When Is It Important To Have Product Value and No Value at the Same Time? With Mark Fortney, VP of Sales and Marketing at Cozzini Bros, Inc.
Mark Fortney is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cozzini Bros, Inc., the leading cutlery sharpening and exchange services company in the US. From food processor and slicer blades to cutting boards and can openers, Cozzini is the one-stop solution for all of your sharpening needs. Mark is a Fortune 200 sales leader with a long track record of building sales organizations and changing the competitive landscape. At Cozzini, Mark assists in the transformation of changing from a market leader to a true nationwide supplier of sharp knives to the largest restaurant and grocery organizations in the US. To date, Cozzini provides a consistent supply of sharp knives and food processing blades to over 75,000 customers.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Mark Fortney details the history of Cozzini Bros and shares how it became what it is today
How Cozzini Bros ensures that its customers regularly use sharp knives
The devastating impact that the pandemic had on Cozzini Bros’ business
Growth opportunities for Cozzini Bros in the current market
Why Cozzini Bros doesn’t sell DTC
The unique benefits of using Cozzini Bros’ knives
How Mark sells the Cozzini Bros’ knife experience to prospective customers
The best advice Mark has ever received
What you’ll learn in this episode:
How many companies offer a high-end product that gets replaced if it breaks or gets worn down? Is your company regularly using any premium products that will be replaced with no questions asked?
Cozzini Bros prides itself on the benefits a set of sharp knives provides to restaurants. They supply restaurants with high-end knives which get regular use and abuse. The minute knives get dull or break, Cozzini Bros immediately delivers replacements to the restaurant and takes away the old ones. Their focus is to create an unparalleled guest experience by ensuring crews are ready to roll at the start of each shift, that a kitchen runs at peak efficiency, and that dreaded "man down" situation is reduced by providing a consistent supply of sharp knives and food processing blades. When businesses supply their workers with the best tools to get the job done, their wages become less important. It’s a great way to retain top talent as restaurants struggle to acquire loyal employees.
On this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni welcomes Mark Fortney, VP of Sales and Marketing at Cozzini Bros, to discuss their unique business model. Mark explains how they supply knives to restaurants, replace them when they break or get dull, and then sharpen the blades and redistribute them to customers. Mark says it’s mystical to have a knife that provides a great initial and long-lasting edge that gets replaced if it gets dull or worn out.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
This episode’s sponsor:
Today’s episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave, we create meaningful moments of brand trust and influence how people interact and engage with brands.
There is a science behind tapping into your audiences’ desires and motivation. After all, if you’re not changing your audiences’ behaviors, you can’t truly unlock all of your brand’s potential.
The proven models and methods of Behavior Design is the strategic foundation for your brands’ success.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
This is From Persona To Personal podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. Off Madison Ave creates meaningful moments of brand trust and influences how people interact and engage with brands. The science behind their approach taps into your audience's motivations and desires. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you truly can’t unlock all of your brand's potential. Now, let's get started with the show.
Roger Hurni 0:33
Hello, everyone. I am Roger Hurni, the host of this show where I get to speak with top leaders in food and beverage. But before we get to today's guests, today's episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave we use behavioral science to create meaningful moments of brand trust, which influences how people interact and engage with companies. Our behavioral approach taps into your audience's motivation and pumps them to shift behavior. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you truly can't unlock all of your brand's potential. These proven behavioral models and methods are the strategic foundation for your brand success. Today, I'm super fortunate to be speaking with Mark Fortney. Mark is a better and fortune 200 sales leader with a long track record on building sales organizations and changing the competitive landscape. His current assignment has been changing gears and working within a very, very niche industry one I actually didn't even know existed, most people don't even know that exists knife exchange for commercial kitchens. As Vice President of Sales and global marketing for Cozzini Brothers. Mark is assisting in the transformation of consuming from a market leader to a true nationwide supplier of sharp knives to the largest restaurant, grocery and care organizations in the United States. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Fortney 1:56
Roger. Thank you. I'm excited to be here today.
Roger Hurni 1:59
All right, first order of business. Did I screw up any names? I got your name right correctly. Company name correctly?
Mark Fortney 2:05
You got it all nailed down.
Roger Hurni 2:08
Okay, thank you. You know, it's always a memory of when you were in school that first day, the teacher always screws up like two or three kids names and you feel really embarrassed. People get my name wrong all the time so I'm super conscientious to try to get names, right. So all right, well, let's move on. And get to the heart of it right here. I personally am a huge fan of knights. Honestly, before we booked you as a guest on the show, I had not heard of Cozzini Brothers. And probably because I'm not in the commercial kitchen. I have some Global knives. Sorry for the competitive mentioned, but I love them. And I don't let anybody touch them. I'm very, very particular about my knives. I've taken several knife classes at some commercial places. And so this is a very interesting subject for me because I actually worked as a kid, like in my early 20s as a sous chef. And so I am all in all the way. It was a really terrible job. But Cozzini Brothers has an incredibly interesting business model, and one I had not seen or heard of before. So let's start there. Why don't you walk the listeners through the company's history and sort of how it got to where it is today.
Mark Fortney 3:23
Yeah, Roger, it's a it's a fascinating story. And you're not alone. Most people, including myself, had no idea. This industry even existed, that it was a thing. But it has been around since the late 1800s, or the early 1900s. And very much so is the backbone of many commercial kitchen operations. As I said in the intro, you know, the service is used by the vast majority of the largest restaurant chains, the contract for your organization's and certainly everybody that has a kitchen that's trying to drive to create that consistent guest experience they all seek. Cozzini Brothers has been around since the early 1900s. Like many families in the late 1800s 1900, the Cozzini family came the United States in search of a better way. And they brought along many other families, the Maganzini’s, the Povanelli’s, the Mostronzi’s is the Ambrosi’s. And these families all settled into the major industrial centers across the east from basically Chicago going East Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, you know, even back then, Buffalo, New York was a major industrial area. And they brought this experience of sharpening knives. And they all came out of this little valley in Italy called the Kerra Solo Valley. And they settled by family into these different marketplaces. And they started out Roger is as their history was of, basically the guy trudging down the street, pushing a push cart, and he would ring this bell and people would bring their knives out, and he would sharpen their knives on this giant wheel, and it was for consumers and restaurants. But as the business progressed, the model kind of shifted. And it shifted from sharpening other people's owned knives, to figuring out that the efficiencies are really in sharpening company owned knives, or in this case, Cozzini owned knives. So ourselves and our competitors typically we don't sharpen knives that other people own. We only sharpen the knives that we carry that we manufacture in the case of Cozzini and that are in use in the kitchens. One way to think of it is we provide sharp knives on a scheduled basis to commercial kitchens across the country think of it is renting knives like you would entrance mats or uniforms.
Roger Hurni 5:50
So, I’m going to interrupt you real quick. So, so I'm a commercial kitchen, I've got my knives by my chefs that they use all the time. And I either on a time schedule or a whim or something. I'll be like, hey, like our knives in front of you know, get it and bring in a new set of knives and you just take the old knife with you, right?
Mark Fortney 6:10
That's exactly the way it works. We walk into over 2 million restaurants a year, bringing a custom tailored set of knives. So the type of knives the number of knives all pretty much unique to that site. We deploy the freshly sharpened knives to the workers have a new, what we call an Easter egg hunt. We rotate through the kitchen picking up the knives and use the prior two weeks. We then take the used sets of knives, rotate them through our supply chain to one of our 10 sharpening centers in the United States where we quality control check them resharpen them, wash them, sanitize them restage to deployed out to that same restaurant two weeks in the future. So Roger, think of it this way, every restaurant has two or three identical sets of knives rotating through our supply chain at all times.
Roger Hurni 7:01
Wow. Does that restaurant, does this restaurant get the same two or three sets, or will they use any set that you’ve resharpened and did all the work to.
Mark Fortney 7:12
Yeah, they'll get to choose same two or three sets, end of life knives or a damaged knife. Somebody drops one or breaks one well certainly that's part of our quality control check is to be able to replenish those knives and refresh those knives every time they come through the chain. And in part Roger, one of the cornerstones here is you know why this service you know you mentioned you are a sous chef and knives you're very proud of. And there is there is a group of people that are capable of sharpening their own knives typically at that executive chef level or the sous chef level, to a point of pride to have their own knives I, I call them you know handforged on a mountain top by a Tibetan monk knives. They're beautiful and the craftsmanship. But the reality is, people can't sharpen knives. It is a difficult process to do. And we see this Roger, when we walk into a commercial kitchen for the first time. We know if they're trying to do it themselves, in that there will be just this large number of knives across the kitchen. They'll be in the the utensil storage, there'll be in bins, there'll be everywhere, they'll be on the racks. But the workers will be fighting over the same two or three knives. And there'll be fighting over the ones that are sharpest or newest. And we look at those knives. And you can tell they're different colors. They're different manufacturers, they're different styles. If they're using a French chef knife, they'll have a santoku they'll also have maybe some Chinese cleavers, they're searching, they're looking for a knife that will stay sharp. And that's what Cozzini does. We take that labor that effort that expertise off of their hands and put it into a commercial process. Very much an expensive process. I won't go, how far in depth you want to go. But it's we have a three stage process all using five figure machines, man by folks that are really craftsmen, where we thin down the knife, we put an edge on it, we polish the knife we wash it, we dry it, sanitize it and send it through. And that's something that most people just can't do themselves. As a sous chef, you may have some stones you do yourself and the vast majority of people don't have that knowledge and they quite frankly don't have that time.
Roger Hurni 9:24
I get it I mean me, because we haven't take our knives to a place and go get sharpened every once in a while to because there's just there's no way that stone or ceramic rod or steel rod can really put an edge on it the way it really needs to be. You can't as a consumer though, I couldn't buy Cozzini knife.
Mark Fortney 9:46
So Right. Correct. We always provide knives to commercial kitchens and Roger one of the kind of cool things about Cozzini Bros is we actually have an in house engineering team. With these knives, and by the way of that process I talked about, we have just over 30 million knives a year rotating though our sharpening centers. So we actually engineer the knives, and we engineer them to provide it's, it's a little bit of an art and a science, it's, it's mystical, the way metallurgy works and the combination of metals that make it up and the heat treatment, to be able to come up with a knife that is going to provide a great initial edge, a long lasting edge, and be able to respond to the sharpening as it goes through. As an example, you're, you're high end knives, typically they're a little bit softer, because you need something that can respond to that steel, you see that Chef working that rod, put the edge on the knives out there, the Cozzini knives are a little bit harder, because because the commercial equipment, we have the 100 horsepower behind those, we create a harder steal, which gives you a longer lasting edge, knowing that we can bring back that edge on our commercial equipment.
Roger Hurni 11:01
Got it. Got it. Well, now that we have a really good understanding of how the business works, let's just talk about some, some sales and marketing sort of stuff. I'm gonna, I can't not address the pandemic, restaurants, clearly had to do a lot of pivoting. A few of the guests that I've spoken to were set up for it. And a few of them are like we had to figure this out. But how did the pandemic effect Cozzini? I mean, because some restaurants, I wouldn't say summarize, well, some restaurants did shut down, but there's there was other entities trying to do delivery. So how did it affect your business?
Mark Fortney 11:46
I think like the majority of people in this space, it was it was devastating. There were some, some dark days, in early 2020. It brought us to our knees, Roger, but never out. We lost a significant part of our customer base within weeks. And that kind of decline could decimate most organizations. But we we remain committed, we were fortunate that we have a substantial amount of our customer base is in healthcare, a substantial amount of our customer base is in grocery stores. So we were able to keep our commitments to those folks, the people that kept our country fed during the pandemic, we were able to keep our commitment through deliveries and we never missed one. Many of our competitors had to shut down they kind of went into a hole and said we'll come back out when when things come back around. But we said you know we've made a commitment to these people and we lived up to it. Myself and and certainly other folks in the organization, we put a lot of money into the company. Our leadership team is all invested in this organization. And you know, we did, unfortunately to lay a few folks off. But we're very proud of the fact that we never missed a delivery. That's also part of the way we dealt with our local customers, the mom and pops the Roger’s Delicatessens or the Mark’s Taqueria. When they call the cancel, they all said, you know, come get the knives, you know, we can't afford this service. We don't know if we're coming back. And as a leadership team, we said our best strategy was, let's tell those people, we're not firing you. You're not firing us. Hang on to those knives. Use those knives. If you're doing part time work, just keep them when you come back, then let's discuss it. You know if that six months or a year, when you're ready, then we'll pick the service backup. But the meantime, don't go out and buy new ones just continue to use your Cozzini knives. And that gave us a tremendous amount of goodwill. That was, they knew we would not walk away from them.
Roger Hurni 13:48
That is super, super smart. Being able to help you and I are in St. Paul's in sales and marketing. I kind of get that sense. So many times it is about helping customers, even if you're not the right solution. Even if you don't make money if you can offer help people find a way to come back to you in spades and and I think that's wicked, wicked smart. The way you were describing how you're going through the pandemic, that does lead me to a question and hopefully it's not offensive in any way. Consumer behaviors and dining changed dramatically during one of the outcomes of behaviors with simply you were forced to eat at home more, make more home meals and stuff like that. So was there ever a conversation that said, wow, you know, we have all these, you know, the general population is basically quarantining themselves eating more at home. Would we want to sell these knives to customers directly? Do we want to go directly to the public and do a DTC model and was that ever discussed? Or an ever an idea?
Mark Fortney 15:00
We, we discussed it frequently, you know, was as part of any distribution organization, again, 2 million plus deliveries a year 30 million knives, you're always looking for ways to be more efficient to add on to your existing network. We haven't practical to conceive consumers, the disparity in the types of knives, they have the personal attachment, you mean, I can see the passion, you know, in your face, when you talk about your personal knives what those mean to you. It's not something that we've been able to really crack the code on how we can do that and not let people down plus from an operational efficiency, with 30 million knives rolling through, it all is based on consistency and repetitiveness. So we're always looking for how can we not break our model in order to keep that commitment to our customers going through? So we've looked at it, but we haven't cracked the code on how we can put that into the organization yet.
Roger Hurni 15:54
Got it. Well, I obviously I don't have the solution for you. But with my background in in behavioral science and consumer behavior, I think I'm pretty accurate based on that acumen, that there's there's a great business there for Cozzini to shift consumer behavior and to wanting to have what professional restaurants have. There's, there's, there's enough of us out there that there's there's a sale to be made. There's definitely some sales to be made. We may have a rotating business model, but there's definitely sales to be made.
Mark Fortney 16:17
We continue to look at it. And one of the things we say about our knives is, you know, they're not the Damascus steel. These are these are working knives. Yeah, even in a kitchen where you got an executive chef who has their knife role in their high in knives, the prep cooks, the line cooks, they're not using that chef's knives. They are, you know, committed to using the Cozzini brand. Because if one falls and a tip breaks, it's not the end of the world. Quite frankly, we don't even charge for it. So but if that executive chefs knife slips and the tip breaks off, oh my god, it's, it's the end of the world. So we did see some drastic changes in behaviors. You know, one of my, during COVID, one of my favorites. I've got a really good friend that I worked with back the big organization. And I don't have clearance to mention their name, but he talked about the shift they made in their preparation of their food that they were always a sit down restaurant with a small to go component. And he was sharing how they had to change their entire model that their test kitchen went to what he called a pizza model. And what the pizza model said was, don't look at your food, how it is out of the oven and onto a plate as you would have in your restaurant, pre COVID. But what you need to do is take a look at your food out of the oven into a container sitting for 30 days, 30 days, 30 minutes, and then on a plate, and how will it react to being reheated. So seeing our customers and how they shifted their models and many went to commissaries which required more food processing blades, which we do and wrote, immersion blender blades and deli slicer blades which we do have the sharpening for all of those to be able to meet those demands was really fascinating to see.
Roger Hurni 18:11
Amazing. So what's what's happening now at Cozzini Brothers? They gets you excited. What's what is growth look like, what are there opportunities that you're tackling?
Mark Fortney 18:23
Yeah, it's an amazing market right now. The I'll give you an example. One thing that I think is in our favor is that labor shortage. Every restaurant is struggling with manpower. And that's not a secret. Every manager is struggling to keep restaurants staffed. And it plays exactly into our value proposition. Those workers aren't just attracted by money. Those workers are attracted by work environment, and the restaurants that provide their people good tools, a good clean environment and the right tools to get their job done. That's where workers migrate. And we have companies that say part of their value proposition when they're trying to attract cooks is listen we use Cozzini and you will always have the sharp tools you need to get your job done. And we're starting to see a reemergence I think of people saying more scratch cook as leverage to attract not just consumers but workers and that plays into our value proposition when people are doing more in house. True preparation of foods, I mentioned earlier I stepped in to help lead a training class or lead a training class last week on short notice and I took the class out to dinner to a local chain here called Pinstripes and we sit down, Pinstripes a cool place it's a bar restaurant, bocce ball, got bowling. But when we sit down the gentleman to my right asked do is Item A or item B better and the waiter just looked at him and said Sir, we are scratch cooking, scratch cooked kitchen. Everything on our menu is good. And I just love the power of that that we're the scratch cook we do it from the basis up or not reheating or doing other foods that we actually take pride in what we do. And just timing. Earlier this week, I was talking to a chain that is a concept restaurant. So they revolve around a certain concept. Not something I would say is normally known for their food. But they're pitching scratch cooked as a way to attract workers. And their ads all say, listen, you you got into this business, because you want to learn wanting to cook, don't go someplace where you're microwaving, or cutting open bags and boiling, come work for us. And you can actually cook. And by the way, if you don't know how to cook, come to work for us, and we'll teach you how to cook. And again, plays right into that, that process. You know, it's, it's an amazing environment we're in right now we are growing by leaps and bounds, Roger, we have a sales team, and we're just, we're just knocking it down right now.
Roger Hurni 20:54
So I love the value proposition that you're describing. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna recap this, make sure it's not lost on the listeners. But most companies have this, I'm going to create a high end value product that you're going to take care of, but with everything, you know, with every desire, or I'm gonna have a product that you know, you're gonna use and toss and not worry about it, you have found a way to have this highly valued product, that you also don't care if you screw it up, because you're gonna be replaced with another economy value product for free. And that that's very, very unique. I take it out of the content context of nines and b2b the way you are like, I can't think of another product category that's like, oh, yeah, it's the highest quality, but can you screw it up, we'll just send you another one for free. You know, I mean, that that's amazing. That's amazing.
Mark Fortney 21:42
Yeah, lost, damaged, end of life. It's all part of it, you know, contracts. We don't require the folks to do contracts. And you talked about the value proposition, Roger, we, we position this with our sales team, that they need to position our product to the customers and what the customers really are looking for. And that very simply is, every restaurant operator is driven to create a consistent guest experience. Whether it's a high end Steakhouse, with a homemade Caesar salad, or a burger and fries, having that meal experience be the same each and every time a consumer comes through is what drives growth in a business. And we teach our folks, we support that by giving them the sharp knives. So the crews are ready to roll to start a shift. They don't have to find knives or sharpen knives, they can operate at peak efficiency turning out that uniform food. And then quite frankly, in a kitchen, a sharp knife is a safe knife, contrary to what most people think, a sharper knife creates safety because it's less pressure, more control. So we can create to their safe environment reduce that, that Man Down syndrome, where they have to send somebody for stitches or something out off site. So we position that let us support that consistent guest experience. And that really resonates with our customers.
Roger Hurni 23:07
So that's wonderful that you're growing, and you're crushing sales. What kinds of challenges are you facing now? Because me no doesn't face challenges, even when things are great.
Mark Fortney 23:15
Yeah, I think, you know, our challenges probably aren't much different from a lot of folks who are facing labor issues, particularly our production areas. The folks that actually sharpen knives are are, you know, they're the backbone of our company. And they are craftsmen, if you will, it's a it's a process that requires a lot of individual knowledge to learn how to take these knives, do that, that three step process, and finding folks and keeping those centers staffed. And then quite frankly, making sure that we can continue our growth of our support network. Today, we are 10 sharpening centers and well over 100 facilities across the country, making sure our supply chain can keep up with the growth of our customer business. And we're growing at such a pace that we have to make sure that supply chain can keep up with our growth and sales.
Roger Hurni 24:03
Yeah, no, I totally understand. Logistics can be tough for a lot of people to get their heads around. Now I want to shift a little bit more into the sort of the sales and marketing. I don't even know if you do any traditional marketing or it's everything like it's sales driven. But I got to imagine not every commercial kitchen that's heard or every restaurant chain is heard of Cozzini knives. And maybe they have but I'm kind of wearing what that process looks like a marketing perspective and a sales perspective to go out and find customers. And what that what you're doing in terms of those efforts.
Mark Fortney 24:34
It's really interesting era tracking because he after a long run in 200, fortune 500 customers, I mean, fortune 500 businesses with very refined marketing programs and a very sophisticated sales process and I came because you need to build this from the ground up. And that's what was enticed me to come as an investor in this organization. When I came on board, we had five people on the sales team. Today we're over 120. And we're sitting on our way to 150. And it's a full team of business developers, account managers, national account teams and support groups. But the challenge we have is that marketing typically is designed to drive opportunity. And today, we have almost more opportunity than we can handle. So we want to be more sophisticated in our marketing, you know, we've got a B level website, we've got, you know, B levels collateral materials, but today are efforts of our reps walking into the door of a kitchen. And it's kind of interesting, Roger, their approach is so simple, but so impactful. They walk in carrying a box of knives under their arm, they walk in and say, Hey, my name is Mark Fortney. I'm with Cozzini Brothers, and I brought you sharp knives, and they open the box and open the box of knives, and they get access to decision makers 5-10 times a day. It's just an amazing sales process. Because it's a, it's access to decision makers. But it's a product that resonates with those people. They love knives, and it's the backbone of what they do. So marketing, I give us a solid C, we've got a long way to go. And it's something we'd all like to do better. But it's not, it's not something we're able to tackle plus doesn't hurt Roger that my DNA is sale, building sales organizations, and I've bought my 15th marketing books, but that doesn't make me a marketing expert.
Roger Hurni 26:32
Well, I know for a lot of people, how a company functions and its product is its brand. And the interaction that people have with it creates that brand reputation, marketing and that brand image often support that. Because if it doesn't, you know, we're going over promises in the marketing over promises, and companies just fail faster. And you don't want to be in that situation. So it's better to be in the reverse where the the experience with your product far exceeds anything that you're doing from a marketing perspective. All right, got that out of the way, as big announcements you can share, like, let's just pretend it's you and me is there anything out there that you can tell me about that, you know, is going to be happening?
Mark Fortney 27:20
You know, I think it's probably the most exciting thing is our continued evolution of the knives. Again, we're the only company in this space has an in house engineering team. And the things that they're working on that we're very close to launching are just amazing. Another upgrade in the steel that we use a different finish on the knife, an extended full tang knife with a tang is the metal part that goes into the handle of a knife to provide even better balance. What this engineering team is bringing to the table is stuff that's just gonna light our customers up to the next level. It's knives, they're gonna look and act like those high end knives that that you use, and you enjoy. So we think that's a beautiful thing. We also did just we haven't officially announced it but we're about halfway through rolling out NSF certification on our knives. We're the only company in this space to carry NSF. And for those that aren't familiar with its National Sanitary Foundation. It's a third party organization that assists folks with food safety. It's kind of a standard for most commercial kitchens. And then, you know, we just continue to grow. You know, Roger, we make acquisitions we grow from our sales team. So the Cozzini of today will look entirely different a year from now as a will two years from now.
Roger Hurni 28:37
Well, I'm gonna tell you, I mean, waited with bated breath for you to go DTC and get my hands on a set of knives. Well, I shouldn't say to set, I buy knives one at a time that I'm very, you know, very fond of, you know, I'm certain set that I mean, a yell at my kids when they grabbed the wrong knife to cut a tomato or whatever.
Mark Fortney 28:58
So here's what I'm going to do. Roger, I'm gonna send you some knives that you can take out on the patio and barbecue with know that if you hit a bone, you're not going to cry over if you drop one, it's not the end of the world. You keep those high end guys and that pride, but we can do some that you can work with too.
Roger Hurni 29:13
I appreciate that. Look, you have given some amazing, amazing advice with how you create this unique value proposition. So now I'm kind of curious turntable a little bit. What's the best advice you have ever gotten?
Mark Fortney 29:28
You know, I've been so fortunate to have so many good mentors, people that have taught me and raised me and in the business environment, and so many things come to mind. But I'll tell you, one of the things that I share with my leadership all the time is have people be mad at the rule. Don't let them be mad, the rules not consistent. Now, I know that's not normal business advice. But what seems to divide so many organizations that create discontent is when people think that things are applied unevenly. So again, set a rule, set a standard set a process, set a procedure, hold to it certainly changed if you need to, but apply it uniformly even if it's painful. Don't vary and create one-off situations everywhere. Because that creates just tremendous discord all the way down through the string.
Roger Hurni 30:19
Yeah. Wow. Wonderful advice. Wonderful advice is a little, a little, you know, not normal, but I love I love the approach. I love the approach.
Mark Fortney 30:29
Lead from the front, set the positive example, hire people smarter than you. You've heard all those other things. Oh, yeah,
Roger Hurni 30:35
Yeah, he's hired people smarter than you all the time. My dad's advice for me was always, always believe you have something to learn, you'll always be pretty darn good at what you do.
Mark Fortney 30:48
I love it.
Roger Hurni 30:50
Thank you so much. I have been speaking with Mark Fortney, the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cozzini Brothers. Fantastic business model. Mark, where can people learn more about you and Cozzini Brothers?
Mark Fortney 31:04
On the web at www.cozzinibros.com. So, c o z z i n i bros dot com.
Roger Hurni 31:15
Alright, and then I highly recommend everybody go work in a commercial kitchen so you can go work with these knives.
Mark Fortney 31:21
We appreciate that Roger.
Roger Hurni 31:24
All right. Well, Mark again, thank you so much have a wonderful day. And everyone, thank you for listening From Persona To Personal and we'll see you next time. I'm Roger Hurni.
Outro 31:34
Thanks for listening to From Persona To Personal, the podcast that takes a closer look into how organizations personalize their marketing. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click “Subscribe” to get future episodes.
