Adam Torres and Joe Lopez discuss helping businesses scale.
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Show Notes:
What does it take for a business to scale globally? In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Joe Lopez, Managing Partner & Founder at Anchora Advisory Group. Explore what it takes to navigate the complexities of a global marketplace.
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About Joe Lopez
A multilingual executive, former venture capitalist, and Oxford University graduate, Joe began his international business career working overseas for an Asian manufacturer.
While managing the company’s Chinese factory, he caught the attention of an Australian Private Equity group conducting due diligence. They were surprised to hear him speaking Mandarin and after finding out he’d helped the company double their sales, they decided they needed his expertise for a private equity turnaround. This opportunity unlocked the world of international business, and he soon found himself living abroad and traveling regularly to Australia, Asia, and the UK. Since then, he has led private equity turnarounds and driven double-digit growth for multinationals and startups.
Along the way, Joe discovered he had a natural ability to learn new languages and quickly adapt to cultural norms, which enabled him to easily develop strategic relationships spanning the globe. After repositioning established brands like Lynx, Viking Range, and Martha Stewart, his international business success opened the door to a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California where Joe was hired as a principal focused on emerging startups.
Joe was also the co-founder of Wildfire, a joint venture with U.S.-based RPG Brands. Within a few years, RPG Brands had doubled its revenue. Wildfire became a category leader and was recognized as a disruptive and innovative brand.
Joe is a sought-after speaker and advisor for the private, public, and nonprofit sectors and has been described as a master connector and networker by international clients. He maintains relationships with some of the largest manufacturers in the world, major institutional investors, Oxford University, INSEAD, World Trade Organization, the U.S. Mexico Chamber of Commerce, and many others. Trusted by venture capital firms, multinationals, private equity firms, and startups around the world, Joe is a valuable partner, board member, and advisor.
About Anchora Advisory Group
Anchora is a full-service advisory offering custom-tailored, end-to-end services that include brand development, management consulting, new market entry, finance, governance, compliance, and more. Harnessing a vast network of global partners allows Anchora to facilitate strategic partnerships that empower brands to accelerate and strengthen their international expansion efforts.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Joe Lopez and he’s managing partner and founder over at Ancora advisory group.
Joe, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. All right, Joe. So we got a lot to talk about. So of course I want to get into anchor advisory group. I want to talk about how you’re really helping companies go global. I know you’re also doing some things in AI. We got, I mean, we got a lot of things to talk about here, but just before we get into that, we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So Joe at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do. Joe, what mission matters to you? Yeah. And in Cora advisory our goal is to make an impact. It’s one of the reasons why we’re so focused on internationalization, helping companies grow in emerging markets and economies like Africa that actually needs business and not charity.
Awesome. Love bringing mission based individuals on here to share, you know, what they’re doing, how they’re doing and what we can learn from that. So, so good to have you on. And just to get us kicked off here, Joe, like how did you get into business? Like where does that start for you? Yeah. So long journey like a lot of us, but spent the last a couple of decades here in startups venture capitalists from there left that founded my own business and had a successful exit there.
And then has launched into inquiry advisory, which is a group of individuals that I’ll be happy to talk to you about. What, what draws you to business like and working with founders and things like that, whether it’s in VCs or in the VC space or otherwise, like, like what drew you to that? A hundred percent.
Great question. It’s definitely about the people. It started at a young age. You know, my dad was a military officer. And then after he retired, he went to work for the IBM corporation as a sales executive. And he taught me early that business is absolutely about the people, the connections that make it authentic and that help relationships grow.
What do you think are some of the things that have that have helped you along the way as you’ve kind of grown in your role, whether it was going into, you know, business for yourself or whether you’re on the investing side and now even with Ankara, like what, what has been a central theme that kind of makes you successful through all these different experiences?
Yeah, I think it is. Well, a couple of things. One is I would answer that question by saying it’s very important that you find what you’re good at and you double down on that. I did learn that through working in corporate America early that that was not something that I was as drawn and interested in.
Kind of managerial environments that are really great for some folks that want structure and a ladder to climb. But for me, I realized early that it was a better fit for me to be out of my own, rubbing two sticks together to create something new and then ultimately helping founders reach their dreams.
Hmm. What, why do you enjoy working with founders? Cause that, that’s not an easy thing to do. Like as, as founders, maybe a different personality depends on what you’re doing, but what, what draws you a lot of different things you could do. You’re a smart person, like big skillset. Why founders? Yeah, I think for me founders, it’s all about their dream because at the old, what you’re dealing with is people that have a dream and it’s an honor to be able to talk to them about helping it make that come true.
And in some cases talking them off the ledge and saying that, you know what, let’s, let’s take a look at this and becoming a mentor. I have a lot of great mentors that have helped me over the years, so I feel very privileged to be in a position with others. What are some of those characteristics or traits that you’ve found have go into like making a good founder because you’ve worked with a lot of them.
So what have you seen over the years? Flexibility, adaptability are probably the two most important immediately followed directly underneath that with durability. So make sure that you don’t go down never giving up, but at the same time being adaptable and flexible to the market. When you found a business, it often a year later is very different than what you originally came up with as your idea.
And that’s, Hey, I’m being flexible to the market. And when you decided, speaking of that, when you decided to go from like the VC space or investing in working with other founders to starting your own business, I mean, that, that was a shift, right? That’s a change. What was that like? Yeah, definitely. It was a unique situation on the other side of the table, right?
Yeah, that was a unique situation. Luckily I had great partners behind me, both financially and operationally. And it led to a very successful business that will be around for the next 40 years. Recently exited that business earlier this year. And I gotta tell you, it was a, a, a learning experience because the depth that you need to go into with something like that is, is really like undescribable because you are involved in every single aspect of it.
Yes. Like what? Like explain, like what, what made that different? Yeah. What makes that different is that whatever that business is, you live, eat, and breathe every component of what that product or service is and nothing else. It’s very difficult for you to oftentimes see the forest that’s around you because you’re so Is he digging holes and fighting in the trees?
So that’s a big challenge is to be able to step back, breathe and say, wait a second, what am I doing here? And I, I would have a lot of reflection on that during my time under anything that you would have that you learned along that particular experience that maybe you’re like, man, I could have did this differently or like any like key takeaways or things that you learned that you’re like, oh, I wasn’t expecting that.
Absolutely. I would say 100 percent follow your instincts and follow your guts. No matter what other people are telling you, your advisors, your investors, everyone’s got an opinion. Even your partner, your spouse, everyone has an opinion on what you should be doing and why. The reality is only you can make it happen.
You’re the person that’s, that’s there to create the change. Because that’s really what you’re doing as a founder. You’re trying to change, change your behavior towards your business. And so, Only you can trust yourself and you have to sleep at night with your decisions. So my advice is do not listen to others and gather information, but there is no playbook.
Yeah. And how do you stay strong in that environment or that situation? Cause it’s hard, right? Cause you’d like, I like, you know, like what you said, you got different advice. You have different things from very well meaning people, right? Like whether it’s a spouse, a partner, whatever, like they very well meaning people.
And maybe that, you know, Advice can hurt people even from what from well meaning people. How do you stay strong? How do you stay on that? Like How do you hone that gut instinct to keep going on that path? Yeah, you really have to have your compass aligned to to have a true north where you know in the inside It’s again back to a dream back to some Only you have that you are the one at night that has to sleep with us.
So you’ve got to follow what you believe is the right path. And then at least if, if something didn’t work out, you did it your way. If you have regret, it’s going to come from listening to others and pivoting and doing things because you were reacting too much. That’s great. And so let’s, let’s shift, let’s shift gears a little bit here, focus a little bit and get in a little bit more into Ancora advisory group.
So maybe start by telling me a little bit more about the company. Yeah. And Cora is really a group of individuals that came together in graduate school UK earlier this year I realized as I was sitting in a room. In England the people that I was sitting in that room with are just incredibly uncommon.
It was what I like to call superheroes, ninja for lack of a better term that would be impossible to gather. And no offense to our big brother consulting firms who go out and recruit from the Ivy league with really exceptional young talent. This is a senior group, a group of past CEOs Policymakers, diplomats and people that can we walk into a room with a midsize companies, mid market businesses.
It would never have access to a group like this. So for us, that’s a very unique thing. The other piece of it is that we’re very focused on internationalization and helping our clients grow beyond borders. So at our core, we’re an advisory firm. that sends to clients and helps them give them a pathway to growth, either through internationalization or just looking at their business and seeing how we can help.
Can you give me an example of what that can look like, like internationalization, and just to kind of wrap my head around this and like a business that wants to, that wants to expand? Absolutely. Some of our clients are UK based companies that want to be into the US market. The US market right now. the best in the world in terms of economic recovery after COVID.
So we’ve really got a lot here when we’re in the U S particularly I’m in California. I know you are as well which is now the world’s third largest economy of nations, by the way. So there’s a lot here that we can deliver back to our clients from other countries and then vice versa. We’re looking at taking established Western businesses in the EU, the EU.
In the U. S. into emerging markets like the Middle East and particularly in Africa and in South America, because the opportunities to do business there right now are massive. And it’s, I, I, I paint the picture of, you know, like I mentioned to you about our mission matters moment. It’s about making an impact and we can do a great deal, more impact for a business and also economic development of a country by doing business in these emerging markets.
Now I know this is this is going to vary a lot because you’re working in places from Europe to Africa to the U S like every, every country is going to be different, right? Different rules, different things like that. But maybe some of there’s some overlapping themes that, that, that can be taken away from this.
And the, so the question is when a company’s. Thinking about entering a new market, what kind of things should they be thinking about when they’re thinking about going to another country? Oh yeah. The question of why go global is one that I’m asked for an opinion on you know, on a near daily basis.
So that that’s, that’s a big question because it may be not necessary. For example, if you’re not executing to your abilities that you should be in the U S it’s not worthwhile. to go outside of the country. Right here is the market where you should be executing on. If you’re, if you’re at a point where you’ve reached saturation, you’ve, you’ve got market distribution everywhere and you don’t know how to enter these other markets, that’s where you need someone who can specialize and help you.
Because here in the U. S. it’s quite simple to do business. We have to form an LLC or a corporation, We can be trading, you know, not long after that, but in some other countries, both regulated ones like in the EU or emerging markets, it takes a great deal to start and get into those markets. And we have both the private sector and the public sector government relationships in many of these countries and continents to help break through those barriers and smooth things out so that the businesses are launched properly and and it’s executed well.
Yeah. And I feel like, and correct me if I’m off on this, but when you’re working with somebody that’s launched in markets like many times, then you’re, you’re, you’re not trying it for the first time and making possibly some obvious mistakes that you just wouldn’t know, like you might have the assumption that something works.
So like taking the example of a company where the, from the United States thinks that they’re going to. You know, enter Africa or enter another country and it’s just going to kind of be the same thing. Right. And then they, and then they find out afterwards, Oh wait, I was supposed to do this. I didn’t do this.
Oh, frozen bank account here, this, there like, Oh, how’d that happen? Like, can you go into that a little bit? Yeah, no, absolutely. Even things to your point things like payment terms. Yeah. In Africa are very, very different. For example, you could offer a product or service and position it by having maybe a dollar less than the competitor.
They would immediately pay cash for that. And like these little lessons, these little cultural nuances that you need to consider when you’re moving into markets are actually critical for success because we have to keep in mind the developing world is just that it’s developing. So it’s business environment and climate that might be like what our parents or even our grandparents dealt with here and how to adapt that into these specific markets.
To help businesses grow. We like to say that we are the bridge. It’s a term we use called commercial diplomacy. We’re the bridge between the private sector and getting penetration through the governments and the local sectors in these emerging markets to help businesses gain a foothold. How does technology play a role in, in like all of this?
I know AI, everybody’s talking about AI right now. Of course, that’s a big, a big word, and it’s going to continue being a part of the, of our culture and and business, like, how does all that play into this? Yeah, that’s also a good question. So where we focus with AI is on compliance. The new trends that are happening in AI and we’re fortunate and some of our advisors and partners on our team are some world class specialists in, in AI.
And where we focus on is the compliance. So right now in the EU, for example there’s legislation that’s been passed to both regulate and create an environment of compliance Of some ethics around AI. So what does that mean? That means if you’re doing business in Europe, or even in our case, now in California, we’ve passed our legislation.
Then you have to be in compliance with these AI regulations. So we’re sort of early stage company that is out talking with AI. Our clients about are you in compliance? Because we’re all using a I in the cloud in thing. And so we work with companies that have tools that can check with the compliance.
And that’s a very big that’s that’s a coming thing. We’re all rushing towards I. Everyone wants to be talking about these small network L. L. M. S. In creating these, these learning. But the reality is, is the next step is to be in compliance and ensuring that we’re doing things ethically with a I. So you have a unique vantage point, Joe, because you’re looking at the world, you work with a lot of different companies and, and just in your consulting practice, like your access is unique.
Let’s talk about money. Like where’s the money to be made right now? Like where, where are you seeing an opportunity? What kind of, if it’s countries, markets, industries, like where are you seeing opportunity? The question that I get asked most on a weekly basis is about what’s going to be happening in the world.
Going forward with certain elections the threats of tariffs the wars that are happening geopolitically. A lot of the questions that were posed are about that. And what business, how is that going to impact my business? How should I be planning for that? The scenario planning that’s involved with it?
What are the steps I need to take as the CEO or an owner of my business to ensure that my supply chain, that my, my tariffs are not, you know, You know, these tariffs are not interrupting that. So those are the things that I think we find that we, we find ourselves not being able to even respond to the amount of input that questions that we have coming in for that, that’s an area that people around the world are really nervous about.
It’s an area of uncertainty and because of the uncertainty, there’s opportunity there, of course, for business. Hmm. So any particular countries or like where, so where is, where are you seeing this? So you know, when I grew up, the world was focused on trading blocks. So there was this new thing called the EU that was coming out.
Then in the U. S. we had NAFTA, which was the affiliation between Canada, the U. S. and Mexico. And then there’s a trading block in Asia called Asian. And those blocks went away over the last few decades. The world’s been more focused on globalization, trying to lift up these emerging economies through everybody outsourced components and services for different businesses.
We’re shifting now we’re in the middle of a new shift back into something similar like trading blocks and nationalization. And that’s where people are getting confused and kind of. Really wanting to business leaders are wanting to understand what’s next for us. How do we navigate these waters? And that’s where we come in with our unique vantage point because beyond we have brilliant researchers on our team, but beyond that, we’re out on the ground in that.
In the middle East. And that’s really where you in, in, in Asia and South America, that’s where you really learn what’s actually happening before even the media or the researchers and the economics professors pick it up. Talk to me about risk, like some of the risks of like, and in the other side of this, like, obviously you mentioned, like, if you’re not ready to go like global, then you shouldn’t, maybe it may be because you’re not maximizing where you’re at, maybe focus on that first, but like, what are some of the risks of going global?
Yeah, no doubt. I think anything, anytime you’re in a business and you, you don’t want to ever get over your skis, right. And over deploy yourself, chasing new sales when you can’t even execute what you have going on in your home country, or there’s better opportunities in your, in your home country from a competitive perspective.
I can’t name the client, but there’s a near a hundred year old company that we’re working with and in California. And that’s a, an issue that they have is that they continue to see sales slide. So they’re looking for outward facing markets that can go into. But once we dug into the data, we realized they just need to make some small product adjustments.
We need to do some small things here with their distribution. And they’re going right back on the right track. So the risk is like anything you’re going to get over your skis. You’re not working with teams who can help you internationalize globalize. Those, those are areas of opportunity where you think, Oh my gosh, I can find a, my cousin’s friend or a distributor who lives in Switzerland.
They’ll handle it for me. Yeah. Can’t tell you how many of those falls I’d unwrap. Oh, that’s a great story. And it happens, right? Like sometimes people don’t even know that some, a company like yours exist, right? Like they don’t, they don’t know that they can go out and they can find a team of experts, as you mentioned, or your, your superheroes, I think that’s what you called them, right?
That’s the thing that they don’t know. There’s a team of superheroes going global out there, right? Yes. I listen, I applied to the I subscribed, I subscribed to the Richard Branson model of surrounding myself with much smarter, brilliant people than myself. Around me to build this business. So I’m merely the, the gentleman who’s in the, the cock, you know, the cockpit controlling it, but really the team that we have executing.
And I know people say that all the time. It’s the team, it’s the team, but this team is an impossible team to have ever assembled. I can honestly tell you that. Amazing. Well, Joe, this has been great having you on today. I just have to ask what’s next, what’s next for you. What’s next for Ancora advisory group.
Yeah. So thanks again so much. For us Q1, we’re sitting down and, and we’re going through where we’re gonna be traveling, what kind of events we’re putting on in London for the uk where we’ll be in Africa, in, in Q1 and then into Q2. Yeah. We’ve got some trips to Switzerland and, and Davos on the upcoming.
So just travel and just getting ready for, for, for 2025. Fantastic. And if somebody’s watching this or listening to this, and if they wanna follow up and they wanna connect with you and your team, how do they do that? Yeah. LinkedIn is, is our main platform. We’re also on X. You can find us in core advisory on X and then core advisory on LinkedIn.
I also am very active on LinkedIn as well, giving companies guidance there which you can just search for me, Joe C Lopez. Fantastic. If everybody watching or listening to this, we will definitely put the links in the show notes. So you can just click on the link and head right on over and check out Joe and his team.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Joe man, appreciate you. Thanks for all you do. Hey, thank you so much. Happy holidays.