Being an Integrator with Guest Mark Winters: MakingBank S2E5

Entrepreneurs are often described as visionaries.

The creatives of industry.

The ones with pioneering ideas that can literally change the world.

But visions can’t be stocked on store shelves, or written into industry-improving software.

Being a visionary is only one-half of the entrepreneurial equation.

The other half is action—something today’s guest on Making Bank knows all about.

His name is Mark Winters, and he—along with co-author, Gino Wickman—is the writer behind Rocket Fuel, a book that discusses entrepreneurs as both visionaries and action-takers (or as Mark likes to call them, integrators).

While the visionary-side of entrepreneurship steals the limelight, it’s the integrator-side that actually does the work of transforming visions into realities. And when the visionary and the integrator are paired together, they create the fuel for explosive entrepreneurial growth.

In addition to co-authoring Rocket Fuel, Mark is a certified EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) Implementer, coach, and facilitator, with more than 300 EOS workshops under his belt. Today, his greatest desire is to help every aspiring entrepreneur harness the power of the visionary and the integrator to cultivate true success.

Tune in as Mark Winters and Josh discuss the balance between being a visionary and an integrator, as well as…

•How to assemble a winning team

•Why our systems accelerate our business

•The difference between a visionary and integrator

•Why a visionary and integrator together is ROCKET FUEL for growth in your business

•The scarce commodity of integrators and the hunt for the “right” one

•The importance of having clarity in your vision and goal

•How being on the same page will make you unstoppable

And much more…

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Transcription

Josh Felber: I am Josh Felber. Welcome to Making Bank where we uncover the secrets and the strategies of the top one percent so you can take and transform and amplify yourself and your business today. Welcome back to the show. I’m excited to have a awesome, unbelievable entrepreneur on Making Bank today, Mark Winters. And Mark’s passion is helping entrepreneurs get unstuck so they can pursue their freedom. And depending on the unique situation, Mark’s talents for introducing just the right combination of perspective and process sparks teams to start moving and move faster or being moving in the proper direction with clarity.

Mark, as a teacher and coach and facilitator, spends most of his time directly engaged with entrepreneurial leadership teams as a certified EOS implementer helping them implement EOS into their own companies. He’s delivered over 300 full day workshops with EOS and with companies from around the US. Mark as well has, let’s see here, he’s a Tech Titans finalist as an emergence company CEO, listed as 40 under 40 in the business journal in both Milwaukee and Dallas. And Mark is a Masters For Member in the US Implementer and it was awarded Rookie of the Year as Chair Excellence distinctions by [inaudible 00:02:29] International. Mark, welcome to Making Bank.

Mark Winters: Thanks Josh, appreciate you having me on.

Josh Felber: Definitely, man. And we connected a couple years ago, I think it was, right?

Mark Winters: Yeah. It’s been a couple years now.

Josh Felber: Super. And just really cool to see your whole progress and everything you’ve been doing from the book Rocket Fuel and just hearing some of the new stuff you have coming out. So definitely want to dive in a little about and understand your background and how you got started as an entrepreneur.

Mark Winters: Sure. So for me, the entrepreneurial journey started when I was in business school at the University of Chicago. And I mean I vividly remember it. I was sitting in a marketing class, a pricing strategy class. And I watched these comes across and they’d have this widget that they’d come up with and here’s the business plan they were going to do or some unmet service need. And at the time, I was a proctor and gamble guy, so I was sort of in the PNG army. And I remember looking at the stuff these guys were presenting. It’s like, “Man, that is so much more interesting than what I work on day to day, I wish I could do that.”

And then fast forward a little bit, and I had an encounter with the guy who was my, really, my boss. And we had a high level exec that was coming into the market and basically what we were talking about doing was, in my perspective, setting things up so that when he came in, it would look all perfect, and the reality was, it was not perfect. And so I raised the novel of idea of do we really want to cover that stuff up or do we want to let this guy see what’s really, really going on so maybe we can adapt our strategy and do some things to change it? And the guy looks across the table and he goes, “Mark, don’t eff with me.” And I remember in that moment, it just became so apparent to me that my career at that point in time was entirely in this guy’s hands. He could stop my train at any time that he wanted and the feeling trapped, just the closed in feeling that I got was like, “I got to get out of this.”

So I went straight from that meeting to a bookstore and I’m picking up any magazine that said entrepreneur on it, how to start your own business, whatever, and that led me to really make that first entrepreneurial leap within just a couple of months of that whole experience.

Josh Felber: No, that’s awesome, and I know one of the things, just kind of when I was looking over your stuff and knowing you a little bit, you bought and sold or shut down roughly over 10 different companies, right?

Mark Winters: Yeah. We’re up over 10 now. I either started it out, bought it, shut it down, or sold it off to somebody else in all different types of industries and types of business models, yeah.

Josh Felber: Along the way, what was one of the, I guess, the biggest challenges that you ran into as an entrepreneur?

Mark Winters: Well, one of the things that I had to sort of learn the hard way, I guess I learned pretty fast, that you can’t do it all by yourself, right?

Josh Felber: Right.

Mark Winters: So it’s all about having a team of folks that are really good at the stuff that I’m not good at or don’t enjoy. So that was a big learning and challenge to figure out how to attract those folks and get them engaged in the organization. And another big breakthrough for me, Josh, was in the beginning, I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants. So I was making decisions and choices and setting direction, just really probably, all over the place if I was look back on it, now. And somewhere along that path, I got exposed to the idea of using a system to run the company, sort of an operating system to run the business. And once I saw that and kind of grabbed ahold of that and began using that as the framework, if you will, for how to make those decisions and how to articulate, “Hey, this is where we’re trying to go, what we’re trying to do,” that was a big accelerator for me. That was sort of a saving tool for a lot of team members because that kept them away from the craziness that was probably going on inside my brain at any given time.

Josh Felber: So, with, I guess, how’d you kind of … I know, because that’s one of the biggest challenges, I know, we’ve seen in different businesses that I’ve owned and just people that I know is really creating that team and making sure you have the right people around you. So kind of what’s that magic key or that thing that you found in that process that’s worked best for you?

Mark Winters: So when it relates to the people and kind of bringing them in, I think a clear vision. So having a clear vision for what you’re trying to do and where you’re trying to go, that’s huge. And I’ve had the experience of people being literally drawn to whatever project it was that I was working on just because they resonated with the feeling of it. So whether that was, one of my first businesses was a cyber café, and I’ve owned a bicycle manufacturing company, right? So I mean it’s been all over the place, but there was something about it that people were like, “Oh, man, that’s cool. I want to be a part of that.” Literally, the cyber café, I was in a Kinko’s working. Remember when they used to have the computer area where you could go and use software that maybe you couldn’t use somewhere else?

So I was using Adobe whatever to try and make some kind of a logo to make a sign and this guy is working there and he’s the tech expert running the computer shop and he’s like looking over my shoulder and he’s kind of watching and he goes, “What is that? What does that mean? What is that going to do?” And I told him and he goes, “Oh, dude. I got to work for you. I got to be a part of that.” I mean it was like that. People kept coming. So I think that clear vision of what you’re trying to do is a big part and then along with that, a clear set of core values. So I think you need to know what kind of person you are and what kind of people you are in your business and be able to articulate that in a way, talk to people about that in a way that the people who are also like that, they’re just drawn in. They’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m that.” And the people who aren’t, they kind of look at you like you’ve got two heads which is great because that gets them away from us and it saves both us and them a whole lot of wasted time and energy.

Josh Felber: No. That makes sense, is definitely having a cleat vision because I mean as entrepreneurs, we kind of are those visionaries but our ideas are all over the place and it’s like, okay. How do we get those dialed in? How do we make those crystal clear so that other people can resonate with that, and like you said, become attracted to what we are doing? And then definitely knowing who we are from a core value standpoint and what we stand for, what we won’t stand for, definitely makes sense, because that way you can then attract those right people from what your saying, correct?

Mark Winters: There you go. You got it.

Josh Felber: Awesome. So tell me a little bit about one of the businesses that you had and I know you said you shut down some businesses. What was that business? Don’t need to know specifically the type of business, but I guess what were those challenges? Were you like, “Nah, we just got to shut this down, it’s just not happening.”

Mark Winters: So I’ll give you an early example. So go back to the cyber café business. We were way in front of that. So early nineties, we built the first full-scale cyber café in the central United States. So literally, there were only a couple of other ones in the United States. There was one in New York, one in Boston. Other ones were just in other countries, really, not in the US. And so we jumped into that, we’re learning all kinds of stuff about real estate and teams and technology, whatever. We built this really cool business to try to prototype something we could expand either through franchising or through adding more locations. But the investor side of that, it was my first time raising money, I go out and I hit the friends and family network hard. And then it’s just that process of expanding. “If you’re not going to do it, will you introduce me to somebody else I can talk to?” And you kind of go down that road. And I learned pretty quick that everybody likes to look at the business plan, right? Everybody’s interested, “Oh, yeah, yeah.”

But then there’s this huge canyon between there and somebody actually giving you a check, right? So you don’t believe anything until they actually hand you the check and the check clears, too, right? So we went through that whole process and the way it came down, there’s so much simultaneous stuff that has to happen. So I remember having to commit to a lease before I really had the money that was going to be able to support us to honor the term of that lease. It was kind of like, “You got to do it or you’re not going to get the space, you’re not going to get the whatever.” But it sort of dialed that pressure up where I had a gap in the funding I had to close, got introduced to a guy that he had the money. And he was interested. And he was willing to do it and so I saw the answer but the whole negotiation came down to, “Yeah, but I want this. I want that.” And what it amounted to was a list of what are called negative control covenants.

Okay, so you’re probably familiar with that. I was not at the time. But what I learned very quickly was it’s not a list of things that they can tell you to do, but it’s a list of things that without them saying okay, you can’t do.

Josh Felber: Right.

Mark Winters: Okay. So they have to yes to all this list of stuff before you can actually go and do it. So I’m like, “Okay, yeah, he can’t tell me what to do, so it’s fine. Let’s go with it. Let’s get the money. Let’s move on down the road.” So we did that and fast forward a year and what had happened with the business is it had taken off, it had down really well, the media loved us. Anytime somebody was shooting a story on the internet, they’d come use us as a backdrop. So that was all awesome. We had kind of a breakthrough in pricing strategy where the business was going like this, the cashflow was going like this.

But the reality was we were running out of money. So being a good rookie entrepreneur, I had not set enough working capital aside to get us through that funding curve. So we’re literally losing 10 dollars a week in cashflow, something like that. I mean that’s how close to break even. But we were out of cash. So I’ve got to get money into the company so I can either loan more money, I can borrow more money, I can raise some more equity, whatever. All these different things. And I had people lined up, anxious to do all of these things. But all of those things fell under this list of negative control covenants and so look over to this guy and ask him to come along and say okay and he says, “No.”

He goes, “I had no interest in us doing that.” And it’s like, “Okay. That makes no sense to me. Can you help me understand?” And he’s like, “No. I don’t really want to explain it. I just, I have no interest in that.” I’m like, “Okay. Do you want to buy us out? Is there something about us?” “No. I don’t want to buy you out.” “Well do you want us to buy you out?” “No. I don’t want to be bought out.” And so it was this really weird situation where we got kind of stuck in this box where we couldn’t do anything to move the business forward so we end up actually having to shut this thing down and I had what was probably one of the first internet auctions to sell all this stuff off in the early nineties which was awful. I had to sit down, never forget it, January 7th, I have a four month old son, no, nine month old son. My wife’s pregnant with our second son. And we’ve got to gather the employees and tell them it’s over. We’re closing the doors and it was absolutely brutal and just so many rookie mistakes that I made that caused that to happen.

Josh Felber: Yeah. And as new entrepreneurs, those are those hurdles and those challenges that we run into and at some point, like you said, you kind of boxed in with the whole thing because you couldn’t pull more money in, he wouldn’t give more money, and you just have no other direction what to do and that’s that time you have to shut it down, so.

Mark Winters: Brutal.

Josh Felber: But we got to take a quick break. Can you stick around for a minute?

Mark Winters: You bet.

Josh Felber: Awesome. I am Josh Felber and you’re watching Making Bank and we’ll be right back.

Josh Felber: I am Josh Felber, welcome back to Making Bank. We’ve been speaking with Mark Winters, diving into a little bit about having a clear vision, core values, and then also knowing when to shut the business down at the right time. So Mark, welcome back to Making Bank.

Mark Winters: Thanks, Josh.

Josh Felber: So we’re talking a little bit here. So one of the things and I know really helped kind of propel you forward even more is you launched a book with Gino Wickman, right?

Mark Winters: Right.

Josh Felber: And that was called Rocket Fuel.

Mark Winters: There you go. There’s the cover.

Josh Felber: So tell us a little bit about what made you kind of dive in and produce the book, come up with the book, and kind of what led down that path.

Mark Winters: So one of the things that we noticed and I got to give Gino credit for discovering this really through some of his personal experience and putting a name on it was the reality that there’s two different types of leaderships in an entrepreneurial business. There’s the visionary leader which is the one whose the idea engine, coming up with new stuff all the time, very creative, great at external relationships, all that kind of stuff, right? That usually gets the business going in the first place.

But there’s this other type of entrepreneurial leader that we call an integrator that’s much more execution focused. I mean they’re all about taking whatever those ideas are, organizing them, communicating them, and then following them through to actually happen. So they make it real, right? And what we would see in our own experience, Gino lived one of these, actually two of these. I lived one of these. And then through our clients that we’re working with, we kept seeing, man when you can put these two together, the business just goes. And that’s where the name Rocket Fuel comes from. It’s like this really powerful combination that just propels the company to a higher level than they ever thought they could be.

Josh Felber: And so I guess along the way, I mean, is that something you guys just stumbled across or is that, you’re like, “Okay, hey, we are looking for a specific type of person to be a part of our team,” not really knowing, hey, this is an integrator or I guess what was that whole [crosstalk 00:17:19] moment?

Mark Winters: So sort of two different origin stories. One from Gino’s experience, they were a family business with three partners and it’s just sort of wrapped around the axle and so they sort of locked themselves in a room and said, “All right, hey, here’s three different roles. You be the visionary. You be the integrator. You go run sales. And let’s kind of structure this for whose going to do what and how we’re going to manage the accountability for that.” And then that was very successful and it worked.

And then I had sort of a parallel experience in one of my companies where I had this guy where in my mind I just saw all the functions of the organization mapped out and I needed someone to pull all that stuff together, to make it work, to free me up to do the stuff that I love to do and the stuff I’m really good at and I didn’t want to and wasn’t very good at trying to manage seven different people. I could handle one, right? So give me one guy. Let him manage those seven people and then that worked really well for me, as well.

So that’s where the concept comes from and then like I say we keep seeing it in the clients, the companies that we work with. So Gino’s like, “Yeah. I think I want to write a book on this. Would you have interest in collaborating?” And so we did and so that’s where it came from.

So now our new mission is, hey, we want to go out in the world and find those integrators and help the visionaries know that this is possible for them and the freedom that they can realize if they’ll go pair up with an integrator and make that a great relationship.

Josh Felber: I think now that one of our other businesses is in that same position and really having that and as I look back at all of my different companies, it’s like, “Man.” I think that was one of the key pieces because you try to do both and you’re doing this and then finally you bring people in for HR and everything else but you’re still missing that key component of the person that can handle and I guess execute on all those different areas.

Mark Winters: Yep. There you go. It’s a different natural skill set than what the visionary typical had. Visionary has been able to get good at some of it just because they’ve had to, right?

Josh Felber: That’s right.

Mark Winters: I mean you’ve had to to survive and make things happen but it doesn’t mean that you love it.

Josh Felber: No. Definitely. Yeah. That’s the un-fun part of those businesses [crosstalk 00:19:34] as I call it.

Mark Winters: Good.

Josh Felber: And I know you guys have some really good stuff that you’re doing now or you’re doing now specifically is just talking with you is you guys have actually a whole event that you’re coming out with to help train integrators, right?

Mark Winters: Yeah. Exactly. So Josh, so what we learned through the research is that the scarce commodity in this whole equation is actually that integrator, okay? So if you look at the small part of the population that’s really wired to be a good visionary and go start a company and then you look at the part of the population that’s really wired to be a great integrator, the ratio is like four to one. Okay, so think about that.

So for every four visionaries out there, there’s one integrator and it gets more complicated because each integrator isn’t a perfect fit for each visionary, right? It’s like a two piece puzzle. We have to understand the shape of those puzzle edges and get a nice complimentary fit. So they’re really a scarce commodity. You don’t want to be the visionary that gets left standing without a chair when the music stops. So you want to be out there looking for your integrator.

So Gino and I thought about that and it’s like, “You know, if they’re the scarce commodity, we got to help identify more of these integrators and give them the tools that they need to really make them great.” So we came up with this concept for an integrator mastery forum is what we’re calling it.

We bring in 50 integrators into a room at the same time. We teach them all the different rules and tools that we talk about, the structure, to help them maximize that relationship with their visionary and then we begin to let them interact and pull out all the different issues, all the things that they’re experiencing and kind of work through those in real time so they get the benefit of a peer to peer learning experience, right, and all the experience training that goes with that.

And what they find is, and one of our discoveries is, when we do this, visionaries have lots of places to go plug in like that, they can be in YPO or EO or whatever. There’s lots of different, Vistage, there’s lots of different vehicles for them. Integrators, not so much. And it’s been really cool to watch these people identify, “Oh, wow, hey now I know there’s a name for what I am and not only that but there’s other people out there in the world that are like me, that kind of get me, that I can talk to.” So it’s been a really cool to watch that come together. So that’s going to become kind of our factory to help provide the world with more great integrators that can help more of you visionaries make these businesses do what you wanted them to do in the first place.

Josh Felber: I know. And that’s fantastic because I know we got a lot of visionaries that watch Making Bank and I think that’s, people as they watch this episode, are going to really see, “Man, this is some integral that I’m missing within my business and everything.” And it’s really cool that you guys are being able to do that.

So maybe if you have a couple thoughts or key points, how can somebody like a visionary go find that right integrator?

Mark Winters: Great. So we think about all the work that we’ve put out there is sort of in three big buckets. We want to help the world crystallize their thinking about this visionary, integrator structure. So understanding what it is, what it’s capable of, and then ultimately, the visionary’s got to go, “Yeah. That could help me. Yeah. I want one.” Or, “Nah. That’s not for me.” Whatever. I mean, they’ve got a choice to make there, but we want them to be clear and understand the possibility.

Once they do that, what we see typically is a visionary that it resonates with, their next comment is, “Awesome. Where do I get one, right?” And so the whole second bucket, the middle bucket is connecting the two, right? And so in the book, we lay out a seven step process that literally walks them through that. And the thing that I would note for your listeners, Josh, is the first part of that process is largely about introspection. It’s about them looking at themselves, looking at their business, really understanding what they need and what the gaps are, what’s going to be a great fit for them, what’s success going to look like in a successful combination?

And then we give them some specific things to do to go out into the world and make that happen. Then from there, the third big bucket, we call it maximize, so you get these two together finally, and if you think about it, because they’re wired so differently, if we leave them alone, they’re going to like this, right? They’re going to butt heads and it can get really negative and can do a lot of damage. So we want to put some nice structure around that to help maximize that relationship and use that friction for something good.

And so we have what we call the five rules and the five tools that are specifically focused at kind of walking them through the structure to help them make that great. So that’s what we’re teaching those integrators in the integrator mastery forum. The visionary needs to know enough about those things to understand it and go, “Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I’ll buy into it.” And then frankly, their integrator working with them can kind of walk them through the process to help get clear on all that stuff and make it happen.

Josh Felber: Really cool. What, I guess, tell us a little bit about where can somebody get some more information, I guess, on the event itself and go from there?

Mark Winters: Sure. So what I would encourage folks to do is go to our website rocketfuelnow.com and on the website, there’s a couple of different things that you can do. One, you can sign up for our weekly video. So I put out a little video every week and try to speak to something that folks are asking about or wrestling with to help clarify that a little bit more. We have a community that folks can engage in and they can begin to interact. And a really cool thing about that, Josh, is we’ve seen people actually meet there. So we have visionaries raising their hand and going, “Hey, I need a integrator.” Integrators raising their hand and go, “Hey, I’m looking for a visionary.”

We have had folks actually meet at some of those discussions and pair up and go off and do business together. So that’s cool to watch. A lot of nice exchange there. We have the integrator mastery forum so for more information on that, you can come into the site and you’ll be able to find out more about what opportunities there are to participate in that. And of course, we’d love people to read the book. So that’s out there and the observation I would make for the visionaries in your audience is I did the Audible version, so I read the Audible version, and Audible has been a huge discovery for me, personally, because I’ll read part of a book but I won’t always finish them. But I listen to them and I can listen to them at faster speeds. I’ll listen to them at one and half times or two times while I’m out on a trail run and I can chew through a book a lot faster that way so a lot of our visionaries, that’s their preferred mode of consumption.

Josh Felber: I remember when I was reading Rocket Fuel and listening to it and everything, I was listening to it and I was out doing things. And I’m like, “Oh, wait, man there’s great information right here.” I’m like, “Okay. Forget this.” So I would go back and so now what I do is I listen to it at a two X but then I also read the book at the same time.

Mark Winters: There you go.

Josh Felber: And then it actually then-

Mark Winters: Good place for your notes.

Josh Felber: Almost like a hack. Then you can take notes as well as you’re seeing the information and hearing it so you’re retaining it a lot better. So there’s a cool little hack for everybody right there.

Mark Winters: Very smart. I’ll try that. I’ll try that.

Josh Felber: And it works well because most of the books almost all hae audible out now and so that’s pretty much all I do is I got an Audible and have a hard copy as well.

Mark Winters: Very cool. I love it.

Josh Felber: But that’s awesome. We got a few minutes left. Can you give us a couple action steps our entrepreneurs that are listening can take today to move their business forward in some way or another?

Mark Winters: Yeah. So for those that maybe have a pair of they’re early on in the process of getting their integrator counterpart, one of the most powerful rules that we have in there is to get on the same page. And so a key component to be able to do that is, again, to get clear on your thinking. Get clear on your thinking of what you need, for the entrepreneur, what does your freedom look like, if you will? And paint that picture. And so then when you begin to have that discussion or if you’re already partnered up as you sit down with those discussions, you can really circle around that and be sure that it’s clear and ask those questions and once the pair is together, it’s that same page rhythm. I mean it’s so important and people kind of think, “Oh, it sounds easy. I talk to him all the time. Yeah. Surely we’re on the same page,” but what visionaries miss too often is the stuff that’s crystal clear in their brain, nobody else gets. And they really don’t, right?

Josh Felber: You’re right.

Mark Winters: But we skip over it. We’re like, “Oh, yeah, they know, that’s so obvious, that’s whatever.” But just slow down. Take the time to ask. “So now I just told you something, won’t you play that back to me?” And what they’ll find is when that person plays it back, it’s completely different than what they were thinking, right? So it gives you an opportunity to kind of come back and validate and make sure that you really are on the same page.

Josh Felber: And I remember that, too, from the book, so you guys have those same page meetings, I think it is.

Mark Winters: That’s right. That’s right. Yep.

Josh Felber: Doing that once a week and it can be, that’s the cool thing, too, I remember it, it was short meeting like five, 10 minutes, or something like that.

Mark Winters: It can be. So what we want is at least once a month. You can do it more frequently if you want. But the idea is it’s the simplest agenda in the world. It’s three things. So this is such an important relationship. It’s almost like a marriage. So in fact, I have one client who calls their integrator their business spouse. So it’s that level of relationship. So we want to take a few minutes at the beginning to just check in as humans, right? “Hey man, what’s going on in your world and what’s going on in my world? What are you thinking about? What are you struggling with? What’s important?” And just kind of connect as two humans in the world together.

And then from there, we build our issues lists. So both of us come to the meeting. We’ve got all the different things that we’ve been thinking about that we need to talk about. And it can be, “Hey, I need you to know this. Hey, I’m confused about that. Hey, when you do this, it really frustrates me. Hey, I want to make sure that we’re thinking the same way or that we explore what we’re going to do.” Whatever it is, just get your list out there. They get their list out there and then we sit down and we put those all on the page and the commitment, Josh, is that we’re going to lock ourselves in a room. We’re not going to leave until we’ve talked through all that stuff. And so sometimes, it’s a short meeting. Sometime, it’s a day, right?

But the more we do it and the more we sync up, the better that becomes. And then so the experience we have when we leave that room, we’re like two halves of the same piece. And so if someone from the organizations comes up and interacts with you or with me, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to respond to him in a similar fashion. We’re going to give him the same kind of signal back so they’re not going to get confused. We’re all going to be synced up and working together. Powerful, powerful tool.

Josh Felber: Definitely. I remember hearing that and it was something that we’ve implemented as well. It helps out so much and it makes so much sense even though it’s so simple. No that’s awesome.

So tell me what’s once device or something you can’t live without.

Mark Winters: A device I can’t live without. So I’ll tell you a, well, obviously I can’t live without my phone, but a little app that I’ve used recently on my phone. So we advocate taking clarity breaks and it’s a time to kind of step a way from what you’re doing. Isolate yourself and sort of let your head get clear, because what happens, if you’re going to be a good leader, you have to be confident. And when the world’s just bringing so much stuff at you all the time and it feels sort of overwhelming, your confidence is not going up, right?

So you need to kind of take this time to decompress every once in a while and let that stuff all sort out and get clear. So I’ve found an app called Focus at Will and normally I’ll do my clarity breaks in a Starbucks and I’ll just kind of get a table in the table in the corner, whatever, and put the noise canceling headphones in. And normally I’d listen to classical music or whatever. Focus at Will, what it does, is it’s a, you can pick whatever kind of music you like, but it runs you through a cycle of that music that the tempo and the intensity that puts your brain in an alpha state and gets you there and keeps you there, so you really can be sharp in focused.

So I found it to a really, a really helpful tool-

Josh Felber: That’s awesome.

Mark Winters: To kind of take full advantage of that time.

Josh Felber: No. That’s really cool because I’ve used different things but I like that the app where it will actually get you dialed in and create that with all the different new technology and everything coming out. So that’s really cool. Awesome. Where can people find out about Twitter, Facebook, where do you want people to go to know a little bit more about you, as well?

Mark Winters: You bet. So Twitter @markcwinter. Also on LinkedIn. Pretty active on LinkedIn so connect with me there. On Facebook and of course you can always, oh, there’s YouTube. So kind of all over and then of course come to that Rocket Fuel Now website and plug into the community.

Josh Felber: Cool, man. Well I really appreciate you coming on Making Bank. I think we really grabbed a lot of awesome information that people can take and start implementing today, learning, and even given the option to the whole integrator mastery forum and everything that you guys are rolling out, I think is just phenomenal that people can take advantage of as well. So thank you for coming on Making Bank today.

Mark Winters: Yeah, Josh, thanks so much for having me on, man. It’s really great to talk to you again.

Josh Felber: Cool, I also Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.