Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They should really think about treating that business as a living entity, like even like a child.
There's really only one thing that causes a business to fail. It's running out of cash. The secret is that the real opportunity and the real problems lie at the intersection of these things. We're in a post in a world where beyond buying trust, think about that concept of buying trust.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Welcome to the Entrepreneurs Outlook with podcast. I'm your host Zach Bernard. You can find me on social at Zack B. In each episode, I bring on experts from various industries for you to learn about their strategies and insights driving extra business growth. Today we're joined by Aaron Telier, entrepreneur and CMO at the Volute Group, a marketing consultancy that helps business leaders maximize your marketing investment and build customer experience that actually move the needle. Aaron is actually a Naval Academy graduate. Two tours in the Persian Gulf, CRM, leadership at Merrill lynch and the bank of Americ, and then he made a pivot into the entrepreneurship world where he co founded a craft guru and a group of climbing and fitness facilities in North Corporate that grew to 2,000 members into seven figures. But he's also advised 75 CMOs, which some of those are actually Fortune 500. And he's got a book coming out. And he's also ran 10 marathon and climb Mount Kilimanjaro, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. I have honestly no idea how he does it. But that's Aaron here and welcome to the show. It's great to have you aboard here.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm tired just listening to all those things that I've been busy doing.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah, you've had a busy career, to put it very simply here. But no, I appreciate you jumping on the show. I think it's going to be an amazing, great conversation. A lot to obviously learn and take from your experience across the world here. But one of the things I always like to ask any guest that comes on the show because it is a business entrepreneurship podcast, you've been across the block and the globe too. But if you had to like, restart your like, entrepreneurship journey from scratch, is there like one thing that you feel maybe you would do differently that a lot of people get, like, totally wrong?
[00:02:06] Speaker A: That's a great question.
So I'll start by saying, you know, there's lots of reasons that people start companies, you know, that's they're want to, they've got a mission that they're on, or, you know, it's just a way to make money, but at some level you want the company to eventually take care of you, right? So you want that thing to deliver its mission. You want it to pay for your kids college or your retirement or whatever it is. And so when people start businesses, they should really think about treating that business as a, as a living entity, even like a child. You really need to nurture the business, you need to feed it, need to cultivate it and you need to do that in a very purposeful way.
And what I find is that entrepreneurs, when they get started, they don't really think of it that way.
They think it's just a thing, it's an entity.
But if you start treating it like a living entity, then all of a sudden you start wanting to nurture it. You want to do the things that are going to give you that long term success. And you do that, you know, sometimes to your own detriment. You know, you work long hours, you give up things to start businesses. But you know, the way I think about it is if you had a child, you don't take food off your child's plate. You want to make sure that the kid is going to eventually grow up, maybe take care of you. Right? It's the same with the businesses. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs, they're not thinking about the long term, they're under investing in their business and they're kind of cutting corners and the business suffers and the business isn't able to take care of them. And, and the last thing I would say is there's an old phrase, cash is king.
And there's really only one thing that causes a business to fail.
Running out of cash.
As long as you have money to pay the bills, the thing can keep going. And so you gotta put those profits away.
You gotta invest in the business and make sure the business is healthy and producing enough return to sustain you both in the short term and the long term.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: That is probably like one of the most original answers that I've gone, to be honest with you. I'm not making that up. I've heard a lot of different answers, but I feel a lot of people, it's typically like, yeah, maybe I wish I would have hired this certain person, I would have done this faster. But treating your business as a living human being.
I know some people say my business is like my baby, but they don't always fully internalize that or act like it. And I feel like the way you're saying it is treat it like your actual baby, nurture it, provide for it and make sure it's healthy, it's happy and everything like that.
That's an interesting one. It's an interesting perspective.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Well, when we meet, there are four partners in the Volute group. And when we meet, we often refer to Volute as another person. Well, how's Volut going to feel about this? What's going to be the impact on Volute of this decision that we're making, apart from the impact on ourselves? And it also helps to kind of orient the group toward the group goal, not the individual goals.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: ELDA and touching a little bit onto like Volute because you build businesses in consulting, hospitality, fitness, and you basically spent years inside these really large enterprise matching massive teams and pnl. But I'd really be curious because that's very different from like the entrepreneurship side of things. And I'd love to understand how has like moving between those, like, come to you, like, what does that actually look like? Like, how does that change the way that you think about marketing leadership in a way that someone who's only maybe just done one of those things because you see like a lot of consultant, they're focused on this one thing. That's the only thing that they do.
But you've been like this part of the map. This part of the map, like basically, you know, Monopoly, like you basically like to, you went through go a couple times to put it simply.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Nice.
Thanks. I appreciate that. Now, you know, I did it because I just love new experiences.
I like doing something putting your heart and soul into it and then moving on and doing something else. You know, life is short and if you do the same thing for your whole life, then you've only got that one thing. But if you move between, you've accumulated and all you really have at any moment in time is your memories. Right. And so I have a rich set of memories. But getting to your core question, what have I learned? Here's the thing.
A lot of people look at corporate and they go, ah, corporate is bad. And you know, all the things, bureaucracy and all that. And then they look at small business like, oh, small business is hard. You know, like you're, you're literally on your own.
But, but both, both businesses have, have merits. You know, big businesses, they, they need that bureaucracy. Because the way I like to say it is yesterday that company that's a big business made a billion dollars.
Yeah, well, they don't want to screw that up.
They want to make a billion dollars or more tomorrow. And so the bureaucracy is in place to manage that.
And so that has value for that organization. But if you're a small business, that's not going to work. You got to be fast, you got to be nimble. But it's also hard because you don't have the resources to draw upon. You didn't make a billion dollars yesterday. You got to figure out, how am I even going to make ends meet tomorrow? And really trying to blend the both of these things is I love doing it. I love taking the lessons from corporate, the structure, the process, organizational thinking, that a lot of times we take that for granted. Being in corporate, you think, ah, those are just, that's just bureaucrat, you know, bureaucracy. But no, those are actual skills that can be applied at small business and then vice versa.
You as a, as a large business, you have to think, how do I act? How do I act nimbly, like a small business would? How can I adapt? Because as you are well aware, and I'm sure your listeners are well aware, it is a fast changing market and if you are not adapting right now, you're going to get left behind. So it's really that blend.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of people are going to maybe like put down like the corporate side of things. Like, oh, like I just want to like run my own business. I don't want to like have a job or anything like that. But I feel I'm big on the motto that everything happens for a reason. And I have a feeling you probably would agree with that too. But I feel like it's going through these different experiences as you talked about that will help to influence how you act and operate on a certain level and being able to have so many different perspective. You're able to bring a more diverse or educated approach to the work that you're doing as opposed to being just narrowed down like, oh, this is how you do things versus all these different things he can do.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Well, you know, there is something to be said for like actually having your hands on the keyboard or actually speaking to the customers because that really grounds you in the reality of business. And so when I talk to CMOs, I'm able to bring that boots on the ground perspective. But yet I spent 25 years as one of them understanding, you know, the world that they're living in and how decisions get made at that level.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah, because I find it like very interesting. Like there's the enterprise side of things, which obviously you've been around that for like a while, but there's also like fitness facilities and like climbing gym, like craft breweries, which I think is like pretty, like unique, which is like a very different. And the one Thing that kind of interests me though is you're doing both at like the same time where like some people, they're going to come from the corporate world, they're going to start the company and then that's like what they're doing. But you're bringing like these different perspective at the same time. So you can always bring like new perspective, things that you're seeing to the other business. And it can influence like a positive way, which I don't feel like a lot of people can do, but I'd be curious, like, do you see that as like an advantage being able to have like those multi threaded perspective? I guess maybe that's the word.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. You know, there's, there's a lot of tunnel vision that happens, especially in large organizations. And it's, it's not a malicious thing. It's, it's not a, it doesn't even necessarily have to be a negative thing, but it's just by the very nature of a large organization, you need to break tasks and responsibilities up into very small components. And so your perspective on the world narrows. And I just heard this the other day, and it's kind of apropos to what you're talking about.
It was a Simon Sinek. I love Simon Sinek. I don't know if you ever listen to his stuff, but he's always really smart. And he talked about when the new CEO of Ford took over and he drove Alexis to work and everybody was like, whoa, what is a war crime right now? And. And they go, what are you doing? And he goes, well, it's a better car.
And they're like, oh my God, I can't believe you're saying that. And he goes, here's the thing, guys.
What are you all driving? When's the last time you got in a different vehicle and looked around and to see where things were going and what the competitors were doing, and they were like, well, never, because we wouldn't do that.
So he went out and he bought a fleet of cars from other manufacturers and made his executives drive them. Now why. It's this question of perspective. Right. You want to broaden that perspective. And when you're working in marketing for climbing gyms, or I've got a space equipment company that I work for, or a wealth management company, that ability to just kind of think outside of the box, your brain is trained to do that because you have so many different things going on.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah, because I feel like a lot of people are going to be stuck on like one idea, that this is how you need to do things again, like tunnel vision, as you said. Like, hey, it's like, only thing that I'm seeing on my rearview mirror. But if you look at different things outside, it's like, oh, this is actually pretty good. Maybe we should take some ideas from that. But I love that fourth story.
That's a pretty good one. Pretty uncommon, but probably got the point across pretty well here and just like switching gears a little bit, because I know we talked about the different ventures that you had, but right now I know one of the things that you do is the loot group that you currently operate with, like your partners here. I'd love to understand if you could walk through, like, when a business leader comes to you guys, what does that process actually look like? How do you guys actually help them figure out what's really holding them back?
Further growth?
There's obviously a lot of different things that could be the cause of that here.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Well, if I could just. I want to say something about the Volu Group and why we started it. Yeah, it's a business and it'll do all the things that I want business to do. But at this point in my career, I'm really on a mission, and it's a mission to do business better. And I've got lots of great examples to draw from, both good and bad. And so, you know, when I was looking at the. When I left my.
My big agency job, I really tried to take a perspective on the market for advice and marketing strategy in particular and say, you know, how is that really playing out for folks today?
And, you know, three, three words or phrases kept coming up over and over in my mind that these agencies and consultancies, they're over promising, oh, man, we can do this. And this is going to be amazing. And it's not backed up by very much. And then, then they're on to delivery.
So that's, that's not good because then the gap gets even, even larger. And then to make it worse there. And it's not their fault. They. They just have large cost, you know, structures that they've got to. They've got to tend to. And so they're overcharging.
And so where does this leave the customer? It leaves the customer in a really tough spot. And it's. They don't like to change agencies. You know, it's. It's like inviting somebody into your house when you invite them in. You know, you don't know if they're going to be respectful. And a lot of people are out there, just, they're just selling, selling, selling. And there's nothing wrong with selling. You know, it's a natural thing that, that we do, and it's essential part of business. But when, when we think about it as volute, we think about it as serving.
And that sounds maybe a little bit silly of a concept to serve, but when we talk to our clients, it's just about offering different perspective while also respecting the realities that these leaders are dealing with every day. We know how hard it is to be inside these organizations. And so we say, look, we're not going to be your vendor, we're going to be your partner. We're going to be in this to solve problems with you. And again, that sounds like a positioning statement, but it's an attitude. And the attitude totally comes across when you're meeting with somebody. And so when we, when we talk to folks in, the whole thing is like, what, what are you really trying to do here? What's your real problem? And then let's just have a conversation about what, what have you done? What, what have you thought of? You know, here's some ideas that we can try. You know, let's. Let's spend some dedicated time thinking about how to solve this problem. And that's basically where every, everything starts. It's just a conversation.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And one thing, like, leading back to, like, what you were talking about, like, finding, like, the problem, et cetera. Something that I find pretty often is there's like, business owners, founders, etc. They're convinced that they have this specific problem, whether it's a. A bad ad, they don't have enough leads, it's a, it's a weak website when the real issue is oftentimes something completely different underneath. And I feel like you have to, like, shift, like, the belief like someone. It's like, no, you don't have that issue. You have this issue. And maybe getting over that belief can be a little bit hard. But I'd be curious to hear how you even navigate these conversations. Like, how do you help someone zoom out and reframe what they're trying to solve in the first place?
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Zach, that is super important.
And so the way that we think about it, I see this all the time.
Again, it's offering that perspective. And the way you do that is not by talking.
It's the same reason you go to a therapist. The therapist doesn't tell you what to do. They ask you a bunch of questions. And so it's the same way in business consulting.
So have you ever heard of a technique called laddering.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: I have not, fortunately.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Yeah, so laddering is this idea of just continuing to ask the question, well, why?
Tell me more about that? So, yeah, I'm sure you've done that yourself, but here's an example of that kind of conversation. Oh, hey, Aaron, we need a CDP here, a customer data platform, because we don't have one, and everybody's getting one. Okay, well, you know that. Because everyone has one. I don't know. That's the reason to get one. So why do you. Why do you want that?
Well, you know, from everything I've read, it's just going to give us better data.
Yeah, better data sounds good to me. Right? Who can argue against better? But why.
Why do you want better data?
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Well, it's because we want to personalize the experience.
Oh, so you want to personalize the experience. All right, so now let's talk about that. What. What are you trying to personalize? Like, what. Where are you going with that? And if you just keep asking that question, why, why, why? You eventually get to some larger business problem. Yeah, and here's the. Here's the secret, and I think this is a secret, is that problems very rarely, especially in mature organizations, live inside a single capability or a single function. Because if it did, that problem had been solved already.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Because good leaders know that's a problem. I'm going to get rid of that thing or I'm going to add that thing. But the secret is that the real opportunity and the real problems lie at the intersection of these things. At the intersection of capabilities, at the intersection of corporate functions, at the intersection of organizations. And there's only one way to get at those problems. That's to zoom out and to see them and to see them holistically. So, you know, when I get a single problem, we just kind of dissect how to get to that perspective. And it can be hard. It can be hard.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Yeah. You have to, like, dissect the problem and get to, like, the core motivation. Like, why do you want to do this? And I feel like any problem that someone has, most of the time you have the answer right in front of you. It's usually the simplest answer, but you always sort of complicate your. Your life and everything that you see. You're like, no, like, this is the problem. We need to fix that. And then it's like, no, if you just did this specifically, 90% of your problem would be gone. And it. I forgot who said this. It's like 80% of business is just like hearing again things that you already know and just applying them. And I feel like a lot of people don't understand that. They just overcomplicate their life in a way.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: But for sure, I mean, it's the old adage, if you're, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: And touching onto a point that you mentioned though, because then, you know, mentioned like data, like, oh, we want better data. It's like the shiny object syndrome. Like, oh, everyone is jumping onto this wagon. Let's do the same thing. That brings me to one question, which I really want to hear. Your perspective is AI, Obviously, everyone is talking about it. Everyone is like, oh, there's like these new cool, insane AI agent. We need to be doing this.
And I fell in that trap myself where like I started building stuff. I'm like, this is really cool. Like this, this is gonna be a game changer. And then I built it took a good amount of hours and like, I'm not even using this enough. Like, this was not worth it. Like, I didn't make like the, the, the analysis of like the ROI based on the time that I spent and what it's gonna give me back. And I feel a lot of people just jump head too fast. And obviously AI top of mind. A lot of business leaders right now, they're seeing it everywhere. But there's really a gap between how most companies think about it versus what it's actually like doing to change the way that their customers make decision.
When do you. We're like, where do you see most organization getting that wrong and where and what should they be paying attention to that they are probably or not.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Oh man. So if there's like a theme for this podcast, it's going to be perspective.
And when I think about AI, you know, when I go back in history, there were, there wasn't computers. When I was growing up, we had this little. We, you know, we had see and says, I don't know if anybody remembers what those things are, but those were so cool. And I. My first computer was a TI99.4A, which most people don't even know.
This was predecessor to the Commodore 64, which was the powerhouse was 64 kilobytes of memory. Oh my gosh, what I would have done with that, you know, I had a tape drive and all this sort of thing. So I'm dating myself, but I'm also offering perspective, right?
So at every, at every evolution of computers, it was just like, oh my gosh, this is going to change everything. Yeah, and the truth is, it did change everything.
But, you know, it's just another. The way I think about AI, it's just another tool.
It's just another layer of abstraction. You're just moving further away from the core problem.
And I mean, don't get me wrong, AI tools are incredibly powerful, and where they could go, nobody knows tons of prognostication about that. So I want to start by grounding in the idea that AI is really just another tool that's come into our toolbox these days.
And, you know, if you're a hammer and everything looks like a nail, it's like, well, if you're walking around with your AI tools, you want to AI everything. And that's not always the right solution. And so that's kind of like my strategic perspective on it.
Don't start with, oh, man, I heard this podcast on Claude Agents and meant like, go back to your team and go, hey, how can we use cloud agents? No, that's the wrong. That's the wrong question. The right question is, hey, guys, you know, I saw this, I saw this podcast on agents and man, there's a lot of powerful things that, that could be done. What are the things that are happening in our business, which that's sort of bogging down our time. It's just reframing the question, and then you can zoom out, get a better answer.
So that's a strategic perspective, but I want to give you and your listeners, like, a very tactical perspective from a marketing standpoint, but it has big strategic implications. And that's this idea of SEO AEO geo. And, man, I cannot be in a conversation with, with business leaders where they're not going, what are we doing? How are we showing up in geo? Yeah, I want to know what our results in chat.
And one of my business partners, Shiv Gupta, is doing a lot of thinking about this, and he's got a great way to think about it. Yeah. Are there technical, tactical things that you need to do to be.
To be. To show up in AI solutions?
Yeah, 100% there are. But he's taken it a step further, and I love the idea. He said, you know, we're, we're in a post in a world where we're beyond buying trust.
Think about that concept of buying trust. What are, what are, what are branding advertisements other than buying trust? Right. You're saying, look at us, we're trustworthy, look at us, our product is great, Trust us, try us, that sort of thing. And so, you know, yeah, fantastic.
There's a place for branding in the world. But now people just go, hey, what bank should I, I'm frustrated with my old bank, I want to try a new bank. What are they going to do? They're not going to sit around watching television waiting for all the banking commercials and decide based on the banking commercials is that going to influence their thinking 100%. But that's not the end.
So in what, what has to happen is, and nobody likes this answer, but it's the truth. It has to be the customer experience.
So you have to create a customer experience that people are talking about that is putting out trust signals into the marketplace in a much broader way than when you go out and buy trust through advertising. And so, you know, this idea of, of geo, it's just a way bigger conversation than that. And I think that's exemplary of how we need to think about AI differently. But that's, that's how we think about it.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to like what we talked in beginning where you have to like zoom out. Same concepts like, okay, where are we going to apply this? How is it actually going to be helpful? How is it going to be impactful to your customers? And sometimes you're just going to come to the conclusion like, hey, really not worth the effort. Like we, we don't need to spend the time, money, capital doing this and maybe just save you a bit of time. So I, I think it's like an important exercise that you should be doing anytime before you do a big decision or initiative. First thing that you should be asking yourself, I mean, not asking yourself but doing zoom out. Then consider all the everything, consequences, what pros, cons, and then make the decision. But maybe don't, don't jump the gun on just because you saw a podcast on Claude and all, all, all these fun agents there.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: You know you're joking about it, but I had a conversation with a CMO of Fortune 500 organization who told me that's exactly what happened.
The CFO of the organization went and told one component of it. They said, hey, I need you to save all these millions of dollars. Use AI to do it.
Okay, thanks.
But this is what CMOs and CFOs and boardrooms are kind of consumed with.
You're absolutely right. If you don't zoom out, man, you're going to get the wrong answer. You're going to waste a lot of time and money and you could, if you, if you have the right perspective, I think you can get a lot further ahead.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Love that. Well, one of the things Just like parting thoughts here. And one of the things I always like to ask, like anyone, for anyone that's listening, maybe they are a business owner, founder, they are obviously trying to grow the business. Is there maybe two, three pieces of advice that you would leave them with? Whether it's tactical or it's just something like, hey, maybe you should be doing this if you're trying to like grow the business, improve your marketing or, or anything like that. Anything that comes to mind there.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Yeah, Well, I think, as I think across my businesses, whether it's the climbing gym or the brewery or my agency consulting businesses, there's people, right? So it's always people. And the time that you spend with your people is totally worth it. If you could, you do it yourself, you told you probably could. That's why you're leading the business, right? That's why you're in charge, because you prove that you can do that.
But you can't scale your business if you're trying to do it all yourself. So you've got to, you've got to train your people, you've got to invest in your people. And it sounds so cliche, but if you, if you really, if you really enjoy, you know, people and seeing them succeed, I mean, there's just, it's fun.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: It's, it's so rewarding to challenge someone on your team and to see them succeed or, you know, a lot of times I'll give people challenges that I know they're going to have a hard time with, but it's. But you put those guardrails on.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to try this thing. It might be difficult, but give it your best try. And I'm going to give you a pass here. Okay. No matter what happens, it's going to be okay. And if you need my help, give me a call. And so while there's tons of advice I could give, I think invest in your people, care about your people, empower your people, and you're going to find that your day is going to be filled with enjoyable conversations and it'll just make your life a lot better.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty refreshing since a lot of the advice people give nowadays, like, hey, use AI, like, find all these new tools, everything. But it's like, no, like, invest in your people, like the actual humans that are making these AI tools work in the first place.
The rest of the wheels in motion here. But no, I really appreciate you coming on the stream. If anyone wants to get in touch with you to like, hey, Aaron, sounds like a cool guy. I want to reach out. How should they go about doing that?
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Well, two good ways to reach out to me. One, hit me up on LinkedIn.
You're going to find me real easy because there's only, there's only two Aaron Telears on LinkedIn and I'm not the engineer, I'm the marketing guy. So that, that's a easy way to find me. Or you can go to our website, the volute group.com and there's a little button that says start a conversation. And that'll take you actually right to my calendar and you can book a meeting with me directly on my calendar. And as you can tell Zach, I love to talk. So if anybody wants to talk, I'm more than happy to.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Perfect. Well, great. You heard that, everyone. Head over to thevaluegroup.com if you want to learn more to your listeners. If you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. Like, review all that fun stuff. Reach out to obviously Aaron here and then. Yeah, until then, keep pushing and we'll see you in the next one.
