5 Secrets to a Successful Business - Episode 2 - Host Marcel Blanchet of Small Business Spotlight with Mosaic Marketing interviews guest Al Canosa as they discuss the principles of business success and the 5 secrets that every small business owner should consider. AL Canosa goes through each guiding principle with stories of his over 50 years in business and the CEO of a fortune 500 business and its success. Now, AL Canosa the president and CEO of Mosaic Marketing, Printing, and Signage talks about using the 5 Secrets to a Successful Business in the new 2021 business climate. Using the consistency of purpose, knowing what to do, and then doing it and not being afraid of failure. The duo discusses ideas on the future and having the sense to anticipate the next best thing by developing the ability to see things as they might be, not simply as they are.
5 Secrets to a Successful Business - Episode 2 - Host Marcel Blanchet of Small Business Spotlight with Mosaic Marketing interviews guest Al Canosa as they discuss the principles of business success and the 5 secrets that every small business owner should consider. AL Canosa goes through each guiding principle with stories of his over 50 years in business and the CEO of a fortune 500 business and its success. Now, AL Canosa the president and CEO of Mosaic Marketing, Printing, and Signage talks about using the 5 Secrets to a Successful Business in the new 2021 business climate. Using the consistency of purpose, knowing what to do, and then doing it and not being afraid of failure. The duo discusses ideas on the future and having the sense to anticipate the next best thing by developing the ability to see things as they might be, not simply as they are.
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From mosaic marketing, this is a small business spotlight show that gives small businesses a spotlight to what they do.
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, this is a great opportunity that we have today. This is our second episode. And I've got a fabulous guest with us today. And we're going to be discussing the five secrets to a successful business. And it gives me great pleasure to introduce Mr. AL Canosa. The President, CEO of mosaic marketing, how are you doing there today? I'm doing great. And I want to thank you for inviting me to this second episode. Well, why not? I mean, part of this podcast is that we have an opportunity to talk to our listeners out there about what we do here at Mosaic, and mosaic marketing, advertising, printing and signage and how long you've been into business. Oh, I graduated from Quinnipiac at that time, it was called Quinnipiac college, in 1969. And I immediately went into the business world, been involved since say, almost 50 years in the business world. Now in my, in my stage of life today, what I like to do is inform people about what is important in the business world. And this was an opportunity for me to do that. And I appreciate the time we're spending today. Oh, great. One of the things that is important in any business, is that you have these customers that you're reaching out to, and part of it is, in most cases for small business is selling them something and building the business. It's almost impossible these days with to not make consistent sales, if you don't have a strong brand. So what do you think about that whole idea of having a brand? Well, I think first of all, what we're what the way I look at it is what we're really doing is trying to help people in their particular business. More than I look at it more as we're trying to help people develop their business, they're trying to sell them something from mosaic. The brand that we're building here is that we're we are mosaic is a marketing company. And we're got a variety of tools to help people develop their business, the brand that we're pushing is that mosaic is here to help you develop your business through traditional marketing, as well as through digital marketing. So that's basically how I see what we're, what we're doing here. So with this situation that we have, with today's climate, how does these five secrets to a successful business work? Before I really got involved with the mosaic business, I was president, CEO of a publicly traded company listed on New York Stock Exchange.
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And I worked for a company for 25 years, and the company was very successful. While I was there, I started to think about why are we successful, what makes us successful, I want us to sit back and put my feet up on the desk and pick up on this and get away from the day to day activities of running the business. So it took me a while and I oiled it down to these five concepts. And that's what we're here to talk about today. And the first of the five is the secret of success is consistency of purpose. So if you are planning on going on vacation, and we're going to drive from Connecticut to San Diego, that's our mission. That's our purpose, and where we can't wait to get to San Diego. But if we're going to drive, you're going to take us about a week, it dragged here at a normal pace. And we're not going to let anything stand on our what we may do a little fight sand along, but we're going to end up in San Diego. And that's what this consistency of purposes before you begin your journey, you've got to understand where you're going and you got to be consistent in regards to how you're going to get there. So the very first item that I think is very important is to begin with consistency.
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So is that like having a map just like you said, going from one part A to part B or knowing exactly where you're going to go where you're gonna end up and you may have a little deviation you may say well on I
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way over there, we're gonna stop and see the Grand Canyon. Right, so we're gonna take a little side trip to the Grand Canyon. But that's only a side trip, it's not where you ended up. Our goal is to get to San Diego. So in a small business, let's take a small business example, a restaurant, the restaurant wants to have the best pizza or the best flaming young, or they want have an unbelievable fried chicken. So is the the end result? The product of like your pick a restaurant? This is why I go to a particular restaurant, why do I go to the same Italian restaurant?
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Why do you do that? Why does anyone because they know that when they go there, that their ship
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is going to taste like it did the last time you would
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fill it's a consistency that drives you to go to the restaurant. And so if I was running a restaurant, which I never ran around, but if I ran a restaurant, I want to make sure that whatever I'm preparing is consistently prepared. So the expectation of the customer is always met. And so I that's a perfect example of what I'm talking. So you have a consistency in the food preparation. So the client knows your customer know that one day go in here, six months from now that they should ask the patient the same way it did, and it was delicious. The first time I went there, and it's gonna be delicious, every single time I go. And that's what consistency.
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So if we were to also look at it as brand values, like your brand voice or your brand message, and making sure that it's cohesive, and consistent. You want to figure out exactly who you are right? And how you want to present your brand. And again, stand proudly in it. I mean, you want to be proud when every customer comes to your restaurant or any business that because you're consistent, that you're proud of it and be consistent across everything. I mean, the way you people come in to the door, where you advertise. And the way you present your whole business consistency is very important. Yeah. And you're paying for you to succeed, you have to be consistent in your approach to whatever you're doing. So if we're going to be in mosaics case, we view ourselves as a marketing company. So we want to get that message heard consistently. So people understand when we go there. mosaic knows both digital marketing, as well as traditional marketing. We feel comfortable that they know what they're doing, and they could guide us. Great. So tip number one is consistency of purpose. What did you have for tip number two, step number two is begin with the end in mind. And ties in with consistency, because let's say the end in mind is that we're going to provide a website to a client, the end result is that we're going to provide a website. So we're going to do everything we can to be sure that we're capable of delivering a modern, up to date website that we could all be proud of. So that's what I mean by having know what you're trying to do. And make sure you do what right, keep the end in mind is very important. Now, we could have another end, another end could be we want to run we want to increase our sale. Our end in mind is we want to be a billion dollar company in five years from now. It's gonna take us five years to get there. But you got consistency of purpose, as well as an endgame. Your endgame is in five years, you want to be a much larger company than you are today. So you're going to put all the use all the tools, you can't create a company that is a billion dollar company five years from now, that's another example of keeping the ended. Okay, so say we're another small business, we're not looking at to make a billion dollars
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in five years, where we want to make, say, a couple $100,000 by the end of the year, as a small business, we have a product that we know that people like and we've been consistent, we're proud of it. But our end game is that we want to at least make $200,000 by the end of the year. You're saying to use all the tools
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that are needed to get there. So what are some of the tools that people really, as a small business need to really get to that point? That's their endgame?
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Well, the first thing you got to understand what are how you're going to satisfy your call, you're going to meet their expectations. So are you going to meet it by missing delivery date, because you got to consistently meet the Miss delivery date, you're never going to get to be 200,000, you got to make delivery, you got to make a delivery date, right? You got to figure out what is important to that customer, those deliveries important, the quality is important. The price is important. That's what you got to concentrate on. And so if
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and also the value you bring to that client, so not only the product, but you may come up with some alternatives. So the value added is also critical, and renewed, to achieve a growth in sales, whatever it may be small growth or a large group. Those are the key things you would think about in that situation.
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Where the goal is to develop the revenue side of your business, in the next one year, five years, whatever it may be, you got to figure out what the important ingredients are. And what I believe the ingredients in that are important and increasing sales volume, is what I just mentioned, it's understanding what your customer is looking for delivering a product on time, that it's a high quality, price reasonable, and you're adding value to the customer. and the value could be suggesting other approaches may be something new that they haven't thought about, to help them develop their business that develop your business. The key, again, is you're helping your client, which in turn will help you.
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How do you think personalization comes into that, you know, like, basically making sure that your own personal touches, part of the makeup of it, I think, is important because we all have a certain personality. And if you have a demeanor that is abrasive, even though you have all those other good ingredients I mentioned a few minutes ago, it's going to be very difficult for you to move forward, and to help that client move forward. So I think the personal touch is this key. Awesome. So you got to be able to relate to people, and for people to trust you. And for them to understand that you do have the experience and knowledge and wisdom to help them develop their business which in turn, that's that's a great observation of personality and that personal touch. And
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yeah, when people want to see when like, when you say you have a coffee shop, and you have baristas, they want to see them, like being happy and greeting the customer with excitement, and saying, Hey, you know, it's important that I'm here to help you receive the best coffee that I can give you. And I stand behind my coffee. It's that personal touches, you know, that defies purpose, you know what you're doing? You know, we got the first tip is success in consistency of purpose. Second tip is begin with the end in mind. So what would you say is the third tip or guiding principle of a successful business? Well, one of the things that's going to happen, and you don't like the fact about this, and a lot of people don't want to think negatively, you always think on the positive. But I hate to say, as we go along in life, we're going along in business, we're going to have a failure. So you've got to be you've got to anticipate that you're going to have a failure, you can't anticipate that everything is going to be perfect. So you got to know what you're going to do when you fail. And you got to think about that before you fail. So it doesn't overcome you and overwhelm you. So I thought about it. And I said, Listen, I'm going to fail. I don't know what's going to happen, or what's going to happen, but it is going to happen. But I know what I'm going to do when I fail. And what I'm going to do is pick myself up with even greater resolve and continue to move forward.
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On the purpose, the consistency of purpose, and what they begin with the end in mind. Two points I mentioned earlier, you got to know that so you don't get overwhelmed when you do fail. And so that's an important ingredient. And I know that I hate to say it but we all are going to run into some obstacle as we move along.
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So we can't be afraid to fail. That's tip number three, we can't be afraid to fail. And it will happen. Yeah, because there's always going to be competition. And there's no one in the world that has the exact same story or history of you as your small business, you have to make sure that you are not afraid of the unknown. Be prepared, you will fail if you have to fail. This got to pick yourself up and keep going, doing what you have to do stand in your own purpose and speaking about in start talking about your brand and your story, and it's all about the customer too. So if you fail, get up and just keep going. Wow,
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I'm really liking this. This is great. It's complicated when you think No, no, no, no, everybody fails something. I mean,
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me, I couldn't really play baseball, I like playing baseball. But I couldn't really play baseball. I had a lot of fun. But, and I kept going.
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And eventually, I, you know, hit a couple home runs and felt pretty good about it. So once you do that, you say, Hey, I can do it again. Try again. Right? Right.
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So tip number four, what's Tip number four. Now,
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it's, it's in line with this failure situation.
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And so let's keep this in mind, we're going to have an issue. And we're going to walk by what the thing you got to say to yourself, failure happened. But there's a future.
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You can't do anything about what happened is the path, whatever it may be, could be a failure, it could be great.
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But you can't change it. So what we got to keep in mind is that the future is ours, the chain, not the path,
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not to dwell on the past, you could learn from the past, you could develop wisdom from the past.
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But really, the future is tomorrow. And that's what we are going to win or lose.
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What is goes on tomorrow, not what happened in the past. So always keep that in mind.
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So tip number four, learn to walk past failure. Right? Understand, it is not ours to recover.
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Tomorrow is ours to win or to lose. That's true.
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You know, how does this work with one of the biggest ways that people start to know about your business? word of mouth. So you walk past failure, but you've gotten like,
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a couple of bad testimonials or like on Google somebody put a bad comment on your business or something. And I mean, it's there. How do you just walk past that and keep going, Oh, that particular case, if someone gives you a bad
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review, bad review, you should immediately and it is in Google, you should immediately respond to that bad review
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with some kind of comment on why that happened, what you're going to do about it in the future.
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We got to learn from them.
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And we got to make sure it doesn't happen again. So even though we may have an excuse for it, and we come up with some excuse, oh, we didn't deliver on time, because our supplier didn't give us the supplies on top. That's one quick delivery. Now, if we just set off, it wasn't our fault, it was the supplier. And
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if we don't do anything about it,
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then it's gonna happen again, we may have to start searching for another supply
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in order to make sure that that doesn't happen again in the future. But if we don't do anything about it, then we're we may have another problem again. So if you if you get a bad testimonial, whatever. If it's your fault, the suppliers fault, or you got to make sure that you recognize the truth
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and make adjustments. So you don't do it again. That's the best way I can. So that's learning from your failures and trying to move forward over that. Taking care of what the problems are right away. So it doesn't happen again.
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That's a good tip. Actually, you know, one of the things I do when I talk about words of wisdom that I have and that is
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You could learn
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now.
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But you live with
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the one an example like we just talked about, we learn something we did something wrong. Now what are we going to do about it? Is he going forward. And so now as we go on in life, we know if this situation happened,
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this negative or positive result,
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that's the wisdom side of the learning experience. So we know how to
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capitalize or monetize on our learning in the future. And that's the wisdom part that is missing in a lot of young athletes, that they have to learn as the development. So being gained more and more learning, you could learn, you could learn knowledge, but you got to live wisdom.
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So that's part of the time that it takes, like I was saying, you know, if you have a small business, and you're looking not to make a billion dollars, in five years, but say $200,000 a year.
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That's time it's gonna take time. And some things you have to do, making sure that you're pleasing your customer, making sure that that customer is aware of what you're doing, and that you're doing the best that you can you are proud, you stand proud and be consistent, right? Tip number four, learn to walk past your failures. Okay, so now we're coming to the last of our five tips. This one here is a little
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more tricky. Because what you got to try to do is to catch the vision, the vision, catch the vision of greatness, but it's develop the ability to see things, how they might be not as they
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go. In other words, let's say that today, we have gaspee, almost 99.9% of all the vehicles are run by gasoline, basic fossil fuel.
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What's the vision and this is very obvious today. But the vision in the future is that we're going to go to electric.
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We're not there yet. But that's the vision of the future.
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Another, so we've got to catch that vision, because you want to be on the forefront of what's going to be happening in the future.
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Another example is let's take, for example,
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an MRI
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machine.
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We all know how expensive they are very expensive, we probably all don't know what they are, but they are expensive. We know how big they are. We know the footprint that they take
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the building, you need to put an MRI, and all the other equipment that goes along with it functions correctly. But what happens if we could take an MRI that is
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that has the footprint of a building that is 20 feet by 20 feet. And we could develop a MRI, that is the size of your telephone.
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Think about how that's going to change the future.
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And the these are the kind of things that we should be trying to focus on. And it's hard to do that because we're so tied up. In every day I get in my car started up and I go, I want to go whenever I run out of gas, I stopped at the gas, they should get gas and keep going, Oh,
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you don't take time out to think about
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how can we develop another source of transportation that doesn't use gasoline? Or how can we come up with a nother machine. that's similar to when MRI does everything that an MRI does, instead of being in a room that's 20 feet by 20 feet, it's it's in your
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it's in a piece of equipment size of your cell phone that you could put in your pocket. I mean, this is the kind of things that we should be.
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So it's catch the vision of what's going to be changing in the future basically.
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And that's how you're going to stay ahead in business.
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You're going to stay ahead of the competition. You're going to help your clients develop their business and be more effective in cost effectiveness or gaining more for them to gain market here. And that's the value added part that we talked about earlier. Bring value add it to the profit
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you touch this
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There's one point that you really touched base on was to see things as they might be, not simply as they are. Look at some of the people that have done that, and have been successful at that. Take a look at the
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perfect example. We're talking, he developed the library. I mean, no change everything. You know, people when the sun went down, they were reading by candle.
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Lighting lamps, lighting lamp, yeah, you know, kerosene lamp, or whatever.
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Now we have the light bulb, and think about how that changed everything. Same thing, what the Wright brothers, you know, whoever thought about flying like a bird, we always just drama, had a dream of flying. But the Wright brothers made it a reality. And that developed into going to today, we could fly to Rome and six out.
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In the future, we may be able to fly to Rome and on our pick about how that was going to turn the way we do. But it will have these things.
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So these are examples of what I'm talking about.
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You know, don't see things as they are today. Try to envision what they're going to be.
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So
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tip number five, catch the vision of greatness. Well, you know, our five tips to small business success really can empower people and give them the ability to find their purpose, bring personality and brands to their business. enlighten others, develop a way to communicate with your customers. These are not really secrets, they're principles. And now you really have the ability to
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bring the principles of business to light. And I want to thank you very much for being here and being part of this podcast. And thank you again now. I want to thank you. All right.