots. He's not going to go being a, you know, 38% to a 48% shooter overnight, right? Those, those, the difference of one day of taking those shots is not going to make him super star. But what is is going to, is the discipline of you taking those shots every single day. And over the course of the year and aggregate, those shots will make him a better shooter and that's a better player. So I thought it was just such a cool way of, you know, and I wanted to adopt that into my own repertoire and work. So I did what I started, I started taking what I call foul shots. And every day, at the moment since I was about 21 or 22 years old, I would just reach out to somebody. And I would, it could be somebody that I read about a newspaper. It could be somebody that I had seen on TV. It could be somebody that one of my friends told me about. And I would just reach out to them for no really selfish reason or commercial gain. It was just someone who interested me. And I said, you know, hey, Scott, read about you in this magazine, really inspired by your journey. Thought, you know, A B and C about your journey was really cool. We'd love to grab a coffee something like that. Anyhow, I did that about anywhere about, you know, five to 10 of those per day when I started my career. And I've done it every single day for my entire career and the thought being similar to the Kobe work ethic is that if I reach out to five new people every day, probably not going to make a difference on a day-to-day basis. But that means that's 25 people per week. 100 new people per month. It's 1,000 new people per year. I've been a business for 10 years now that's 10,000 people. And, you know, even if 20% of those people respond to you, it changes the course of your career because you meet new people that lead you to great places. And the whole thought is that if you take those foul shots every day, it's the repetition that will really impact your career. So that's one, you know, piece of advice and it's a lesson in the book. And I actually share in the book, foul shots I've taken, and how they've changed the whole direction of my career. They've led me to a game changing life changing financial opportunities. They've brought me to new friends, you know, that to, you know, to this day hold a very, you know, special place in my heart. And I would have never had those opportunities if I didn't tell you. I love that. Yeah. But a lesson. And I think this is the most important one is just I mentioned earlier, good people lead you to great places. That's some lesson I mentioned in the book. And that's the most important one, I think, to me because your career, just like your life, is not a straight line. It's a curvy line. Very unpredictable. You're going to get knocked on your butt so many times. And it's really how you respond to that adversity. I think that counts. And you just want to go through those curves with people who you respect, people who you care about, and people who respect you. So if there's anything, you know, I've learned any small lesson. I've learned it last 10 years. It's been that the better of the people that I've surrounded myself with, the better places I found myself, you know, in and going to. And that's a lesson that I think is really important. If I was starting my career out today, knowing what I know now, I would tell myself, you know, don't worry so much about money. Don't worry so much about, you know, the name of the company you're working for, whose name is on the door. Worry about the people that you're going to be dealing with on a day-to-day basis is usually the better move around, the better places you're going to find yourself. That's great. That really does tee up most of the questions that I had. And one of the questions I usually ask is, what's the one life lesson that you would tell your younger self? Would that be it? Would that be the one that you would probably tell your younger self if you could out of everything that you've written about and learned over your career? Yeah, that would be one. And, you know, I also taught, yeah, that would probably be the most important one. I think we set the other thing as, you know, losses, learn from losses. You're going to lose so many times in business, learn from those. Each time you lose, you know, force yourself to study the losses, to, you know, the more you study your losses, the better you improve future. And also, I think, you know, celebrate winning moments. That's another thing I talk about in the book. I probably have some regret. I definitely have some regret over the past 10 years for not celebrating winning moments as much as I should. Like, this is a beautiful journey. Your career is a beautiful journey. And you're going to have a lot of winning moments too, you know, financially winning moments, you're going to have, you know, winning fine outcomes, you're going to meet people and, you know, sharing winning moments together. And I think a lot of my regret comes from probably not spending as much time sharing in those moments and celebrating those moments with people who have contributed to them with me. And I think that's something I would probably tell. Very good. Very good. And the last question I have would be, what would be a resource that could be a podcast, a book, an audible, it could be a person that you would recommend people go check out if, if you were going to say, this is where I learn or this is where I go to, you know, improve myself. What would that resource be? Well, look, you know, I don't mean to skate around that question, but, but, you know, you have to be a constant consumer, I think, of, of intelligence and media. And I know that I'll pull little bits and pieces from so many different podcasts. And, you know, one of them being yours, by the way, Scott. And, you know, so many others. And I think you don't have to plug my podcast, but I appreciate it. And, and I think, you know, look, I think that you should really apply those data points in your own way. And, you know, I just read, for example, I just read Bridalgo's book principles, you know, they're, you know, that's like a 800 page book or something. And I love the book, by the way, am I going to apply all 800 pages of it to my journey? Probably not, but I'm going to take certain elements of that and get better and apply it for sure. And then, you know, Scott Galloway, who is a long time, you know, mentor and client, you know, the finance now now has great podcast with Harris Fisher, you know, I've learned a lot from him as well. Anyway, you know, my, my, my approach to consumption is just you have to be addicted to information and data. And then consume as much as that as you possibly could. And then put your own spin on it. You know, it's you to be the judge and jury of that. Yeah, that's, I think that's, I mean, that's a smart answer. It's not skating away or skating around it at all. It's a very smart way to look at consumption of knowledge and improving yourself. And that's, that's probably more useful than if you can tee that up for somebody and they can internalize that concept, that's going to be more useful than name dropping a book for sure. I think that people just have to get, get into the mindset of always wanting to learn and always being curious. I think that that's probably the best way to approach life. And if you can, if you can sort of, if you can make that part of what makes you happy and, and, and something that provides, you know, satisfaction, like learning and improving and curiosity and taking all those different data points from all these different sources. And having the mind also to filter, like filter what's relevant to you and how to apply it. You can listen to, you know, 100 very smart PhD billionaire, you know, unicorn startup founder CEO, but understand the lesson that, and that's kind of really what this podcast is all about. There's a wide range of people that I bring on here, but I try and draw out like the tactical from each one of them relative to what they've done in their career. And hopefully somebody listening can understand that message as well and take that one piece from that one individual and apply it to, to what their instance or their particular set of circumstances. That's really the best way to learn. That's how I learn. And I think that's, that's very, very smart. Well said. How do, how do people get in touch with you? Where do they go to, you know, check out your book. I'm assuming Amazon, but outside of that, you know, where's, where's your, your website, N6A's website, LinkedIn, whatever. So check us out on N6A.com, you know, that has all information about our clients and corporate culture. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So reach out to me, find me on LinkedIn. It's helpful. At all, obviously for your listeners, you know, if they need, they need just access to the book, we're happy to do that. In fact, just given the, it's so funny, Scott, when we, when I published the book, it was like the week before COVID started, you talked about, it's not a good time. So the beginning of the next book, which I want to write a book 10, the next 10 years, based on the second kind of 10 years of my entrepreneurial career, it's going to start. Look, the first chapter is going to open up. And then, you know, and then the change, which is literally where, you know, the first day of the second chapter of my career, I guess, began. But when we went into COVID, we made a decision to donate all profits and proceeds from the book to COVID relief fund. So any, you know, any book sales are going straight. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, I Heart Radio, and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes. It takes about 30 seconds, as it allows other people to find our podcast and let's our amazing guests reach even more people with their message. And remember, any rating is fine as long as it contains five stars. I'm Scott Clary from the success story podcast, signing off.