Ecom Growth Insider · Podcast episode

Mario Lanzarotti: Build a We Brand, Not an I Brand

With Mario Lanzarotti · Published 2025-05-08 · 48 minutes · Hosted by Andrej Tumachowitsch

Mario Lanzarotti: Build a We Brand, Not an I Brand

Mario Lanzarotti talked his way into a company. He met the founder of a custom shoe brand at a New York trade show in 2014, asked to intern, and made one condition: give me the chance to earn co-founder. He worked a year unpaid on a handshake, never got the contract his father told him to get, then moved to New York on a tourist visa and went all in.

All and Sundry never ran paid ads. Growth came from custom tailors who set up a shoe booth for a cut, from events other people paid for, and from a Manhattan showroom that looked far more expensive than it was. An introduction from a personal stylist led to a Super Bowl champion, a launch party the Seattle Seahawks paid for, and a client list he says included the CEO of Google.

Then he wanted to sell, and the thing that had built the business turned into the thing that discounted it. A brand whose relationships live in one founder is a brand a buyer cannot safely take over. A disclosure: Mario is Andrej's own leadership coach, which he says on the recording.

What you will take away

• Find the people who already have your customer. Custom tailors were making suits for exactly the man who buys a 495 dollar custom shoe. Mario set up small booths in their shops, the tailor took a cut, and the referrals became a standing channel rather than a campaign. His framing is to look for the gatekeepers: who can open a door to a network you would otherwise have to buy your way into?
• Premium means the first touch has to be physical. They were selling against houses more than a century old, so trust had to be built in a room. The showroom on West 23rd Street did the fitting and the experience, and reorders then happened online at the customer's convenience. The in-person step was the acquisition cost they paid in time instead of in ad spend.
• Get somebody else to pay for the event. A free pair of shoes to a personal stylist opened his network, which led to an NFL champion, a collaboration, and a launch party in Seattle that the team itself paid for. Mario's line is that they simply said they had no money: they would bring the shoes and the designs, and the partner set up the rest. Without that, he says, they would not have survived.
• In a custom business, a remake eats the order. The shoes sold at 495 dollars and cost 130 to 200 to make. Good margins, not generous ones, and one remake takes most of them. That is why the money went into the product and eventually into moving production out of China to a family factory outside Tuscany, where the communication was at partner level rather than order level.
• The regret is the easy-buy product they never built. Custom has a long consideration cycle, and they had nothing you could just add to a cart. Matching belts arrived late, shoe polish never. He would build a ready-to-wear line and accessories from the start, both to bring people in and because an exit is priced off predictable revenue.
• Agree the roles before you agree the partnership. They divided the work by instinct and got it wrong: he ended up running operations when his strengths were sales and being the face of the brand. His method now is that both partners write down their values, strengths and weaknesses first, then fit the roles to that, on paper. He thinks a partner mismatch is one of the biggest reasons companies fail, because it is really a mismatch in decision making.
• Build a we brand, not an I brand. The clients mostly dealt with Mario. For a buyer, that is the problem: take out the person the relationships attach to and it is not clear what remains. His words are that you want to be much more replaceable. The company sold for shares in a larger business that is still growing, which he says now sits in the seven-figure range.
• Awareness first, then accountability. His coaching case is that the bottleneck you name is not the bottleneck. Lead generation is not the block, the behaviour you are avoiding is, and behind that is a belief. Strategy is the cheap part now: you can get a good one out of ChatGPT. The execution is emotional, which is why he starts people on daily journaling and then on somebody who will hold up a mirror.

Jump to a chapter

• 00:00 - Introduction
• 00:32 - From Berlin to a trade show in New York
• 03:49 - Interning your way into a co-founder seat
• 07:14 - The showroom, and why the first touch was in person
• 08:54 - Tailors, stylists and a Super Bowl champion
• 14:08 - Why the relationships were the whole business
• 18:49 - Where a bootstrapped brand's money actually went
• 21:55 - The ready-to-wear line they should have built
• 23:40 - Buying into a business instead of starting one
• 27:04 - Splitting the roles, and getting it wrong
• 32:02 - Deciding it was time to exit
• 35:51 - Getting the company exit ready
• 36:48 - Build a we brand, not an I brand
• 39:28 - Life after the exit
• 43:27 - Awareness, then accountability
• 46:41 - Where to find Mario

Full transcript

Lightly edited from the episode captions for readability. The episode is the record - where they differ, the audio wins. Lightly edited from the recording captions, which carry timings but no speaker labels, so the transcript runs unattributed.

00:00 - Introduction

So welcome to the Ecom Growth Insider podcast. I'm Andrej, the host and today I'm here with Mario Lanzarotti. Hi Mario. Hey Andre. Thank you for being the first person on earth in a podcast interview that spelled my name correctly.

Kudos to you man. Thank you. So Mario is a good friend of mine and also the co founder of all and sundry, an e commerce brand that he successfully exited. To kick things off, Mario, do you want to give a brief personal background of you?

00:32 - From Berlin to a trade show in New York

So basically where did you grow up and how did you find your way into the e commerce fashion industry? Absolutely. So I grew up in Germany. I'm half German and half Italian, hence my name. And I first got into the e commerce game when I was studying in Berlin.

I was studying fashion management and at the time I was doing SEO with a friend of mine who had a business in online sports betting. And he asked me to write content and I had no clue how it worked, I just understood that it's quite profitable. And so he taught me how to write articles with the right keywords. And so that was my first viewpoint into the online marketing world, online business world. And then fast forward when I went to New York City for the first time in 2014 as a, as a student, I had a six months sort of experience in New York City.

And part of the three months of the six months were a three month internship. And so I went out and I went to a trade show and there was this guy, Indian guy, standing there, small booth with a bunch of incredibly beautiful shoes. And immediately my Italian spirit was like, check out those shoes. And so I did and I asked him about the shoes and he said, look, this is a personal project on the side I'm calling it all in sundry. It's custom made shoes.

I'm like, okay, this sounds amazing. And I just gave it a shot. I said, hey, are you looking for any interns? And he said, absolutely. You know, I could use all the help I can.

I said, okay, I'd love to intern for you, but only if you give me the chance to become your business partner and co founder if I, you know, if I prove myself. And he said, okay, you've got balls. Let's see if you know, your words match your actions. And so that was the time when I dove into all and sundry and, yeah, just hustled my heart out, you know, like, no pay, just work, work, work, work, work, work, work. And eventually, the founder, Nikunc Marwania, he said, I want you on board.

I'll make you my co founder. Once you graduate in Germany, I want you to come back. And this was a year later. So I kept on working online. I had no contract, no agreement, just a handshake, no pay.

And I remember telling my dad about it, and he was like, okay, this sounds good, but you need a contract, so make sure you're getting a contract. And I was like, sure, sure, sure, I'll get a contract. I never got a contract. So I just kept on hustling and hoping this is going to work out and he's not going to screw me over. But then in 2015, I moved over to New York on a tourist visa.

No idea how I was going to figure this out. We both didn't have any plan. It was bootstrapped complet day one, and, you know, took the leap of faith and then went all in with it. Interesting. Yeah.

And there are a couple of things that, like, stood out where I want to. Where I would like to dive deeper into. And one of the things is when you. When you started the internship and basically pitched your idea of becoming like a. A business partner for him, were there like any conditions that you decided on?

03:49 - Interning your way into a co-founder seat

Like, if we hit those conditions, then we can talk about it. Or was it based on a handshake deal without any specific goals? Yeah, see, in hindsight, that's what I would do again today to really map out the conditions back there, you know, to understand a bit of the backstory. For me, I was. All I cared about was how do I get myself into New York City with a minimum pay so I can be close to speakers and coaches?

Because that was my real goal. I really wanted this to be sort of like a. A give me street credibility. In the entrepreneurial game. So that when I work with entrepreneurs later on they would respect me and they would allow, they would trust me.

And so I didn't really have any conditions. I said that I want, you know, a certain level of equity in the company. And we agreed on that. But beyond that, it was sort of like, how much money do we need to do we need to take out of the company to sort of survive on the minimum level. And, and from there on we said, you know, we'll figure it out as we go.

I don't recommend that approach to people. For me and Nick, we're still, to this day, we're dear friends, him and I. We resonated on very, very similar philosophies. So he was an avid meditator. I had been into meditation a bit and we really cared from the heart.

And I saw how he showed up and he saw how I showed up in relationship to him. And that's why he moved, move mountains to get me over from Germany to the US which as a bootstrap startup without any funding is really hard to get a visa. We, we pulled off some crazy magic to get me to, to stay in the U. S. and so, yeah, I hope that answers the question.

Yeah, yeah, it does. So if I understand you correctly, you, like originally you didn't really care about whether it's like E commerce or what kind of business it is. You just wanted to get your foot into the door into like the New York market and into that, into the business world. Or did you have like any specific idea in mind what you want to do there in terms of like, e commerce business? Yeah, I mean, online was sort of the name of the game for me because I wanted to find a way to live wherever I wanted to live, but not be tied locationally to having to be there to earn money.

And so that's when the idea of E commerce, of online marketing really became extremely attractive to me. And then the challenge that I found was I found it extremely boring. I was like, I don't want to just sit in front of a computer the whole day, you know, like, just watch a bunch of numbers and images and, you know, and, and really don't really get involved with people. But it was the combination of on and offline. Because we had a showroom in Manhattan on 18 West 23rd street where people could come in to get fitted, right?

They would, we would measure their feet, we would choose the colors and the patterns with them and it would be a total experience. And then it would be taken online and I absolutely love that idea to combine real life products that are of high quality with the efficiency of doing it online. And you know, the rest is, the rest is history.

07:14 - The showroom, and why the first touch was in person

So did, did the majority of the customers come like in the store and then end up like later on purchasing online or how, how did that work? Yeah, a lot. So a lot. A big driver of the, of revenue of new customers came through the in person experience. And we also had strategic partnerships with a lot of custom tailors because we were thinking about where can we, who can we piggyback with to get customers without having to pay for it necessarily.

So what we did was we went to custom tailors that were making suits and shirts and ties and we would set up like a mini small booth there. We bring the shoes and they would advertise it to all of their clients and they would then come in and they would get a cut. And so we would establish these relationships. And that was a big breakthrough in terms of customer acquisition because now we had these referral channels, constant referral channels from all over. And I would get called, you know, hey, you know, I've got another client that wants to buy another pair of shoes.

And you know, and, and the good thing was it was usually the initial touch point that required more of an in person approach. But once that was done, people started ordering in the convenience of their own homes because they didn't have to come back. Some of them still did because they just loved to talk to us, especially to me because, you know, Italian background, you know, I was wearing most of the shoes. So there was like a little bit of a face of the company for a lot of the customers. And that what really helped us drive so many of the collaborations and you know, just altogether revenue without spending a dime on marketing, essentially.

08:54 - Tailors, stylists and a Super Bowl champion

I mean, building out those referral partnerships sounds like it was like a pivotal moment or like a huge, huge driver of revenue. How did you approach that back then? Or how did you got your foot into the door of those other businesses to build that partnership? Yeah, I would say without those strategic partnerships, we would have not had a business, I mean, no chance. Because we were in the premium luxury segment with the products that we had.

And so when you're premium luxury in E commerce, there's a lot of education around it, there's a lot of thought process, a lot of trust building around it because you're competing against brands that have been around for decades. Some of them, you know, over a hundred years, John Lobb, over a hundred years around. You know, there's a Custom shoe brand from England. And so we really had to establish a personal connection. And it's, you know, me coming into New York, I didn't know anybody.

So it was Nick, my partner, who drove the initial conversation around getting to know people that could get us into other businesses. We also, we also tried to establish partnerships with like JP Morgan and some of the bigger finance institutions because obviously these guys, they need those kind of shoes. And we, a couple trunk shows here and there, but we didn't really, we weren't able to facilitate a, a partnership with them. I don't even remember why. I think it was a conversation around volume that didn't, didn't work.

They, they needed much more volume and we weren't at the stage to be able to produce that. And then we went on to put up events. So we put together events and we invited a bunch of influencers and you know, friends of friends invited their friends. And so eventually we had some sort of middle tier influencers come. And I remember there was one guy, his name was Dex Rob, that we build a personal relationship with and to give you an understanding, usually the way it works is we gave them a free product.

So we made a pair of shoes for them. They got the pair of shoes, they put it on, they loved it, they took pictures with it, videos, you know, the whole influencer game. But then they started to open up their network. And so this guy opened up the network to his clients and he was a personal stylist. So you know, when, when you run a, an E commerce brand and you want to do strategic partnerships, you have to understand who are the gatekeepers, who are the people that can open the door for you to get to a higher caliber client or a network where you can spread out and, and, and have a multiplier of meeting clients.

And so Dex Rob then connected us to Cam Chancellor. Cam Chancellor is a NFL super bowl champion, played for the Seattle Seahawks at the time, Massive deal. And so he came to New York. We met him in New York. He loved the shoes, started designing a collaboration and in his own collection he flew us into Seattle.

They did a launch party in Seattle with the whole team. The Seahawks came, was, you know, the Seattle Times came, was a big press event. TV was there. And just from there it started spreading and that was such a help. And from there we brokered deals with Sony, Sony's the Blacklist, the TV show which is still running today.

The CEO of Google was a client of ours. He flew into the New York office. I didn't even know who the heck he was. I remember he showed out in a cab outside and I was standing there on 23rd street and was looking around and then this Indian dude in these loose sports or comes up to me, he's like, hey, are you Mario? And I'm looking at him, he's like, oh, are you Sundar?

His name is Sundar Picha. And he's like, you know, multi billionaire CEO guru. And he came in, he was super down to earth, super humbled. My business partner freaked out because for him he was like a demigod in India. But came in, had a great experience and you know, I was invited to, I had to sign an NDA, so I can't say who it is to a billionaire in Long island to his mansion.

You know, they, they drove me out there, bought 10 shoes in one go, which for us at the time was a huge deal. It was like 6,000 or $7,000. You know, it's just like boom there. And so, you know, these partnerships, they put the name out. Another thing that we did was we had a, our launch event for, for another collaboration that we did with other NFL players in Jay Z's nightclub in, in Manhattan.

And again, big event, right? And we really managed, that was our superpower because we were bootstrapped. We really managed to talk people into us not having to pay for these deals and even them investing into sort of the events. And you know, the Seattle Seahawks, they paid for everything. We didn't have to pay for anything.

We said, guys, we don't, we don't have the money. We can't pay you guys. We bring the shoes and we bring the designs, but, but you got to set up everything else. And they did. And if it wasn't for that, Andre, we would not have survived.

No chance. Interesting.

14:08 - Why the relationships were the whole business

And I think there are a lot of very, very valuable lessons just from that story that you just told. And I think nowadays business owners in general, but especially E commerce brands, really underestimate how important it is to build real relationships and real connections to people. How many doors it opens to you and how much it just helps with scaling the business. And also the in person events, I mean there are barely any, at least, I don't really know any E commerce brands that do like in person events. If they have like a retail store, then it's obviously easier to do it because then you already have some physical presence and it's easier to arrange something.

But I see a lot of potential and a huge opportunity in doing events and real in person events just because nowadays everyone is shifting even more online, more remote, more into AI and all of those things that are just not as personal. And I think in the next couple of years, we'll see a big shift into more like, in person stuff again, more human connections, human relationships. Because if you meet someone in person, you're sure that that person is real, not an AI you're talking to. And I think that will really help a lot of brands stand out and build like a cult, like, following and really have, like, fans that then also. Yeah, build out, like, open the doors for you, refer you to other people and similar to what a lot of people did for you.

Yeah, like to, to. To give you an understanding of how impactful relationships were. For me personally, if it wasn't for all of those celebrity deals and endorsements, I would have never gotten my visa. I had an O1 visa, O1A, and it was valid for four years and it was really difficult to get it. But because we had so many celebrity endorsements and I got it right, they, they, the lawyer, you know, presented me as like a, a super special kind of person.

It's really necessary to get into the US and it worked out. And also the showroom that we had came through a personal relationship and the showroom that we had, if you, when you came into the showroom, you would have never thought that we are a bootstrapped, you know, little E Commerce brand founded by two people. You would have thought, wow, these guys are killing it. Because it was like this gentleman's club. You know, there was a corner where you could smoke C, you know, you got a whiskey on ice.

There was always, you know, at least one beautiful lady sort of serving drinks. And, you know, there was like jazz music playing and it was this loungey area. People loved the experience. There was a poker table in the back. So it was like a proper gentleman's cave.

And we paid so little for that in. In the middle of New York City. And that came because of a relationship. And, you know, if I didn't get that visa, I could not. I could not have stayed in the US If I could not have stayed in the US I could not be doing what I'm doing.

So I built a big personal brand and I built so many connections and relationships that opened, you know, doors. You know, we haven't talked about that, but Kickstarter, we ran three Kickstarter campaigns. All of them were super successful. Again, so much of what we did in the Kickstarter campaign, when, even when it came down to the video crew relationships, we did Exchanges. Right.

And I think, I still think that, you know, when you're a bootstrap company and you don't have that huge marketing budget, you need to leverage connections to also exchange services, to exchange opportunities to allow people to cross promote. And with what we did on Kickstarter, again, that brought a proof of concept to what we do and it attracted investors. We didn't go with the route investors. And we can talk about that a bit later, which leads to the exit. But highly, highly, highly, highly recommend that if you're an e commerce business owner, get out there, get into the real world and build connections with real people because you know, they will open the doors that people that are just behind their screen will never be able to open.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And I mean you touched on that. You like didn't really have a lot of money and that like, that opened up a lot of doors for you without having to invest into marketing. So I'm just curious, where did you put like most of your money when it comes to like.

18:49 - Where a bootstrapped brand's money actually went

Yeah, bootstrapping the business? Yeah. So one was for sure the product itself. I mean we had to make sure that our product was superb because the biggest challenge in the custom industry are remakes. Remix can kill your business.

You know, if you. The shoes at the time we were selling them for 495. We were producing them anywhere from 100, from 130 to $200 depending on the pair. Sometimes the price would then increase with it. So the margins were good, but they were not crazy.

And you know, if we had one remake, you're just barely, barely cutting it. And so that's why we had to reinvest in the product. I remember we started out in China in Guangzhou. We had the leather flown in from Italy to Guangzhou and they were making exceptionally good shoes. The problem was that in China the communication wasn't at the level.

So the Chinese that we were working with, they were lovely people and their creative thinking wasn't dialed in because for them was like, just tell us what you need to do and we'll get it done. And that worked, but we didn't have that partner level communication. So then what we decided was let's move our production away from China to Italy. And so then I flew to Italy and I had to set up the whole thing from scratch there with a local family outside of Tuscany. You know, they had already had a factory and we built that relationship there and then ended up moving production to Italy.

And that was amazing. And so most of the money that we were Spending, you know, one was salary just to keep, keep us ourselves going as founders. But then it was about, you know, small events here and there, trunk show shows. You know, at that time, you know, even when you, we were traveling to like I flew, I remember I flew to Texas, Austin, Texas, and I set up a trunk show there. You know, you have to pay, you know, flights, hotels, cars, money for food, all of that.

That costs money. And so we were investing money in that ways. The Kickstarter campaign definitely cost us some money. And it was a great way to you use crowdfunding to actually get traction on online and social media and also sell shoes. And what we often did is the shoes that we ended up selling to the Kickstarter betters is they came back as regular clients and started buying custom, from ready to wear to custom.

So I'd say, you know, that's where most of the money went, like staffing the team that we paid the shoemakers. We eventually started hiring people in New York as well, you know, some staff to help out with, you know, to help me with sales. So yeah, I'd say that's where most of the money went. We didn't do ads, we didn't do email marketing campaigns because we focused on, you know, really honing in on the relationship part and on nurturing those in person experiences. Mm.

21:55 - The ready-to-wear line they should have built

And looking back, is there anything where you now think that you spent like too much time or too much money on it, where you didn't really get a return on investment? That's a great question. I think what would have helped us from an earlier point of view is to have a ready to wear collection, like something that's an easy buy, like where people don't have to think much. Does this work for me? Does not work for me.

Because the time it took to make a sale with custom is prolonged. It's not a, you know, it's not like you go to the website and you go, oh, what's a T shirt and a size Sure I'll get that. And immediately you have a foot in the door. And I think we invested too much time in perfecting custom rather than also having a few other products that are easy to buy, you know, later down the line. We came up with matching belts, which was quite late.

You know, I think that would have been better from the get go to sort of offer those combinations, even like accessories like shoe polish. You know, we didn't, we, we didn't jump on that train. So we, I think we obsessed a lot about perfecting what was Already a good quality shoe and really try to get it to like exceptionally high end. And yeah, I would do that differently today. I would want to have products in store that drive a lot more traffic and that drive a lot more of the conversation around the brand.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then I also wanted to quickly touch on, you mentioned a lot of brand owners, obviously start the brand from scratch and build everything from the ground up. But you basically had a different approach.

23:40 - Buying into a business instead of starting one

You decided to partner up with someone who already had a business and basically come onto the team and first as an intern and then transition into a business partner. Looking back, like, would you do it again this way and what are the main things you would say to consider going with that approach? Yeah, I definitely would do it again because I've done it twice actually. I've done it first in Berlin where I was an intern at a high end luxury marketing agency, branding marketing agency. And I interned and the.

I remember we were putting together an event, a luxury exhibition over a whole weekend in Berlin with like, you know, yachts and like high end cars. And I'd never done anything like it. And the guy, the owner of the company, who was also my professor, said to me, I need a sponsor for a shuttle service. And he's like, normally we would work with like Porsche or Audi, but you know, what do you think? And then Uber just came out.

But when Uber came out, Uber was not what Uber is today. Uber came out as a luxury car limousine service. So when you ordered an Uber, at first you had like a Audi A8, you know, S class, Volkswagen Phaeton, these kind of level cars. And so I saw that and I was like, what if we get these guys? And then he said, you go figure it out.

I said, how am I going to supposed to figure that out? I said, I don't know, figure it out. I was like, great, thanks. So he threw me into the cold water and I brokered a, I think it was like 30 or €40,000 sponsorship deal for the entire weekend that they gave free rides to every single guest. And that was great for both of us, right?

And because he saw that success, he's like, yeah, I'm going to make you partner. And then I thought, if I did it here, why not do it again? And I would say this is not for the faint of heart because you're anchoring yourself at a partner level. That's a radical shift in mindset. If you've never been a business partner and now you gotta be a business partner.

It takes up everything from you, because you have to step into the responsibility of the owner of the business, even though you're not technically the owner of the business. Right. You're a shareholder in it. And it's quite a brutal journey. Like, I won't lie.

You know, in New York, I worked seven days a week. Literally seven days a week. You know, I barely went out. You know, I was like a machine drilled in at that time. And I wouldn't change it going back because of the learning curve.

The level of learning and maturity that I got out of that was incredibly high. And I always knew for me that I wanted to do public speaking and coaching. So leadership was always at the forefront. So I was like, okay, I gotta learn how to think, act, and live like a true leader, like a CEO. And so that's why I said, you know, let me live close to the CEOs, to the guys that found these companies.

And it was, like I said, an accelerated learning company that I would definitely do again, but, you know, might not be for everyone, because it really will ask everything of you. Yeah.

27:04 - Splitting the roles, and getting it wrong

And how did you figure out the split in terms of, like, who is doing what? Because I hear from a lot of, like, business partners or if multiple people, like, manage a business, that they always struggle with figuring out the responsibilities and who is, like, working on what. How did you approach that? Yeah. So nowadays, obviously, as you know, I have a whole process around that and, you know, how you optimize all these things.

Back then we just decided, you know, I was sort of like. We had a conversation around each other's strengths. When I first started out, you know, given the fact that I started as an intern, he would initially guide me a lot in, like, understanding. Understanding the basics, you know, I remember I came in and I, you know, opened my MacBook, and he looked at my Mac. He was like, dude, you have no organization on your MacBook.

You know, and I'm like, well, no. He's like. And he showed me how to organize myself on my MacBook and, like, how to build structure in my workflow. And over time, as we figured each other out, we got to know each other better. It was clear that I'm sort of like, more of the extroverted person.

So my focus was customers, was sales. Then he would step back further and further in the. In the management role, and I would take over the coo. So I was taking care of operations of people. In hindsight, I think the role wasn't optimal for me.

I think the sales role was definitely very good for Me, because I was very good at selling, I would have probably taken over more of a brand face marketing role. So when you see all in sundry, you see me speaking, wearing the shoes because it just fits from a style perspective. But today I would say you need to understand your values and you need to understand your strengths and your weaknesses. These three things, once you understand them and you have a business partner, they should do the same thing. You come together and you look at, you know, where do I excel in, what are my skills, what are my, what are my values also?

And where do I not? And then you figure out what are the roles that can be complimentary to that. But if you skip that part, you are throwing a coin and you're hoping that things will work out. And I can tell you that we've definitely had a lot of mismatch in the roles and that led to, it led to conflict between us. It led to also me focusing on things that I clearly wasn't the best at and, you know, vice versa.

And so I would say going back, I definitely would apply more of a structured approach and also jot it down on paper to be clear that the roles are distinct and the roles are agreed upon. Because every role comes with a set of different responsibilities. And if you don't communicate it, you just make a couple assumptions and then the only time you're going to change is when you know some massive fire is burning in the company. Yeah. And I mean, ideally you should do that before you even partner up, before you find like a business partner or decide whether you want to move forward with that.

But obviously sometimes it's too late and you're already in the partnership. But still, then you can still like do it. You should try to figure it out whether there is a way how you can work together, how it makes sense for everyone. And then, I mean, if it's too bad, then unfortunately you will have to end the relationship or the partnership. Because I think that's one of the worst things that you can do to yourself is just being in a partnership with someone who you don't align with or where you can't do the things that you want to do or the things that you excel at.

Yeah, I would say it's probably one of the biggest reasons why, why companies fail when they have a mismatch between business partners, between. Because what you're really having is a mismatch in decision making. And if you have one person that pulls left and the other person pulling right now you're not going straight. Right. And so that costs you a lot of money.

And I feel that actually, I know that it's extremely undervalued this part of the conversation. Most just say, okay, yeah, you want to partner up? Sure. Cool, let's do it. We get along.

Okay, cool. Now what do we do? Okay, marketing, sales, operations, finance. Okay, cool, yeah, we'll figure it out. And then you invest six months, a year, two years, and then you realize, damn, you know, we're now sacked in into a corner where we can't really get out.

And, you know, so many things depend upon us, so many of the structures in the company, so many team members that we hired based upon that, and it just becomes this freaking chaotic mess. And so you don't want to get into that. You want to do it like you said at the get go. Yeah. And then, I mean, going forward, what were kind of the main factors that led you to making the decision that it's time to exit the business?

32:02 - Deciding it was time to exit

Was it like a plan all along or. Yeah, so it was a plan all along for sure. I remember this was part of the conversation where I asked to become a business partner. And I told my business partner from the get go, I said, look, I am here in New York because I want to become a speaker and a coach, and I want all and sundry to be my first real committed experience in the world of entrepreneurship. But I know this will not be the end.

I will not be doing this forever. And I said, are you okay with that? And he said, absolutely, as long as you give me your best for the next, you know, X years, I'm good with that. And then we'll talk, you know, as it comes further. And I said, okay, cool, this sounds good to me.

And then initially I started communicating to my founder. I said, look, I kind of feel like, you know, it's somewhat time for me to make a move. And this was like a year before I actually made a move. And so I started talking about. Then he said, okay, I respect that.

You know, if it, if you're not staying in the company, then I will not be growing the company on my own. So let's try to sell the company. Because we had conversations with investors to scale it up is very complex because when you're doing custom, custom at scale is really, really, really hard because of the nature of remakes, because of the nature of the complexity of what can go wrong. And we, the investors, wanted to see a Ready to Wear line, hence why we did the whole Kickstarter campaign with Ready to Wear shoes. And as a Proof of concept, showing them, hey, if we pump this much money in, we're going to get this much money back.

So it definitely works. But we realized that the process to get funding was just dragging out, just dragging out, you know, and when you're bootstrapped and both of you are fully involved in the company, having one person removed to then go on, you know, on a funding spree is hard. It's really, really difficult because you are fully involved in the business. And so that we got some offers, but they weren't, you know, satisfactory to what we're doing. And then we decide, okay, let's go with the route to sell the business.

And then my business partner, he took that on to have those conversations. Sometimes I was looped in the conversations as well, but I was running the whole business by myself at that point and, you know, and had some support with other team members, but it was coming to an end because also the fire wasn't there anymore. Like, I felt that I'd outgrown my role, I'd outgrown my capacity to create impact, and it just felt very aligned. And then my co founder eventually found someone that ended up buying the company in exchange for shares for a bigger company, which turned out to be a great deal. The company's still growing and we still have those shares, and now we're in the seven figure space with that.

And so, you know, fingers crossed that continues to grow. But I'd say the most important experience for us was to build a business that we actually successfully exited and to also make peace with the fact that, you know, it didn't become this eight, nine figure brand that we were, you know, dreaming about in the very beginning. But it was an incredible door opener. The learning lessons that I got, you know, and having been through this whole New York City hustle grind, experience led me to what I'm doing today. And so for that, I'm eternally grateful.

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing.

35:51 - Getting the company exit ready

And did you do anything to ensure that the company was attractive to the buyer or did you just sell it as it was at that point? Yeah, we were. So. And this was part of the Kickstarter conversation. We did three campaigns, and initially we did those campaigns because we wanted to, you know, we wanted to polish up the image of the company saying, hey, look, you know, we have proof of concept three times here.

It definitely works. The next thing, also part of the move from China to Italy was also to. To prepare it for an exit because, you know, credibility, trust factor, communication line, exclusivity with, with the family that makes the custom shoes, all of that was geared towards helping us to definitely seal a deal with becoming exit ready. Yeah.

36:48 - Build a we brand, not an I brand

And is there something that you nowadays would do different than you did back then in terms of the exit process? That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, I would say if we had known from the get go that this is. That we're building this for an exit, I think we would have diversified the product offering a lot sooner with Ready to Wear to really scale up.

Because when it comes to exiting, it's strongly dependent on numbers. And we often relied on custom, which wasn't as predictable of a revenue driver. And so I think we would have made some changes in terms of, of revenue. I think we also would have established more of an online strategy to attract and retain customers because as I said, a lot of it was in person based. And then lastly was also to build more of a we brand rather than an I brand.

The brand was often centered around, you know, my co founder and me. A lot of the clients mostly refer to me. So that was a big fear. It's like, okay, well, if your guy's not here anymore, what happens to all the relationships that you build? Because if you build a heavy relationship business and then you remove the figures that build those relationships, for a buyer, that's extremely unattractive.

Right. So I would shift that, keeping that in mind, so that we are much more replaceable. Yeah. And that's what a lot of people forget if they're looking to at some point exit or sell their business, that they can't really be the face of the business, the face of the brand, because it has a lot of benefits of having a personal brand, the business, and being on the forefront of everything in the marketing material, on the website, talking to all the clients, customers. However, as you just mentioned, for a potential buyer, it's one of the worst things because once you sell it, you're not there anymore.

And if they then have to suddenly switch everything, transition everything, they don't know whether the customers will stay, whether the marketing will still be efficient and yeah, it just makes your company way less valuable to buyers. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I think that was very, very valuable for the last couple of minutes.

39:28 - Life after the exit

I would like to quickly touch on what you're doing now. So Mario's basically, as he touched on, he's now more into the coaching, leadership and public speaking industry. And he's also my leadership coach, mindset coach, and helping me scale my business without burning out and without going completely crazy. And yeah, I want like how was the transition from like exiting the E Commerce brand going into what you're doing now? Yeah, super scary because I left a comfortable network and mechanism in New York that was driving revenue that was giving me, you know, an income.

And I remember after we sold the company, I left New York because I, I noticed that I was often super burned out, super stressed out, super anxious, you know, on a day to day basis. And that's not why I became an entrepreneur. I was like, this is, you know, this is stupid. You know, I feel, I feel worse than people in a 9 to 5 hamster wheel. And now I'm in the, I'm in the grind hamster wheel.

And so then I left New York and I traveled remotely with my then girlfriend today wife. And in a while traveling I gave myself six months to have enough money to not having to work, to not be dependent on making sales because I really wanted to make it intentional. I wanted to take my time and to build something that's valuable and not just be another coach because there's plenty of other coaches there. Right. So I took time to really reflect upon what methodologies I want to use.

And that's how I then eventually came to build the Zenpreneur method, which is really a way to rapidly scale your business by identifying what are the hidden bottlenecks. Right. You may say your bottleneck is lead generation. Okay, got it. So what's the behavior that is causing your lead generation block?

You might say, oh, I'm working too much in the business rather than on the business. Right. I'm avoiding building a real process in the system for lead generation. Okay, why are you avoiding that? And now we get into the realm of your mindset, we get into the realm of your belief system.

And so that's really where the crux is for people to be able to change. And so that for me when I started to see that I was like, okay, it's not about your business strategy because you can just go to a freaking chatgpt and it'll give you a, a really good business strategy. But the execution part of it is about your emotions, is about your, your belief system. And so I build, yeah, I build a multi six figure coaching business from scratch again through relationships. You know, like I'm now this year getting more into strategic lead generation.

Before I didn't have to, it was all through partnerships and relationships. And you and I, we met through a strategic relationship of mine, client ascension, where I'm the in house mindset leadership coach. And yeah, you know, I do seminars I do speeches all over the world. I'm launching my own signature event which will be like a four or five hour sort of day retreat. Going really deep, really powerful changes for entrepreneurs that are scaling and that don't want to hate their life while they're scaling.

Yeah. And you know, now I'm based in Cape Town in South Africa, but I will be traveling frequently. Come winter here, southern winter hemisphere, northern summer, which is sort of like June, July, August, September, I'll be in Europe, I'll be in the States and then I'll be coming back here. This is amazing and so exciting. Now, based on your hundreds of coaching sessions that you did and working with a bunch of business owners, what is like your number one piece of advice specifically for e commerce brand owners or for people who are scaling their business to make sure they don't hate their life doing that?

43:27 - Awareness, then accountability

Yeah, yeah. Awareness is the game, is the name of the game. Building awareness. Awareness means you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. So what are the thoughts and the feelings that are driving your actions?

Why are you doing what you're doing every day? Most business owners can't answer that question. They'll just like, oh, well, I want to make money. Okay, why do you want to make money? Oh, because I want to have financial freedom.

Why do you want to have financial freedom? Yeah, so I can buy a house for my mom and my dad. Yeah, cool, right? So it's super superficial and you don't understand what's really driving you. And so many times you're driven by scarcity patterns.

You know, you're driven by proving other people, proving your worth to other people, proving other people wrong. You know, you're driven by trying to be perfect and those drivers, they make you very ineffective. So I would say a consultation is you need to be in an awareness building process. And it can be as little as daily journaling where you just become aware of how have I been feeling today? And because of those feelings, what have those actions come from those feelings?

If you want to take it to another level, get into a group or one on one coaching where people can hold up a mirror where you know, when you say something then you get asked back, you know, did you notice that while you were saying that, you know, things are looking good, you were looking down the whole time and you were like twitching with your fingers and then you're like, oh, no, I wasn't noticing that. Well, what's going on? And then you realize, oh, I'm actually feeling really anxious. Why are you feeling anxious? Oh, because, you know, there's a part of the part of me that keeps telling me I'm not good enough.

I'm not good enough. No wonder you're always so stressed out and so rushed and making so many reactive decisions. Right. So you have to have an awareness building process. And the best way to do it is to have somebody reflect you because you can't see your own blind spots.

You don't know what you don't know that you don't know. It's just completely invisible to you and so you're oblivious to it. Right. So I'd say get into a process of awareness building and once you have that awareness, get into a process of accountability with other people that can hold you to a higher standard so that you can show up differently. If you do those two things, you'll be much further ahead than most people in the game.

Amazing. Thank you very much, Mario. I mean, that was very, very insightful. I mean, going from the starting of the business, but then also the building partnerships. I'll definitely re listen to the episode myself, but I think there were a lot of very, very valuable lessons in there.

But also going into the leadership and mindset aspect, which a lot of people really neglect. And also I realized for me how important that is and I'm definitely focusing way more on that now.

46:41 - Where to find Mario

So where can listeners find you online if they want to connect to you or have questions in general or also related to the Zenpreneur method? Absolutely. So I would say the best way to learn more about me and what I do is, you know, the social media channels. I'm very active on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on Instagram. Just type in my name, Mario.

A R I O and the new word, my last name, Lanzaroti, which is L A N Z A R O T T I. If you have a question about today's podcast or if you want to share a thought, you know, what you thought, what you like, what you didn't like, feel free to drop me a message. I'm very easy to reach. And if you want to have a conversation about leveling up in your business, I'm also down for that. Either way, I hope that this interview is valuable to someone who listens to it.

And the most important part is take action. Don't just listen to this and go, oh, this is great. Yeah, awesome. Wow, cool. And then continue doing the same stuff that you are doing.

Make a change. Because it's the changes that give us the results that we're looking for. Thank you. That was great. And a perfect, perfect ending.

So, yeah, we'll talk to you. Wonderful. All right. Thank you, Andre. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.