Mark Magnacca, President and co-founder of Allego, has spent the last 15 years helping sales leaders shorten sales cycles and distribute their best ideas faster. He has worked as a presentation coach with a wide range of financial service companies by delivering innovative, practice-development and business-building strategies. Mark is the author of “So What? How To Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience.” His work has been featured in numerous media outlets including Fox TV, The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Prior to co-founding Allego, Mark founded Insight Development Group, Inc., a leading sales and presentation training firm specializing in the Financial Services industry. As a former financial advisor, Mark brings a unique perspective to the world of consultative selling. Mark is a graduate of Babson College and resides in the Boston area.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Mark’s Dad & Mom
- Mark’s Friend’s Dad
- Alex P. Keaton a fictional character Family Ties
- Yuchun Lee
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I have had numerous difficulties in different businesses and yet in many ways the difficulty was itself in many cases was the problem I was trying to solve. And so when I was in the financial planning business the difficulty I had was I looked very young. I was relatively young but I looked even younger than I was. So when I was say 25 now and may have looked 19 to many people and so the challenge then was who is this young guy and can we trust him with our money. And one of the things that I learned over time after I had done it for a couple of years I had actually helped more than 50 people go through the process of retirement. So I learned about the power of the personal biography and I learned how I could communicate to people that I went to Babson College, I studied finance investment, I traded in the stock market since I was a teenager, and oh by the way I have helped 50 people go through the process of retirement and that is why I am qualified to talk to you even though I may be younger than your grandchildren. What I learned from that is that it worked and I started to teach other people how to do that who were financial advisers and that’s how I wrote the book. So in every case the difficulty was part of the journey, number one. And the other one I will just tell you that’s probably not the obvious one is how do you find the time and the money to do new business if you don’t have capital? And in my case the answer was really simple I basically had two jobs. So from the time I was 20 I had my job that I generated an income from and then separately had the project I was working on that I was trying to have become the main thing. A program that I have been a part of called Strategic Coach run by a guy called Dan Sullivan because it ‘New Co’ and ‘Old Co’. and the idea was keep the old company running to help fund operations for the new company almost like your own venture capital firm. But don’t give up the thing that generates revenue. The distinction is that that’s different from don’t quit your job because obviously if you are working for someone and they are paying for 40 hours a week they are basically buying your life and you are not supposed to be doing another job while you are on someone else’s payroll ”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It Book by Michael E. Gerber
- Think and Grow Rich Book by Napoleon Hill
Favourite Quote:
“Sometimes a moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
Recommended Online Resources:
- TED Talks – are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity, with subtitles in 100 languages Ideas free to stream and download
- Audible – Explore the world’s largest selection of titles by best selling authors
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization – enables entrepreneurs to learn and grow from each other leading to greater business success and an enriched personal life
- Strategic Coach – Discover how you can grow your business exponentially with the leading company in business coaching for entrepreneurs
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“my best advice to other entrepreneurs is it is really important to love what you’re doing, and it doesn’t mean that you are going to love every moment of it or every single day but on average in my experience it is really important to believe and to know that there is some way that you are either making the world a better place or that you are working for something bigger than just the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow so to speak. Because in the long arc of a career, particularly as an entrepreneur even doing multiple different things I believe you have got to have it be about something bigger than just the money. And so my advice would be make sure that the thing that you choose is something that you are committed to, that you would be willing to stick with it longer than what you think because chances are you have an optimistic bias, as I know I have, and things likely do take longer than you thought they would originally”…[Listen for More]
More About Mark Magnacca:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“No one answer is ever the answer.” Ahmed Mostafa
Other Quotes From the Chat with Mark Magnacca:
- “if you haven’t taken the first step on the entrepreneur way you probably want to step back and ask yourself is this for you. I really think that is a big question because I have met a lot of entrepreneurs, I spend a lot of time with entrepreneurs, I actually most enjoy being around entrepreneurs, those are my people, it doesn’t matter whether from, it doesn’t matter their culture, their background, they don’t have to be in my industry but in general are like being around entrepreneurs. And what I would tell you in my study of entrepreneurship which has been for a long time now very few entrepreneurs ( it does happen) work quietly in a company until the mid-50s and then all of a sudden have an entrepreneurial seizure and say I’m going to give up everything, I have finally put enough money away and my children are educated and all that. The reality is most of them have been dabbling in trying it…”
- “start small and find something that allows you to take some level of risk that you are comfortable with and see if you can make it work because there is no substitute for confidence and believing in yourself”
- “the number one thing that sets entrepreneurs apart as a class is they just want it, they want it in a way in athlete want’s it in a way you can’t even understand if you are not one of them”
- “One of the secrets of success to me has been the love of reading. Because I love to read it has afforded me an opportunity to learn so much from so many great books and in the more modern era now from videos. So I just love to learn, I am curious. And I think that start with reading and being able to absorb information in that way and then be able to do something with it I think that has been a big part for me”
Leave a Reply