Leadership and culture impacts sales

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Mick. Appreciate it.

Yeah, so thanks for that question. So we are a consulting firm focused in three different areas. We focus on leadership development, culture enhancement, and sales execution. And as we were doing our research and getting our frameworks together and figuring out our point of difference, what we realized is there is while there's a lot of consultants out there, a lot of them focus on two. Of those three areas, and not necessarily all three. Some focus on culture and leadership, some focus on culture and sales, but very few, based on our research, actually focus on leadership, which we look as the engine, culture, which we look at as kind of the operating unit, and then sales execution. And so that's kind of the output. You have strong leadership, you have a fantastic culture. And then that gives you the desired sales results that you want. And so we felt there was a an opportunity for us to fill that gap. And here we are. We're about a year old now and I'm pretty excited about where we're going.

Yeah, when you when you say leadership development, most people automatically go and think about the idea of, all right, fix me, right? You sure up the gaps in their leadership. And while that's a part of it, make really holistically speaking, when we do our leadership assessment, we look not only at the gap areas or the opportunities for them to improve in leadership, we also look at what they're already good at. So our assessment that we do allows us to see that they're strong in XYZ. So we want to help them lean into XYZ even more, along with the idea of helping them improve in those gap areas. It's not an either or, it's a both and. And I think that's a misconception because oftentimes leaders are thinking, here we go, you know, leadership development, you know, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna get this IDP, you know, individual development plan, and I'm gonna work with this person, and that's a part of it, but it's not the only thing. a big part of it is also understanding what you're naturally gifted at. because sometimes leaders miss that. They they take their their good things for granted. And so with the approach that we take, we affirm these great leadership qualities and we lean into them even more.

Yeah, AI is something that obviously is is here, right? it's not going away. And it's it can be an excellent tool to use, especially for a startup consultancy like us. It it helps with efficiency, it helps with information, but it can't do the work of, in my opinion, of a human being. And so you take what AI can do and you you couple that with the experience and knowledge that we have from being in the industry as long as we have, and you have yourself a pretty good marriage there. So I don't think it makes sense to push away or refute AI because I think you're only hurting yourself. I think embracing AI and figuring out how to best utilize it to help you achieve your goals makes a lot of sense. And so you know a lot of organizations now are leaning on AI in many different areas. And for us, it's helped us to I'll say scale faster.

Hm, that's a good question. Because we're so new, I don't know if I can really answer that. Mick, I think obviously you you want things to happen faster, but when you're starting something from scratch, it takes time. And so understanding that it takes time, I think leaning into our network sooner than we did probably made a lot of sense. Right out of the gate, we developed a a website which is Which is good, but that maybe didn't need to be the first thing that we did. Maybe it was really leveraging our network first and then building the site second. That might be one thing that I would change, but there aren't any regrets. It's just a matter of when you when you're doing something for the first time, there's a lot of things to learn. Right. And so I would say that even when you don't do things perfectly, you're still learning, right? You're you're learning how How to do it better, more efficiently. I firm believer that we learn oftentimes more from our our mishaps or our mistakes than we do our successes. And so when you're starting out anything new, you're gonna make some mistakes. But I don't look I don't look at those as impediments. I look at those as learning opportunities for us as we develop and grow and scale our business. Does that make sense?

That was a mistake.

Yeah, I mean it really is the word you just said, it's it's about relationships. we're not we're not transactional, we're relational. And so when we engage with a prospective client, our our goal is to truly understand what their needs are, what their goals are, and how we can partner with them to help make them successful. And so we ask a lot of questions so that we can understand. we want to get to know them. not just professionally, but on the personal side, because the personal side impacts the professional side. And so we take the time. Like if we were engaging you, Mick, we would take the time to understand, Mick, tell me about your upbringing. Where are you from? what's important to you? Tell us about your family. All these things do matter, right? And they may seem nuanced, but it actually helps us get. A fuller picture of the individual, especially when we're thinking about it from a leadership perspective and a culture perspective, right? Because culture is about the things that we do every day. so understanding the individual, not just the organization, is important to us. And I think that plays a big part in the reason why we've been able to have success in retaining our clients.

Yeah, I would say connection is so important. So we were engaging with a client here recently and and it was our first time meeting them. and as we often do, it's it's we engage in, you know, some small talk on the front end and we ask some questions. So again, you know, Mick, tell me where you're from, et cetera, et cetera. Come to find out this particular client is from the same home state that I am from. And so right there you have a you have a connection, right? Because we can relate to the fact that we're from the same area of the country. And so then we just build off of that. And there's something of relational about the idea of knowing that someone can relate to like if we came onto this this podcast and I and I said to you, Mick, yeah, I'm I'm British or I'm you know I'm from I'm from some part of Europe. there would have been a an instant connection and we probably would have spent some time talking about what part of Europe are you from right and you would have smiled right and so it's it's finding that that connection point to then help the conversation jump off and so I again the relationship aspect of what we do is so key. And also when you think about the idea of what we're trying to accomplish, we're trying to help organizations improve in those three areas of leadership, culture, and sales. All those things are very much relational. They're not transactional. And if they are transactional, they're not going to be successful. And so we lead with that. We lead with relationship because relationship impacts our ability to help an organization improve in those relational areas.

I've been there. I've been there, but I'm not from there. Yes. There you go.

Yes. So our backgrounds are similar, but our skill sets are different. And so you know, we've learned that over this this year and we've known each other for over twenty years. So so we we were very familiar with each other. But when you start working together as intimately as we are now, you still begin to learn your partner that much more in terms of what's what their strong suit, their skill set is, as well as as mine and how it differs and how it's similar. And so we tag team a lot of things up front. And then once we understand the scope of work, we then decide, okay, we need to divide and conquer. And there's certain things that I'm that he has he's better at than I am, and vice versa. And so we lean into kind of like what I was talking about with leadership assessment, we lean into those things that we're naturally gifted in, because it's it's easier, right? It's easier to instead of me struggling to do something that I know Ryan is good at, and vice versa. We just lean into that that much more. And it helps us to be more efficient. And so it just depends on the scope of work, what we're being tasked to do. And then we have a conversation on who's going to do what.

man, that's a great question. So my experience in the corporate world was was very, very varied. And so my background is a mix of sales, marketing, talent development, leadership development, and and sales execution. And so all the things that we consult in are the things that I did in my corporate role for over 25 years. And so to tell you what I've learned, we'd be on this podcast for quite some time. I've learned a lot. And it's it's difficult to to say and list it all, but what I've what I've learned is because I have this experience, when certain things arise, my experience naturally just takes over. Yep, I've been that, I've been there, I've experienced that. So this is not new ground for me. Or if it is new ground, I still can lean on my experience from the different roles and responsibilities I had in my corporate role because I I move to different functions within the organization, oftentimes never having done the role. So you have to figure it out. And so even if you've never done something before, you can still lean on the experience of never having done it before. And what's like what's step one, two, and three? And how do I get from not knowing this to becoming proficient and to efficient and then etc, right? Moving on. And so I think there's just a lot to gain from that that many years of experience working in a corporate environment that I can now take into this role as as helping other organizations in those three areas.

Thank you.

Yeah, great question. The the future is is attracting additional clients, getting to the point where we need to scale our business and bring on another partner at some point. you know, we're we're so focused on the the right now, that the the future I think will take care of itself if we're doing the right things now. then we don't have to worry about the future so much. And it's it's because we're so focused on the right now and making sure we take care of our clients, we actually haven't had a lot of conversation around around that. We had our three year strategic plan that we start with, right? and then of course, as as the year one, year two goes around, we, we reevaluate, we look at does this Does this plan still make sense or do we need to pivot or adjust? but we're so new right now, Mick, that you know, thinking about three years from now, five years from now, it's it's it's difficult. We're working on a project now that might actually take us a couple years. so so yeah, so we'll see. I I think the future, I think the future is bright. There's there's a there's a lot for us to to tackle and engage in. I think there's a lot of organizations that we can come alongside and partner with and help out. So that's exciting. But just like anything else, we do want to grow. And with growth means probably additional headcount, additional needs that that maybe the two of us can't necessarily handle as we move the business forward.

I would say making sure that we do a great job with the clients that we have. That's our focus. And if we do that well, then the future will be very bright. If you if we misstep, if we do something or or we we don't deliver on what we say we will, then that's going to impact our ability to grow at the speed we want to grow. So really focusing in on Doing the very best that we can do for our clients today helps set the stage for a bright future for tomorrow.

Yeah, our website's a great source, Catalyx C A T A L Y X. Catalyxgroup.com is our website. we also can be reached, can be reached via email, which is Antoine Destin, A-N-T-O-I-N-E. Destin is D-S-T-I-N at Catalyxgroup dot com. There's another way that they can reach out to us. We're also on LinkedIn. They can look up the Catalyx group on LinkedIn and reach out to us that way. yeah, so those are our three easy ways to connect with us.

Yeah, Mick, thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity. It's a pleasure meeting with you and speaking with you. And I wish you all the best with your with your ventures, with finishing up school and and and for what's next for you.