Adam Torres and Nicholas Alter discuss maturity modeling.
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Show Notes:
What is every organization really looking for? In this episode, Adam Torres and Nicholas Alter, Founder of Founder’s Best Friend, explore marketing and achieving better outcomes for founders.
About Nicholas Alter
It has been a blessing and privilege to work with several incredibly talented teams to serve hundreds of brands over the years, helping them win their place in ever more crowded and unforgiving markets. Seeing so many owners, founders and executive teams struggle with revenue, market share, adoption and so on had me questioning everything he knew about marketing, business development, sales, and, generally speaking, growth. Years of research and active participation in these areas for organization after organization has led to the creation of ThriveSide, a maturity model and framework for predictive, sustainable growth.
Architecting and working with both for profit and not for profit, the effort is to blend all aspects of life together with a mission to serve faith, family, and community. They are called to be good stewards of God’s abundance, to love others and to serve well, so that’s his endeavor.
her wife and Nicholas have two boys they often refer to as adorable chaos. their mission – raise kind, creative, productive, faithful men with a heart for others. his mission, with all of you, is to create a place for their generation and those after them to thrive.
About Founder’s Best Friend
Founders Best Friend is your go-to ally in the startup world. They provide tailored solutions, expert guidance, and strategic planning to transform your vision into a thriving business. Ready to navigate the startup landscape with confidence? With their team of industry veterans, we’re more than a service – we’re your reliable partner in the entrepreneurial journey
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 b our guest to apply. All right, so today I have Nicholas Alter on the line. He’s founder of Founders Best friend Nick, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me.
All right, Nick. So I know , you were referred over to us from David Holman. So we should do appreciate that. I know he always brings us great interviews and today we’re going to talk about really modeling for growth. And I guess just to get us kicked off here, I mean, tell us a little bit more about founders, best friend.
Yeah, so Founders Best Friend is a response to what we built with, there’s a company that actually precedes Founders Best Friend called ThriveSide, and what we did is just that we built a maturity modeling system. Proprietary framework around how do we actually approach market? How do we go to market?
How are we at market? And how do we win our position at market? And how do we define those stages or positions at market? And so anyways, , we spent about 3 years building that and really vetting it out, validating. The whole process and framework and everything that we were doing there, making sure that it really did work.
And then, but the always the end goal, the intention was always to build a coaching platform where we can actively take businesses with meet them where they’re at and guide them through coach them. Along the way, the journey of how do we graduate from this position at market to this position to ultimately where the majority of us really want to go or need to get to, which is sustainability.
Everybody thinks it’s scale. It’s not scale. It’s sustainability. And so ultimately, how do we get to sustainability? And then once we’re there how do we then go forward from there? How do we actually what decisions or what do we have in front of us? What questions do we need to ask? And in order for us to say, this is okay.
. This is what we want. So, yeah, let’s take a step back. Just 1 step back before we go further. Because I want to make sure that our audiences is up to speed on this. So give me the definition of maturity modeling, like what that means to you. Sure. So the idea of maturity modeling is this is that it’s a sequence , it’s like how we approach raising kids, you know, it’s, the idea of kindergarten through 12th grade through college, right?
It’s the idea of what is level one and, you know, in gaming technologies, or if we’re talking like, you know, for football nerds, it’s, I would go from Pop Warner to the NFL. And it’s, you know, it’s funny that, and like, and so it’s like, well, that just sounds like an esoteric and kind of jumped up way of describing what that is, but the reality is that the idea of maturity modeling is, this is that if we actually have a model, a framework by which that we can say, no, this is, I mean, I don’t care what kind of building you’re building.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a skyscraper or if it’s a house, there’s always going to be fundamental you know, steps that we have to address in a particular order in order for us to get there. Now, the details might be different in between but, you know, ultimately, we always are going to start with, like, what’s the purpose of the structure?
And then, you know, move into things like site planning and getting into, you know, architectural design and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And yet we seem to, we tend to forget that that is ultimately what we’re always doing. So maturity modeling. Yeah. No, get this. And what’s interesting to me is that like, there’s obviously there’s different levels, right?
Different stages. People and a company in the case of what we’re talking about today and maybe even marketing like It can be there. They’re going to be in different stages So whether it’s you know, start I’m just gonna start up whether they’re you know in the beginning stage is still in the idea No product.
No, , whether they’re still dreaming it up or whether they’re already Like further along and they already have you know, they’re in the market there They have a certain amount of traction and now they’re You know, like you mentioned earlier, sustainability, they’re trying to figure out how to sustain and how to grow over time.
In my understanding, that’s right. In terms of the concept, I just want to make sure I’m painting that picture correctly. Yes. Correct. Awesome. So let’s go a little bit further here. So, in terms of Your expertise and you working with companies. Are you working with companies like on all different areas of the spectrum or like what’s the specialty whether it’s whether it’s stage or niche or industry like let’s get in the weeds a little bit.
Yeah, sure. No, I actually, so I have a pretty bizarre career background in terms of I like that. Come on, give it to me, Nick. , that’s where it starts to get good here. Go ahead. Yeah, I think you know is it Joel Trammell that put it best? He goes, Nick, you’re unemployable, so you better go build something.
And it’s just very true. I love that. Yeah, he’s brutally honest. Actually his platform is really, really cool. You should go, you should interview him at some point. Anyways, but the idea was this, is that when I actually, I went to college, I went to school for publishing. That was my, that was my intent.
And you know, I graduated right around when the publishing industry collapsed, imploded the way that we knew it then. And so didn’t really have you have good time. I got, I got the first part of your journey. You have good timing. Go ahead. . Amazing. Oh yeah. Amazing timing. And so anyways, and so I was like, all right, what am I gonna do?
I , I got a lot of student debt. What are we how am I gonna make money here? And at the time, you know, marrying , my high school sweetheart, my wife was like dude, you gotta make money. I’m like, yeah, okay, I figured out. And so we, we got to the point where I was like, all right, so this, I, I loved telling stories and I love the story concept and, you know, aspect of things.
And I realized, you know, , and again, really marketing wasn’t initially , my plan. But as I was digging into it and realizing that, you know, I could be telling stories in this environment and get paid to do it. That’s where I started leaning in. And it just so happened that social media was a new versioning side of the equation.
And so I was like, Okay, great. I’ll just go after that. Then why not? And so then what that turned into is that I was, you know, 22 23 at the time. And suddenly I’m, you know, I’m working for really big companies. And I had, you know, I was a consultant. I can say that I was a consultant, which basically, again, means that nobody was willing to actually employ me full time.
But, you know, I was a consultant for groups like, you know, big hospital organizations like St. David’s. And then I wound up working with CCIM, which is the, one of the largest commercial real estate. Organizations in the world. And I mean, just, and it just had this, and I was working for Jeff Henson, who he was the CFO of Univision when they went IPO, and then he started his company.
And so, like, I just had these really bizarre experiences that I just kept getting knocked into. And then, and so I was working for big established brands, but then I was also on the flip side. I was like, no, I mean, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And I was an idiot. I was like, I’m gonna go work with startups.
That sounds fantastic and exciting. , and in reality that’s just you’re a masochist if you just want to keep getting into that over and over again. And so I wound up, , it’s just apparently, and it, and it hurts so good. But, and the thing was is that I was working with groups like we, I worked with a group called Square Cow Movers.
And at the time they had like three employees, which is the owners, and they had like two trucks. And within seven years though, , that was a rocket ship. We took them from Basically, you know, it’s less than a million dollars all the way through to they were, you know, doing eight figures.
Wow. And I mean, just really crushing it. And they were, you know, they had hundreds of employees and I mean, it was just this. And the thing was they were one, like we had, and we had several of those and a bunch of different industries I was working in, construction I was working in. And so, and the thing is, is I’m two A-D-D-A-D-H-D to, to really settle in on any, any one thing.
And and the thing is, I just love the challenge. I just loved the, you know, I like fixing broken stuff. And I like being the solutions guy to all the things and again, like, , I don’t sit still long enough for any of this to to be like, Oh, you know what? I’m going to go after it. Like, I mean, the smart play always was to be like, Hey, let’s go into this one industry, this one vertical, and let’s go crush it.
And let’s just go be the, you know, the dominating force in this arena. And I’m like, no, let’s blow it up every time and see if we can do it all over again. And so that’s that’s what I did. And so with, you know, and here we are, you know, 15, Plus years later, and we’re, you know, over a thousand companies in behind me in that regard, many of which, you know, have been really successful and many of which have not.
And so in the long way learned a lot around. It was like, okay. Why do we hate marketing so much? Because at that point I hated it too, right? I really didn’t like it. And I was getting bring it down. I built a really cool agency and it called alter endeavors. And I had an incredible people that I was, that I was working with there.
And and that agency still exists. But there came a point and there’s a whole God story behind. How I wound up getting out of that company. But what I wound up doing is I wound up selling that that business to my employees. And in that process was just that I wanted to answer the question, how do we fix marketing?
How do we take control of marketing? How do we actually because it’s the one side of our business that we’re always reacting to. We’re never in a proactive state. With the, you know, the growth side of our business. Typically, it’s always that. I mean, over time, you know, the other sides of our business, whether it’s you know, the fulfillment side or the, you know, the the sales side, even or the, you know, H.
R. I mean, name the other different aspects or facets of a business and over time. Yeah, we always start reactionary at first, but. Over time, we know what actions we take will produce what results, right? And that’s proactivity. And so, and so because of that, we keep it inside the operational circle, the operational whole of the business.
And yet we tend to see marketing over time, especially the longer we’re in it, the more that we hate it because we aren’t in control of it, right? And so, Anyways, I, yeah, I didn’t say really define marketing. I want to, I want to like, let’s say, like, how do you define that? Because marketing is a broad term, right?
Yeah, and I think that’s the, that’s actually the problem, right? The problem is that, like, if you were to go ask 100 people and say, what is marketing to you and you ask them to find marketing, you’re going to get 100 different answers. I guarantee you to probably go down, you know, all your episodes you’ve done so far that you’ve produced and people have talked about marketing.
It’s like their, their perspective on it is going to be. Dramatically different. And the other thing is, this is that typically marketing is defined as an activity rather than as a result. And so the majority of business is the rest of the other sides of our business. We don’t do that. We typically define the other sides of our business in context to the outcome.
Right. Yeah. And so we, so I look at marketing. My definition is the actions we take to win our position at market. Okay. And so, in which, I mean, people can argue with me, and I’m like, fine, you can call that something else if you want. I’m going to call that marketing. Because it’s the driving force behind growth.
Yeah. looking for? Like, at the end of the day, what do you think they’re looking for? Outcome, ROI. I mean, we’re, I mean, actually, if I were to take it all the way back, the first question I always ask anybody in the very beginning of whatever it is that they’re building, they’re trying to get out there into the world and say, what do you want?
Yeah, I mean, I don’t ask the why, I never asked the why question first. I always ask the what do you want question first, right? Yeah, it’s saying, hey, really, what do you want out of this? Where do you want this to go? What do you really want this to become? Yeah, and so, because, I mean, and more often than not, , they struggle.
To answer that because they’re just like, I’m just doing this, oftentimes they’re just doing it out of necessity or they’re doing it because they got excited about something or like, oh, I think we can do this. But I’m like, yeah, but what is where do you really want this to wind up? Right? Yeah. And I think that the depth, I think the definition that I have, it sounds underwhelming when I first say it.
But it’s super easy to remember, right? The actions we take to win our position at market. The trick is, what position at market are you currently in? What do you need to graduate from? What do you need to win? And we always, I mean, because ultimately when we talk about, you know, building a business and, I mean, there’s so many good books out there and that talk about the different aspects and components of business, but they never talk about, you know, In what order those things really should be happening.
you mentioned before, I mean, you’ve worked with a lot of companies, some that have done, you know, extremely well, some that, you know, have not have not, not, not gone down in history as big winners, we’ll say what do you find for the, for the losers, let’s call it not as people, but I just mean in the business it lost what, what do you find a lot of times hold people back, like from winning or from succeeding, because you’ve been inside a lot of companies.
Oh, man, we could , there’s a laundry list that we can go down, right? I mean, one of the biggest killers is always going to be ego, and oftentimes, or it’s going to be a scarcity mindset over an abundance mindset it’s going to be a lack of commitment and consistency. I mean, , there, there’s a laundry list and oftentimes it’s not just one.
It’s not just the one thing. For sure, right? It’s and then the thing is, this is that it was on top of that. It was, by the way, we’d be able to solve that 1 thing and everybody would be fine. Right? So I know it’s not 1 thing for sure. It’s a mixture. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. It always is. But I mean, but when it comes to marketing where everybody really struggles with growth, it’s just that oftentimes they’re like, they’ll try 1 thing.
They’ll try another thing. And they’re like, that didn’t work. That didn’t work. And that didn’t work. And so, therefore, I don’t believe in this. I, I’m, I’m done with it. I feel like, I mean, this is, you know I, I, I feel like this is a sham. I feel like this is this is some kind of Ponzi scheme. Why am I doing this?
And so they think, and so therefore, when we fail at something, I mean, how many times do we fail at it before we say, all right, I’m done with this, and I’m, I’m, I’m not doing this anymore. There’s those that now the people that are, that, you know, continue forward. Like, I mean, like it’s like me with golf, right?
I’m terrible at golf. I’ve always been bad at golf. And yet I still play the game. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I keep playing this one hit. You get one, you get one good shot every time. And it’s the sport that give us and take it. If you get that one good shot, I always wish I’m like, man, Nick, I hope I don’t hit a single good shot the whole time I’m out there because then I’m done with this.
Amen. I always get one and I’m like, why’d you get one? That’s right. And by the way, I don’t say dang it. Like there’s a string of expletives that come out because I’m like, I got that shot and I’m just like, well, I guess there goes another, you know, there goes another, whatever, however many dollars next month for towards that membership, because my, and however many hours, cause my wife’s like, she’s like, you hate this.
And I’m like, no, I love this. And I hate myself. You’re like, no, no, no. I hate this. I do. I love it. I hate it. That’s right. I don’t. By the way, funny, funny quick story. I got it sidebar quickly. The, our director of podcast of our podcast agency that runs the whole agency for us. He’s been, I’ve known him since our twenties, like really good friend.
He used to be a professional golfer for a while. And and when I, and he was always my coach and he gets mad whenever I bring up the don’t tell people that I coached you ever, no. Cause he plays really good. So whenever I have a chance to work it on the podcast, thanks and Matt for those lessons.
Okay. Go ahead. Oh, buddy.
Bless his heart. That’s totally fair. Laundry list. Because I, I like, and the reason why I asked you that question, by the way, and I like to kind of focus on the negative not negative or the bad, or whatever, however you wanna say it, I don’t care. But the main thing is, I feel like so often, you know the successes, right?
That Elon Musk does this, that whatever, maybe he’s not a good example right now, but whoever we say is the exact the successes they get, you know. There’s this unrealistic expectation sometimes of what it takes to succeed or what it’s like to do that. And I, so I at times like to bring when I’m, I have somebody like yourself on the line who has worked in many companies and, you know, admittedly some have done really well, some not so well to kind of elevate that part of it.
So maybe, By you sharing things like ego or things like that, like that, if somebody out there is battling with some things to understand that it’s real, like some of these things they’re not the only ones that are maybe suffering for some of these challenges that have caused other businesses to fail and that, you know, everything’s not necessarily going to be okay.
You have to address problems and issues and not put your head under a rock because your business can fail too. So that’s why I asked you those questions, just so you know, from context. Well, and I think that’s totally fair. By the way, there’s sometimes it’s that purely we’re just in the we’re in the wrong game, too, right?
Sometimes it is just that sometimes like we’re in a losing way. Sometimes they’re supposed to like, that’s right. That’s right It’s like hey this market this market ain’t there anymore or this, you know, this was never meant to be that I mean, this is not where people are in the first place when he goes back to yeah Wrong idea.
Wrong. Right. Which actually goes back to, right, right. It’s almost a miracle if you really look at it. It’s almost a miracle anything succeeds if you really think about it, like time period and everything else. Like, it’s a lot stacked up against entrepreneurs to make it happen. So that’s why I have so much respect when somebody gets traction on an idea because I know how hard that is.
Right. No, a thousand percent. But that said, I do actually believe that there is a way to, I think there is an approach that is much more controlled. I do think that there is a methodology that is that not like that we take have to be locked. Yeah, right. It doesn’t need to be. And the thing is, this is that we can prove that because there are people.
I mean, there are plenty of entrepreneurs that have made it that have been very, very successful. And it was just the 1 thing that they did. And frankly, they, it was like winning the lottery. And they just mean, no offense to anybody that has done that. But, I mean, the reality is, like, if they just drunk stumbled into it, right versus.
You know, it’s like, no, we fundamentally understand, and I mean, there are people like, I mean, I think it’s like Alex Ramosi, or I think it’s Sharon Cerviza, or I think I mean, I could go down the list. I think of Aaron Stokes, and I mean, And these guys that they can just, I mean, it seems like, man, whenever they touch Transco, no, because they understand methodically what it is that they need to do, and they know how to evaluate the opportunity in the first place.
They know how to actually frame up, you know, the existential piece and then move into the discovery piece and then move into the adoption piece. And they can do that. And like, and they just, they, you know, I mean, you think about big, big businesses that tend to do that really, really well. And Which not every big business does, by the way, right?
I mean, and we see that. So, anyway, that’s just, I’ll go with that. Well, Nick Nick this has been a ton of fun having you on the show. I really enjoyed it and I want, but I do want to give you the opportunity if somebody, if somebody’s listening to this and they want to connect and learn more about Founders Best Friend or connect with you and your team, how do they do that?
Sure. You can either go to the website, which is just foundersbestfriend. com or, I mean, heck, anybody that’s listening here. I mean, if you ever just want to have a conversation, it’s just nick at thrive side. com. Which actually lends itself to my LinkedIn role. Like, I don’t connect with anybody on LinkedIn unless we’ve had at least a 30 minute conversation.
So, just reach out to me, nickatthriveside. com and let’s, you know, we can have a conversation. Love it. Amazing. And for everybody listening, we’ll we’ll definitely put at least the LinkedIn link in the, in the show notes so that you can Click on it and, you know, connect and shoot, shoot, shoot Nick a message over there.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t hit the subscribe button yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. We have daily guests each and every day. We’re putting out new content, bringing out amazing guests. Like Nick and others. We don’t want you to miss a thing.
So hit that subscribe button. And if you’re an old time listener, you’ve been with us for a while and haven’t pitched in and done your part yet and left us a review, man, get that done. Get that review done already. We’re supporting entrepreneurs out there. We’re entrepreneurs. Leave us that review. We really do appreciate it.
And Nick, again, so much fun having you on. And David, if you, if you listen to this one, thanks so much for introducing Nick to us. Yeah. Loved it. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate the time. This was fun.
