This is the full transcript for Episode #321 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Anne Candido & April Martini – ForthRight People, Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
April Martini 0:00
Don’t waste your time doing something you hate.
Max Branstetter 0:02
Hey, welcome back to the Wild Business Growth podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting, and you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 321, lift off, and today’s guest, guests, plural, which I always struggle with that word, are Anne Candido and April Martini, the Co-Founders of ForthRight People and the Co-Hosts of the fantastic, if I must say, Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business podcast. Anne and April, are an absolute hoot. They are so funny, so fun to work with. They are long time podcast production clients of mine, and in this episode, we talk everything from how they met to finding the perfect business partner to pivoting along the way, how a podcast can work as a marketing and networking tool for your business, and you’ll hear April conquer her fears in the unusual segment at the end of this episode. You’ll want to stay tuned because there is a bit of a scheduling update for the Wild Business Growth podcast in the near term. And if you know the personal news of Dana and I, you might have an idea what that is about, either way, stay tuned for the end of the episode for an announcement on what is next in the near term for the Wild Business Growth podcast. Who for now, it is Anne and it is April. Enjoyyyyyyyy the showwwwwwww!
Aaaaaalrightyyyyyy we are here with Anne Candido and April Martini, the dynamic duo, and in April, co founders of ForthRight People we’re already laughing during this introduction, because this is a bit out of place for us. Long time, clients, friends, inspirations, football rivals and today, special guests in the wild Business Growth podcast, which I mispronounce. And in April, thank you for joining. How you doing today? Good? How you doing? Max, yeah. We’re good. I’m great, I’m great, I’m great. We’re going to ignore the 45 minutes of tech setup before we hit record. So now nobody knows about it, but in this episode, really, really excited to dive into the forthright people story and everything with your podcast, strategic counsel, you know, marketing smarts before that just really, really cool. I’m always like, I know you’re gonna say, I’m just buttering you up, but I really enjoy and learn so much editing every single one of your episodes. And you guys are big inspiration. So I’m pinching myself. And, you know, I also did a Yeah, yeah. And I also practice tech setup as part of this. But before we get to present day, I don’t, I actually don’t know this full story. Can one of you share like, the first time that you locked eyes with each other from across the room and were like, I want to start a business with that person. That’s
April Martini 3:36
not really how it went.
Anne Candido 3:40
It kind of was for me. It wasn’t for April. I’ll let her start, because it starts with her year of taking every meeting. So I’ll let her start. Yes,
April Martini 3:48
I had been at agencies for almost 17 years, went out on my own, thought it was going to take me a couple years to build what I was envisioning in about a year in I realized that I had accomplished what I set out to do in short order, which was great, but I was feeling lonely and a little bit untethered, and I couldn’t figure out why that was so I didn’t have a definite like, Oh, if I go do this, then I will not feel like this anymore. So I started out the second year of being in business alone saying that I would take any meeting that was put in front of me on this mission to figure out what I wanted to be doing beyond what I was currently doing in my own business. And so people learned this about me and started sending people my way. And so Anne and I like to say, through the five degrees of Kevin Bacon, we were connected, and the person who connected us to each other did so understanding that meeting with someone who worked at Proctor & Gamble for 20 years was not going to be my cup of tea, but that since I had put this notice out there to the world saying that I was going to take any meeting that was put in front of me that year, I didn’t have a choice. And so I. This was a new connection of mine through someone who I value very much. And again, it came kind of down the chain. And I was like, You gotta be kidding me. You’re gonna put me with a Proctor and Gamble person one who’d been there for 20 years and think that I’m gonna have a successful meeting? And she was like, Oh no, no, I know that. You said you’re taking every meeting this year. And then, in all seriousness, she was like, I met with you guys close together, and you reminded me of each other, but also there was a lot of complimentary skills. So I show up at this coffee shop, and I remember distinctly getting out of my car and being like, Okay, this can be a waste of an hour. Here we go and walking in and meeting with Anne and what ended up happening, and then I’ll let her pick up, was three hours of conversation more alignment than I’d had with anyone in a while, and also it was kind of the start of expanding my network well beyond my comfort zone, for sure, but well outside of people that I knew and had been talking to again or renewed relationships with this was the start of something totally different and a whole new world, as it ended up, for forthright people so but Anne’s perspective was a little different than mine going into it.
Anne Candido 6:13
Yeah, for me, I’d been out of P&G probably for about a year, and I was doing my own thing as well, doing a lot of brand strategy work, but I My specialty is more in the execution. So what I was finding was I would do the brand strategy, the marketing strategy, or the social strategy, or whatever strategy was that was needed at the time for the client, but then trying to actually deliver it was not always meeting the expectation. So that really, for all of us who live in the marketing world can just kind of probably feel the angst of like when you put together this beautiful, beautiful plan, and then some other agency comes and butchers the whole thing, you’re like, No, that’s just not my product. That’s not what I want to deliver. So I was out looking for another partner who would help or had more of the execution side of the business. And I wanted it to be another woman, because I thought a powerhouse of two females was going to be pretty unusual and very sellable. But I wasn’t stuck that I needed a woman. But as April said, it’s a real, true testament to the fact that when you invest time in actually meeting new people and and just kind of seeing where it goes, you just never know where it’s going to go. And it was literally five degrees separated that me and April came together through different people up to that one person that just kind of was like at the pinnacle, I took the meeting happily. So I don’t know why April was so apprehensive, but I was at the coffee shop first, and she walked in and she had this really cute little outfit on that was like this, like, blue. No, I’m just kidding. We’re not like at that level. But when she came in, I could tell she was actually a little apprehensive. And so we sat down, and I actually liked her almost immediately. So for me, it was a little bit of love at first sight. I was like, Oh, I think I found my person. It took April a little bit longer, but what we did was we really took our time with it, and I think that’s really important for people to hear because a lot of people want to decide they want to partner, they want to jump right into it, and they want to find the right person. They get really frustrated when it you know, they try to kind of date and stuff like that other people, and it doesn’t quite work out. And so there’s a lot of that that goes on, and me and April both have independent stories of that, but when you’re trying to build that partnership, it’s really important to take the time see if you have similar philosophies when it comes to business, which we spend a lot of time talking, the three the three hour meeting became our thing. It’s something we still do today, five hours or five hours five years later, sometimes the meetings can go five hours, um, we never went out stuff to talk about, but it’s still like the core of what we do every week is we get together, we share what’s going on in our lives, we talk our business, we connect, and we make sure that we’re still on the same page when it comes to philosophies, when it comes to approaches, and that’s what was core, is that we really united on that part. And
Max Branstetter 9:10
you both selflessly today, have signed up for a five hour podcast recording. So it’s like five hour everything. So thank you so much. You didn’t know you’re getting into I already
Anne Candido 9:17
COVID 45 minutes, trying to make the technology work. So it’s now four hour and 24 hours and 25 minutes or 15 minutes. So there you go.
Max Branstetter 9:28
So let’s get a little bit more present day forthright people. So appreciate you sharing the backstories and you both clear. I mean, you could just hear it like if somebody hearing like the first time hearing you speak how great of a team you are. And like, one of the things I always love partnering with you guys is that you both have a great sense of humor, and so it’s, like, a lot of jokes and and making fun of April’s dress. No, I’m just going but like, a lot, like, you know, you can always joke around. And like, you guys really like to make the work and the projects and the podcast a lot of fun, so that’s always a blast. But. Uh, fourth grade people. So like, when you started having these five hour conversations with each other every second of the day, how did you start to craft together? Like, all right, like, if we’re teaming up, if we’re, like, officially becoming business partners, like, what is going to be like, our differentiator out there?
April Martini 10:16
Like Ann said, the biggest thing, and for her, I think it was, you know, a foregone conclusion that we were going to be partners as the processor of the duo. It takes me longer to get there, and that also still continues today. Once we realized truly that we liked each other as people, one of the most natural ways for us to connect was the fact that we could do a lot more of the work itself with both of us together. And so from Anne’s perspective, it was being able to build the strategies, and then I had a bunch of folks on my side that I had cultivated, that worked on my behalf, with my company, that we have transitioned. And yes, there’s new players now as the business has matured, but a lot of those folks still remain today, and we call them the practitioners of the work. What I never offered in my career, because from an agency standpoint, I mean, I jumped around to learn all the things I wanted to learn, but PR and communications kind of sits by itself. And so for me, getting to know that work and that world through Anne completed the continuum of offerings and allowed us to do the strategy all the way through the executions, because we had folks that could do social media posts and all of those things. That was kind of the easy part. So we already had that end to end of what we like to do, and then we spent time on where we overlapped. And again, I’ll let Ann talk, because she loves this one story about taking work away from me, but there we had a period of time where we spent time talking about where we overlapped, and then ultimately what we liked doing. So the strategic side of things for us was present in both of us and a passion area for both of us. But the difference was that Anne very much saw it from the client side, and I very much saw it from the agency side. And so when you talked about us being a powerhouse, which I appreciate, and we agree, that piece of being able to provide that for clients, in addition to being a women held business and partnership, was what started to click for people, because we literally have the client and agency in the room, whether the client that is there every single time, and that started to open up for people, the realization that they could get work from us, that was very on target, on strategy, because we were talking to each other. And then the other thing I’ll say, and then I’ll hand it over to Anne, is one of the things that took a long time for us, in addition to our philosophy, like we said, our philosophies as human beings and integrity and all of that aligned, but what to call the business was a big thing, because we didn’t want to be Candido and martini, although that would have been really fun, in case, one day it was going to live beyond us. And so the forthright people name took us a long time to get to and we did the diligence that we do on behalf of our clients with that to get it just right. And the reason for that is because we say we’re direct yet respectful, and we are a business about people, and so we vet clients that way from our standpoint, and we always say that that’s what we’re going to bring to them. So having that really forthright conversation with each other two ways, between the clients, but also between Anne and me, really led to that differentiation, and then we’re five years in, so Anne can kind of take us on the journey beyond there, but that sort of sets the stage for things.
Anne Candido 13:33
We liked each other as people to begin with, and I think that’s actually a differentiator a lot. Yep, we do like each other and we respect each other. And I mean, even we disagree, we disagree very much in a way that forwards the work so that we can be very transparent with each other and we know we’re not taking it personally. And I think that’s a really unique thing in business, when we can set the egos aside of it, and do good work on behalf of our clients, and be okay that it’s coming from a different place that we wouldn’t have normally thought it would come from. So as April, like, alluded to one, there was two. Like, really funny examples is that, as April started to take ownership for, like, the core piece of work that she traditionally take ownership for, I asked if I could try some of it, right? That’s that wasn’t traditionally my my thing. I did more, like I said, marketing, strategy, communications, PR, work. And it was, this happened to be brand stories. She’s like, Yeah, try a few. What does it hurt? So I tried a few, and we put them in front of the client. And the clients were regularly picking mine over hers, and it was killing her. I mean, killing her to the point where she just like, Fine, you do them. Then it mean, it is said kind of like that, but it was also said to the fact, like, you know, with the whole intention. Yeah, and this, I think there’s another big differentiating fact, is that we are really doing what’s best for our clients, and we are the the facilitators of the work, but we really appreciate the value each one of us brings, even if it wasn’t a traditional skill or expectation of the world that we had before us. And so that was a really funny story. But then one, one of the quick one, I’m gonna let you talk Max, because it is your podcast.
Max Branstetter 15:28
I No, we do not need that. Oh, okay,
Anne Candido 15:31
so we do, we do agree on that. Okay. Then, like when we were talking to a client, and this was very early on, and we were speaking about what we do, and the client asked about communications at PR, and April’s like, Yeah, we don’t do that. And I’m like, okay, so I just kind of let the conversation go. And then at the when I called her afterwards, I’m like, Do you not want to do communications PR? Because that’s what I did at png for 10 years of my life. And she’s like, I totally forgot, you know, and so it was kind of like one of those things, of like, oh, we have new capabilities. And so it takes a little while to kind of like work out the kinks too, which I think is really important for people to hear. But our differentiating factors is our transparency. It is our will to do really, really good work, and we able to pull really talented individuals and agencies in order to deliver that work.
Max Branstetter 16:23
Well, appreciate you guys talking so long. It always takes me a long time to build up the courage to speak into a podcast microphone, and so I really appreciate that you’ll
Anne Candido 16:33
get the hang of it after year four or five, don’t worry.
Max Branstetter 16:36
Exactly No, your business is such a cool combination of that like. I mean, I’ve always thought of it as like, like, you clearly take, you know, like, the agency background, and then the PNG background, and then, you know, other backgrounds on top of that, and put it together. And like, you guys obviously are great team and have a great team around you. What I didn’t realize until now is that sometimes you forget about each other’s skills, and you’re like, oh, yeah, we’re good at that too. It’s a good reminder to leverage everywhere you’ve you’ve been in your career or areas of expertise that you can kind of flex your muscles on, and knowing
Anne Candido 17:08
what you’re not good at too. Max, like, April won’t let me touch design, and she’s not wrong. There
Max Branstetter 17:17
no hesitation from April on that we’ll let that be but so now, and like, over the past couple years, let’s kind of focus in on, I want to hear from each of you while I’m talking for the last time in this interview, what would you say is, like, the type of you don’t need to get into specifics and like, financials and all that, but like, what’s the type of project that you’ve done kind of recently that you’re like, This is why We do this. Like, I love doing, you know, X type of work.
April Martini 17:44
And we haven’t talked yet about the fact that we introduced forthright business, but that’s pretty foundational to the type of work that we’re both going to talk about.
Max Branstetter 17:51
You read my notes somehow, because that’s coming. So that’s what we were going to do. Yeah, yeah. You can tell you guys are our hosts, co hosts as well.
April Martini 18:00
So, I mean, one of the things that I think is also really important, and we did a 10 part series, which you’re well aware of, last spring through summer, Max, around what’s happening with the creative agency world and what to do about it. And thing that I have found really important throughout my career, and especially on the agency side, is staying ahead of the curve and being able to anticipate the challenges that are coming. But in addition to that, as business owners, for Anne and me, I think it’s continuing to have things that we are really passionate about that fuel our desire to always be doing that really good work on behalf of clients. And so our model for working as coach, train do. And that means we executive coach folks. We will train folks on how to be successful branders and marketers within organizations, and then we will do the traditional agency services that we’ve talked about up until this point. As I lose one of my headphones, and
Max Branstetter 18:56
you guys are just so impromptu and cool is a cucumber, it’s unbelievable,
April Martini 19:01
well. And as I’m sitting here talking, I realize my problem is I run in these beats, but I don’t talk to people in them, and I definitely don’t laugh. So that’s why they keep falling out. Therefore that problem. But anyway, my point here to your question about the type of work, what I have found really keeps me going. And as important as the coaching piece, and I love it both in a one on one setting, and I love it from an organizational development perspective across teams within the companies that we work for. And I’ll get into the strategic planning, and again, you’ll see how the maturation of our relationship and our skills have helped us solidify what we are on a much higher level, really good at for our clients, and provide additional value from that perspective. So as we continue to work together, and especially within the course of the past year, we’ve been doing a lot more work in the strategic planning and organizational development space, and our coaching book of clients has quadrupled. The natural progression. Like Anne said, you put something out there and you decide to really go for it. I think we were working on some things that maybe weren’t serving us. We spent last year shedding a lot of things that weren’t good for us and refocused. And that’s where forthright business came into being, and where for me, I’ve been able to spend a disproportionate in a really good way, amount of my time over. Call it the past six to eight months, doing that coaching in those different settings.
Anne Candido 20:27
I think what April is really honing in on is the real need to pivot, and in some cases, both professionally and personally. I mean, we’ve been in business now we’re heading into our fifth year so and a couple of those were COVID and so our business has never been the same. It’s been a continued evolution of what we initially conceived, which is actually more of what we’re doing now, but we how we initially conceived it, but we’re told we didn’t have the credibility or the reputation to do what we wanted to go do that, which is more the strategic business work and as well as the coaching at that moment, so we went with our bread and butter, which was the branding and marketing and Well, that’ll always be the bread and butter of what we do, to some extent, at least for the near future, because that’s what people know us for. But the strategic business development and as well as the organizational development, is definitely something that helps to provide a runway for that branding and marketing, and a runway that connects it, it makes it a strategic choice, versus something that people go do, and that was intentionally done for two reasons. One is, we’re seeing the marketing world being diluted by, I’ll say, diluted by things like AI, very novice based consultants who think they understand marketing because they have a social media account. This is the honest goodness, truth of it. So people who are really seasoned practitioners of it are getting undermined by these people and by technology that are saying, I can do it just as well, right? Or systems and processes and other things like that. What the one thing that nobody can parallel me and apron is our expertise and our experiences, and that’s really where the foundation of the business strategy comes from, the foundation of organizational development. We’ve done it. We’ve been there. We’ve seen it across multiple different industries. So that gives us a unique perspective that nobody else has, which again, leads to that differentiating factor you were talking about before, and then personally, it’s just kind of coming into our own with what we really, really like to do. So April mentioned the coaching. I really, really love business strategy. It’s been something that has been a core of some that I contributed to and I experienced when I was at P and G and something that I feel like I uniquely can provide to businesses in a way that they’re not currently getting. And by the way, when I was in PNG, and I try to tell people what I think they could, you know, they didn’t always get received. Well, these people pay me to tell them what I think, how I can’t get any better than that. I mean, you walk in and you’re like, I think you’re doing that wrong, and I think you’re doing that very respectfully. And they’re like, thank you. And I’m like,
This is awesome.
It’s like a personal and a professional pivot. I think that has really led us to doing the work that we’re really getting in a groove on. I think,
Max Branstetter 23:23
yeah, that word pivot, I think, comes up a lot in the entrepreneurship space, and with good reason, because you need, I mean, if you don’t pivot, your business, oftentimes will simply not survive. And I think you guys are like, an amazing case study of trying out new things and then going all in on something when, like, the time is right or when it’s working. And so as I brought up unprovoked, April 4, right business. So, you know, you got forthright people. And I think what’s really cool is, like, over the years, like you’ve added different dimensions, and maybe even could be considered, like, separate business as part of it, but there’s forthright business. I know we’ve done a lot of work, and you’ve done some amazing stuff with, uh, forthright women as well. Like, there’s kind of, like, under the fourth right umbrella, there’s some really, really cool stuff there. So that’s your story. But like, as far as overall, for for any entrepreneur out there, like, how do you know when it’s actually, like, the right time to pivot and actually go all in on something?
April Martini 24:18
Oh, that’s a big question. You got five hours. Yeah, apparently, signed up for it. I’ll
Anne Candido 24:25
start. I’ll start because, you know, you don’t always know, but me and April do planning sessions every year, and that’s the time when we really sit. By the way,
Max Branstetter 24:35
that sorry to interrupt you, but that’s another one of my questions. So this is just too you guys know me too well. You
Anne Candido 24:40
think we do this too. I don’t know. It’s just kind of weird. We do do planning sessions every year where we we get out of our space, because it’s especially since it’s just me and April. And this is very true for a lot of entrepreneurs. You spend a lot of time in your business. I mean, me and April are our business 363 days of the year. But. There’s 365 days a year, right? Yeah. But, okay, yeah, okay, well, thank you. But like two days a year. We should two or three days a year. We are out of that business for sure, although we try to do it on a quarterly basis as well, in a smaller scale that we really take a look and kind of really address, are we doing what we like to do? Are we making a difference in what we want to do? Are we generating impact, and are we making money? Right? So there’s other kind of questions in there, but those are like the core of what we sit and we evaluate, and because that’s really important to your business, when you’re trying to make your business go if you’re sitting there grinding it out every single day, and you’re not liking what you’re doing. You’re not getting any satisfaction, you’re not generating any impact. It’s hard to feel a reason or a why to go on day to day, right? So it’s can’t just all be about the money. It can’t just be all about like, Oh, I love what I do. You know, when I get up every day, but I can’t make ends meet. It all has to kind of come together, and so when it’s not coming together, that’s how when we know it’s time to pivot. But it’s not always easy. I mean, we’re gonna probably get into so I won’t preempt the fact that we shifted our podcast, our whole rebrand of our podcast,
Max Branstetter 26:12
after four years. Yeah, you guys just interviewed yourself. All right. Well,
Anne Candido 26:15
we thank you for initiating the interview and putting it on your on your platform, so please share it so that everybody can share, okay, thank you and give us a five star rating. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, but yeah, I think that is like a core of it, of like, you can’t decide to pivot, unless you’re going to get out of your business and look on your business for a whole like, more than a hot minute, and be able to look look at it objectively and really realize that what somebody told us very recently in our last podcast with Jonathan Baker, is that the the business is not your baby, so you have to look at it like a business, and sometimes it’s really important to cut ties, because they could be dragging you down. They could be diluting your efforts. It could be frustrating you. They could be zapping all your money and really looking at, well, what do we want to go do now? How’s only escape? Change. How is our clientele? Change. Are there new clients we want to go after? Are there new opportunities, like the coaching that we really want to go after? So that’s my my thoughts. I’ll let April take it from here,
April Martini 27:21
and I would say yes, and to that which
Max Branstetter 27:24
we say, I feel like, wow, this is like a real life improv session city.
Anne Candido 27:29
We don’t say yes, and a lot, we say yes, but a lot, but that’s fair, yes,
Max Branstetter 27:33
but that was a yes, but that itself and thank you. I was
April Martini 27:38
trying to be a little more positive, but I’ll just go ahead and be forthright about it. Okay, yes, but yes to the planning and the getting out of the business. But the other thing that I think is complimentary to that and equally important is the three hours we spend a week with each other. And the reason I say that is because we don’t wait for anything. And by the nature of who we are as people, we got really lucky. Ann and I are both really direct, and we don’t take things personally. And yes, we cultivate that in our organization and with our clients, but our personal brands sit in that. And yes, it’s because we trust each other and all those things we talked about, but we make decisions like nobody’s business in those meetings, and it’s because we have made the choice to spend that three hours with each other every week. And I look back on COVID In specific, which obviously was huge, massive disruption for everybody, I don’t think our business would have made it had we not set that foundation from the beginning, because I don’t know how we could have been so aligned with each other when we couldn’t sit in the same space. So we kept that up. We talked remotely. But I think about our Start and the fact that those three hours a week were everything from six months to figure out if we really wanted to work together, to what does it look like to Oh my gosh. Now we’re going through this crazy thing that the whole world is suffering from. And when I think about how to stay in front of things. It’s making sure that you do that hard work and you continue to talk about it, and you don’t let things just sit. And I think the reason that we don’t take things personally outside of it, just being part of who we are, is that we make it really objective to make change, create change, make decisions, do those pivots, and have the tough conversations about it, so that it doesn’t become this massive distraction for the business, and every time we shed something, and I mean, maybe we’ll get in a little more about forthright women, maybe not. But we’ve shuttered that side of things, and it was because it was sucking the life and energy out of us, and we were pushing really hard for something that we were passionate about, but that we had to at the end of the day admit was not working, no matter how we tried to do it.
Max Branstetter 29:48
Let’s get to one of the things you’ve teased, and this is how we connected in the first place. By the way, shout out our mutual friend and maybe mutual mutual client, Sue Frech who connected us in the first place, who was it Vesta, who sold that to TINT and now is Meritage and EOS implementer, and she’s just awesome anyway. Shout out to thanks for listening podcasting. So this is how we cross paths in the first place. You two are some of the best I’ve ever seen at one like creating a podcast and keeping it going for a long time, and being so consistent with it and batching recordings. And now I’m realizing I’m just listing off a lot of things in a row already, but two, just like your business, like you’ve pivoted and evolved the podcast over the years, and so, like, it’s always been, I think, as you posted about it recently on LinkedIn, and it’s always been, like, a main priority, as far as marketing, the podcasting, and it’s always been great from a networking and like, lead generation tool, but as far as the actual like in the podcast, in terms of what you’re talking about, the types of conversations you have, who you’re interviewing, like, that’s the type of thing that’s changed over the years, and you’ve done some things, different experiments. So I think you’re like, great, like, role models in the podcasting space. Of like, yes, a podcast you want to keep consistent over the years, but that doesn’t mean you have to do the exact same thing every episode. Like, for example, with marketing, you know, your podcast used to be called Marketing smarts, you realized over time that we love marketing. We’ll always love marketing, but we’ve kind of like, you know, drilled marketing, you know, like beat it to a pulp or pulse, or whatever that said over the years. And like, we know, we have more expertise in addition to marketing that we can provide, as far as strat business strategy goes, hence the rebrand to strategic Council by forthright business. So amazing stuff, I guess, overall, in terms of, like, how you think about the podcast as part of your business. Can you just shed some light? And like, how you’ve been able to keep the podcast a big part of your business, and then, like, what’s allowed you to get to, literally, at the time of this recording, like you’re coming out with, you know, episode 360 besides an amazing producer, what’s allowed been, what’s allowed the podcast to be such, like, a huge part of your business, Max,
Anne Candido 32:00
I knew you would find a way to actually get some words in that, kind of like even out all the talking. So I find
Max Branstetter 32:08
I am, I need, like, a five hour sip of water. That was a lot.
Anne Candido 32:14
It’s been a journey, right? It because podcasting, it’s easy and it’s not easy, right? It’s easy to actually go do it’s not as easy to figure out how you want it to come to life, or what you want it to be about, or what you want people to take away from it. And there’s very few people who get rich off of podcasting. Maybe you do max, maybe you’re, you know, you’re all set and stuff like that. But
Max Branstetter 32:38
stuck over here, yeah, doing Maxwell.
Anne Candido 32:43
So you have to have a bigger why? Then I want to make money, or I want to have affiliate marketing based off of it. And so that’s been over. Now, what? Gosh, we’ve had the podcast for four years. We started in COVID been a discussion again, when you asked about, how do you know when to pivot that me and April continue to have, and frankly, we get to moments where we’re like, we’re just bored. I mean, we’re not enjoying it anymore. And so do we cancel? Do we are we done, or do we see glimpses of someplace else we can take it? And that’s when we did the creative series, which was hugely successful and very well appreciated, but not sustainable thing long term. But that’s really what got us the inside of maybe we need to rebrand it in order to be more consistent with what we want to actually now offer our clients, and so it provides a vehicle for us to be able to share our thought leadership in a way that reinforces why us. So when you think about a brand, a little education. Who am I? Why am I different? And why do you want me? The podcast really exemplifies the why do you want it part, right? So it allows us to go through why we’re credible, why we’re reputable. It allows us to really showcase deep insights, or the strategic counsel we provide our clients, bringing in our network of people who are really, really smart and experts in their areas, which we may not be as strong in, and there’s just some few that we’re not as like, really, really strong in, but there is a few. And so it’s very complimentary. And so when we go and we RFP, where people want us to RFP work, or we’re trying to go in a new client, we we share certain episodes we’re like, if you want to know what it’s like to work with us, this is what this is what it’s like to work with us. This is what you can count on us for, and this is what you can expect, the transparency, the honesty, the the in depth expertise, the stories that really showcase the experience behind it. This is what you can get from us that speaks volumes, way more volumes in a deck, right, or even a presentation in our presentation. So that’s been our why it speaks on our behalf. It is our primary marketing channel, and it allows clients to understand who are in an April really, really. And am I gonna like working with them?
April Martini 34:58
Yeah. And I would add. But number one, just a plug for our planning. If you don’t believe us that it’s that, it’s worth it, that creative series came out of I remembered specifically where we were in Red River Gorge hiking when we were like, we’re making the decision to do this 10 part series because we were bored and we were trying to figure out something new to do. So that’s the first thing I would say. And then the other thing is, we also still hold true to our integrity as part of the podcast. And what I mean by that is, we’ve said from the beginning that we want to give people actionable things to go and do following the podcast now, I would say our audience has matured. We no longer really speak to any sort of 101, type language, because we’ve learned at least qualitatively And anecdotally from people what they want to see. But our goal every single time is, when somebody listens to one of our episodes, they’re inspired to go do something immediately after it that creates action in their business. That is still the same. When we switched from marketing smarts, we just felt like we were hitting up against a wall every time, right? You said, beat it to a bloody pulp. That’s what it felt like. And so we needed to be able to broaden it, but also we felt like we’d been taking some liberties too. So back to that integrity, right? We pushed as far as we could to be inclusive of quote, unquote, marketing that maybe wasn’t quite marketing, and a lot of the soft skill episodes start to get into that. So this was a point where this one to me was just, you know, and Anne, I think, came to me about it, and we were both in this place where, like, Oh, I feel like we’re phoning it in, and we never wanted to do that, and it feels bored, and we still are getting kudos, but we don’t feel good about what we’re producing. What do we need to do? And now I feel like it’s been reinvigorated. And then you’ve heard us talk about how stuff comes to you right? Number one, the guests we’ve been getting, which I don’t know if people know this, but at a certain point, when you’re around long enough and you have enough episodes, people start promoting guests to you. The guests that we’re getting are now in line with the strategic Council podcast. That’s number one. And then number two, the type of business, from that standpoint, has elevated. So we’ve had two situations just in the past month where people have come to us specifically for the strategic planning and the organizational development with the marketing in order to train their team to go and do it. So you can see how that, with us being intentional and leading through our integrity and what we think feels right has allowed us to expand the business, the podcast and everything’s working together again in a really good way. I’m
Max Branstetter 37:28
fired. You got me fired up. You know, my my podcasting senses are tingling. You guys go about it just like really, really good way, the right way. And last thing on podcasting before we move on to the segment that April has been dreading since this interview was conceived. It’s true, can one of you just hit on real quick your your approach to recording and batching your recordings? Yeah,
Anne Candido 37:51
and actually, it’s evolved. So I’ll tell a little story of Max Branstetter. So we did get introduced at the very beginning, when me and April were getting ready to kick off our podcast, and we weren’t confident enough in ourselves to do it totally remotely and virtually. That would require us to use Max, even though we knew he was a superstar at the time. What hold up? That’s
Max Branstetter 38:15
true. First of all, thank you. But second, why? When you said Max, it sounded so negative, right there. I
Anne Candido 38:20
should probably not be saying you, a new third person, but a dead story wouldn’t make sense if I kept saying you, because they wouldn’t know what you I’m talking. Go on, go on. But so we decided to actually do it in a studio for, oh, actually, it was about a year, almost a year and a half, right? A year, year and a half. Yeah, I
Max Branstetter 38:38
didn’t get any sleep that year. Yeah.
Anne Candido 38:42
Well, you got the benefit, because then when we came back to you, you charge us twice as much as you would have if we’d have started with you a year and a half ago. So I think the joke’s on us,
Max Branstetter 38:51
which is not the first time this has been brought up. But anyway,
Anne Candido 38:55
it may be a little bitter, but it’s very money, very well spent, so we’ll spend it all the time. I mean, so, but yeah, so we did. We did use the studio just because we wanted somebody to help us with the format and the structure and kind of keep us accountable to doing the batching. And we, that’s what we do. So we, we schedule four episodes a month, and we do them two and two, like a Monday, Tuesday, back to back. If we decide that we aren’t going to do a full episode, and we’ve been resurrecting from our library some what we’re calling classics, we’ll do a new intro on those at that same time, or sometimes April will do those at a different time. That’s a really benefit of actually being and having done the podcast for several years now, is that you can pull that those episodes, and we pull those marketing episodes into supplement some of the other things that our listeners are asking us for. But we don’t want to go and do a new episode on so we do do that. We do it through zoom. And that’s what we’re doing. This one on two. Thank you. Technology, and it’s been pretty easy, except for over we’ve been doing it for three years this way, and we’ve lost two episodes, but because we have the guests record to we’ve been able to resurrect those so pretty easy platform, Max. You listen to them. You clean them up. Make us sound even better than we already do. You manage all of the launching for us, so that’s all out of our hands. You do all of the descriptions, the notes, the blog posts for us. You even give us LinkedIn copy in order for it to make us easier for me in April to go post it on LinkedIn, which is where we primarily showcase the podcast and connect with our guests if we have a guest there, in order to get more exposure for it. Am I missing any of the details that you think it’s important to articulate?
Max Branstetter 40:56
I think your producer is just endlessly charming and a blast to work with, except
Anne Candido 41:01
for he’s a Browns fan, so that great guy, but that’s proud Browns fan,
Max Branstetter 41:06
great guy. No thanks for sharing all that and the kind words. And I did not intend, maybe I did subconsciously intend this to be a giant testimonial, five hour testimonial,
Anne Candido 41:18
I forgot to mention real quick, the reason why we came back to you is because after we got the education that we needed, we didn’t see a need to go to the studio. And so we called our buddy Max back, and we said, hey, we think we’re ready to do this on our own. Would you support us? You said, Of course, I would. Here’s your proposal for twice as much.
Max Branstetter 41:40
It’s really like a modern day fairy tale. It really is.
April Martini 41:45
I would like to add something though about and I guess this is turning into a max love fest, but I think what we started seeing happening is Anne and I were having to do way too much work on the editing of our episodes, and things were being missed. And a year and a half in, it shouldn’t have been missed, but some of it was starting to get like just, I mean, craziness, right? I think what I appreciate, and I’m the Brand Character, tone of voice police, right, is that you learned very quickly. And we did have a fairly forthright conversation about our expectations, about how Anne and I wanted to show up, but I think you were able to interpret that very quickly. And now fast forward. Not I’ve I’m not a math person. However, many years we’ve been doing it this way now, at least since I’ve been in this house. So almost three there’s very little for us to catch. And it’s not just in the ums and the US and the whatever. It’s because you know how we want to show up and present our brands, individually and collectively, and I’m a really tough critic of myself, like being polished and professional and not having a lot of missteps, but also getting my point across is really important to me, and the fact that you picked it up quick, and it happens very easily now, I mean, we listen back to every episode, because it’s important again, to Anne and me to do that, but we’re at the point now where there’s hardly anything that we have to come back and say, redo it, and the fact that you’re committed to staying with that after so long also means it’s part of a craft for you, which is another thing we value with people that are on our bench and working on our behalf.
Max Branstetter 43:18
For those listening, April just had, like, an amazing rant that I decided to edit out so those last five minutes you won’t be able to hear. But no, I appreciate that. And I think just last thing on the podcasting front is that when you think about the batching, when you think about the you know, deciding to offload in the editing, when you think about repurposing and re recent seeing, I just invented a word. You’re like, great content, as far as the classics and the Quit quick hits goes quit hits, you have made it like infinitely more manageable on yourselves than it could be as podcast hosts like you. You’re business owners. You have so much going on. I think part of the reason why your podcast is so sustainable and you’ve been able to do it for so long and at a consistent pace is because, I mean, it’s, it’s mind blowingly simple to be like, Hey, we’re going to record once or twice a month, and then, like, we’re good for the month, and then, oh, we have this giant catalog of previous episodes. Now, why don’t we pull some insights from that and repurpose because, you know, I don’t even know what the numbers, but half the people like maybe even more, have not heard those previous episode, like the episode from a couple years ago. So really, really smart way to do it all. Right, enough messing around, April, let’s get to more messing around. One more, one
Anne Candido 44:37
more thing that’s really important. And then what? Then we’re done with the the the agenda item for this episode, it says Max Lovefest. But I think what is really important you taught us this is it’s very important to plan for the episodes. And there’s a lot of people who don’t do this. They just want to get on the microphone and just talk. And that really is not really taking that, that craft, as April mentioned, to the right level for podcasting. Because people need a point. They need a focal point. So me and April actually pre screen personally all of our guests to make sure that we can align ahead of time what that focal point is going to be. And then we do draft. We’ll call it a discussion guide that articulates the questions any key points that we want to make sure to get out there, both from our guest standpoint, based on that pre call, as well as from us. So we want to make sure that our listeners hear from us, so that we can make sure, as April said, the episodes are tangible. They’re impactful. You’re getting something out of them. You’re not wasting 45 minutes of your time or like, that’s 45 minutes I won’t get back. And it profiles our guests in a way that allows them to sell that episode to their clients, to their business, and they like to splice them down and use them for for content. That’s a really big success metric for us is if they’re using them and repurposing them for their own benefit, for their own marketing. So I think that was really important just to stay too that there is a process that that should be honored in order to make sure that each episode is really meeting the intent for any objective, for what you wanted to get out of it, or you want your listeners to get out of it. All right, I’m done now. Thank you.
Max Branstetter 46:10
Thank you. And it wouldn’t be a true Max Lovefest if I didn’t tell you some places beyond the podcast that you can learn more and that could come in handy for you. If you want help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and we can help you save time with your high-quality podcast from the audio front, from the video front and or that is at max podcasting.com if you are interested in a newsletter every week coming from me that combines podcasting tips, entrepreneurship tips and awful, awful puns, you can subscribe at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter that is the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. And last but not least, if you are interested in the video versions of any of these episodes of the Wild Business Growth podcast, your place for that is on YouTube @MaxBranstetter. So make sure to Subscribe @MaxBranstetter for the video versions. Shoutout alliteration. Now, let’s stop or start arguably messing around all right. So now enough messing around, not that we’ve talked at all. April, I know you sent a note before this recording that you were extra nervous about this section. So this segment is a fan favorite. You know, gotta love it or hate it. The unusual. So this doesn’t have to tie to your business at all. You can if you want to, but pet peeves, quirks, weird talents. This is kind of just to learn more about you guys personally. And so I’m going to ask each of you to, you know, answer for yourselves. But if, like, for example, April’s talking and and you’re like, chomping at the bit, like, Oh, she’s missing a big one, you know, feel free to jump it out with an answer. So anyway, we’ll start with you in Okay, I just had to mess with you, April and what? What’s a pet peeve? You have something that just like grinds your gears, even though it’s like small detail the song
Anne Candido 48:16
Zombie, The Cranberries. Yes, I hate this song with a passion to the point whenever it comes on, I have to leave the room, and my friends think it’s hysterical, and so every time it comes on for them, they have to point it out to me. But it’s I can’t stand a song. It’s irritating in so many levels.
Max Branstetter 48:39
Yeah, those Cranberries songs really just Linger in your head.
Anne Candido 48:43
Oh, that’s pretty funny. You go, you got your dad joke in
Max Branstetter 48:46
Thank you. Thank you. Left me, uh, your answer had me dead like a zombie. That was great, interesting. All right, I’ll never think of that song the same way, but I could see how that could be. You know, stuck in your head pretty easily. All right, April, up to the plate. All right, what’s Pepe Have you got?
April Martini 49:04
So I hate inefficiency, and I mean that in all ways. And
Max Branstetter 49:08
you haven’t jumped off this interview yet. No, I haven’t,
April Martini 49:12
but where it really shows up is traffic jams. Do I do not like to waste time sitting in the car to the point that I actually decided to leave a job, and it was the cherry on top. But I was driving from Cincinnati downtown to Dayton every day, and I sat within visibility of my condo for three hours in a traffic jam, and I literally started my exit strategy after that, I was like, I’m gonna lose my mind.
Max Branstetter 49:36
That’s a great answer. I actually love traffic. It’s my favorite, favorite part of the day, the commute. All right, we’ll stick with you. April, what’s the quirk you have? Like some and maybe Anne can answer this. But for you, April, what’s like, a quirk, like something about your personality that your business partner, your family, kids, friends, somebody calls you out for, but, like, it’s who you are.
April Martini 49:57
You know, I don’t know personality, but one of the things. About me as I’m a sleepwalker, and that’s attributed to the fact that I my brain like never shuts off, which is a personality trait of mine. I would
Max Branstetter 50:08
have guessed sleep runner based on your
April Martini 50:12
Well, I think I was trying that in the instance that I slept, walked down a set of stairs at a 45 degree angle, my humerus and my face went through the drywall. Oh, my God, some ribs. So that’s been that was 2010 early 2010 and knock on all the things. Whenever I bring up sleepwalking, I feel like I have to reach train my brain that I don’t want to do that anymore. I haven’t done it in a long time. Do you
Max Branstetter 50:34
put up like, do you not? What’s it going to come across like, I’m making fun of you in a really mean way, but I’m hoping it doesn’t. Do you put up like, you know, like baby gates or like railings, like something to prevent that’s, that’s no joke, the flight of stairs.
April Martini 50:48
So that’s a really very informed question for you to ask me, because we did, we did have to do that. So the one thing about Sleepwalking is you can do all the same things that you can do when you’re awake. So that’s why people drive cars and all that kind of stuff. So for me, we put an extra large dog gate at the top that was at our old condo, so we don’t have that here at the top of the stairs. And the reason for it, it was drilled into the studs. The reason was because I had to pull twist and turn, and your motor skills are just off enough that my husband could wake up in time to get to me versus if we just put a door that wouldn’t have made any difference whatsoever.
Max Branstetter 51:24
Oh, so, yes, yeah, that’s good. You gotta take it seriously. How about you? Anne, what’s a quirk or a quirk for you? Not a quirk in general.
Anne Candido 51:34
I’m struggling. Maybe April will know better than I do. I was, I was more concentrating on the weird talent. I couldn’t think, Oh, we’re gonna skip
Max Branstetter 51:43
that question. No. Just got oh no, no, but all right, April, so what’s something a little quirky, a quirky in a loving way that and does that you call out for? She’s
April Martini 51:56
blingy, but not in the shiny way,
Max Branstetter 51:59
but not shine. Yeah.
April Martini 52:01
So, for example, red is her power color, and so she has a bag and a wallet and a red leather coat.
Anne Candido 52:09
I do, I do. And red Jordans, yeah,
April Martini 52:13
red Jordans, I was gonna go there. So red is her color, and I and also, like, she’ll do some adventurous things nail wise that I won’t do, like, I don’t do the, like, super, ultra shiny chromey nails. We both are big on getting our nails done on a regular basis, because we feel polished. But, yeah, she she has a certain bling. But it’s not, it’s not like, Oh, she’s covered in glitter. It’s like, hers is the red, or the chrome nails, or, like, something that is just a little extra. How about that? Oh,
Anne Candido 52:43
I like that one. Yeah, powerful.
Max Branstetter 52:48
All right. And what’s a weird talent, otherwise known as party trick, but I like the term weird talent. Okay,
Anne Candido 52:53
I have two. So one, I’ll start with the one that is a little bit more tamer, which I am like a expert Jigsaw puzzler. That’s true. Yep. So I can do the more pieces, the better. I do them without looking at the cover, and I do them based on color blocking, so I don’t even do the border first. Oh, my god, yeah, that’s expert. And I thought that I was gonna, maybe I was I could do a YouTube video, and I’m like, Oh, I don’t think people, like actually want to do that. But then I found a gazillion people actually do YouTube videos of themselves doing jigsaw puzzles, and they get a lot of views. So I have it. That’s like, my backup plan, just in case,
April Martini 53:35
when forthright people goes to shit, you’re going to become a YouTube puzzler.
Anne Candido 53:38
Puzzler. Yes, that’s my backup plan. So I have two different size puzzle boards. I mean, yeah, I go in, like the whole nine yards, and I can do them for hours, like I can sit in just like four to five hours straight. So that’s one. The other one that’s a little bit more interesting is that I love the bosu ball. Are you familiar with the bosu ball max? So it’s one has, like a platform, and it’s kind of like a blue, kind of like a puffy ball on the other half, and it’s like a balancing
Max Branstetter 54:07
ball. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve seen that the gym before. Yeah, yeah.
Anne Candido 54:10
So I can do all kinds of fancy tricks on the bosu ball, including yoga poses, like Crow and like side planks and stuff like that, all the way up to like, you know, standing, balancing poses on BOSU balls. So that’s kind of like my party trick at the gym when I’m feeling like, Hey, you want to see a 49 year old woman, you know, do something different. So it gets a few looks
Max Branstetter 54:32
awesome. Bosu ball and I learned a new, a new word, a new a new ball. All right, April, what’s a weird talent you have?
April Martini 54:40
I don’t know that it’s a talent, but it people perceive it as a process, an obsession rather, is how many years I’ve actually been a runner, and the fact that I didn’t pick that up until I was an adult. So it wasn’t until college that I actually became a runner. And where it’s a weird it’s not, I wouldn’t call it a talent, but where the obsession comes in is, like, I just recently. Only bought Yaktrax to be able to run on the ice on the trail behind my house, because I refuse to miss days to do it. Now I will say that that is partially mental health and also physical health. Probably more mental health of being outside and doing all that. But people think I’m completely insane when I tell them that I do things like that. Other talents, I love vocabulary. Like, really, really love words to the point where, like, if I’m reading a book and there is a spelling error, I have a different opinion of the book, like it is, like, a really deep rooted obsession. And to your point about, like, what does your family something your family knows, or whatever? Like, my husband and sister will often be like, can you use words that the rest of us will understand? And it’s usually when I’m starting to get going about business or something that I’m really excited about all these words explode from my mouth that those around me are like, that’s dorky. And also, Stop showing off.
Anne Candido 55:57
I got one too. She’s really good at chalk art on the pavement.
Max Branstetter 56:01
Oh yeah, she’s
Anne Candido 56:03
really good at it. I mean, really good at it.
Max Branstetter 56:06
People see it in front of your house and they think you’re they’re like, Wow, your kids are so talented. And they’re like, Oh no, that was just me messing around with the
April Martini 56:13
Well, no, what I say is, what I say is, you know, thank god I spent all those 10s of 1000s of dollars going to a prestigious design school to be able to draw chalk. I mean, it’s really good, really good. I mean,
Anne Candido 56:26
it’s big too. It’s not just even, like, little chalk art. I mean, she could do big things. It’s all proportion. I mean, you know, most people, like, kind of do the big circle in their standing and, you know, they kind of get off at the end, not April’s. Aprils is all perfect. So I don’t know if she’s like, washes it down and starts it again. But I mean,
Max Branstetter 56:46
wow. Well, you braved it. We’re gonna wrap up with a super quick rapid fire, Q, A, so just jump out. Jump out answers. Jump out answers. That sounds right. Shout out answers when it goes quick. You guys ready for it? Yep, because we need to end this before I just can’t complete a single sentence. It’s happening. All right, let’s get wild. Skyline chili. Yay or Nay, no, no. Oh, and you guys,
April Martini 57:14
I work there, and I’m from here. Oh, you work there. Oh, I’ll eat the black beans and rice. But after working there and smelling like that. No.
Max Branstetter 57:22
All right, if you could only have one specific type of alcoholic beverage a glass for the rest of your life, red wine. How about red wine? I would probably say margaritas. Oh, okay, not martinis. Sorry, I couldn’t resist all right. And the last one, and I think this, you might have even asked me or somebody, one of your guests this before, it’s a really, really good question, and if not, I’m just complimenting my own question, who would you pick as the actresses to play April Martini named Candido in the forthright people movie? Oh my god, oh
April Martini 57:55
my Wow.
So interestingly, growing up, people used to say that I looked like Sarah Michelle Gellar, which I never saw. She’s gone. Let’s show my age. I probably wouldn’t pick her. She’s not a, yeah, she’s not on the making the rounds in that way anymore.
Anne Candido 58:18
I think I have mine because I go with the other Anne, I’d say Anne Hathaway.
April Martini 58:23
Oh,
that’s a really good one. I love her so much, you know I mean, because so I can’t pick for myself, but the one person on the other side of that, and I immediately went to double wars, proud of my head, because it’s one of my favorite movies. Meryl Streep is like, if I could go back in time, it would be a huge compliment to have her play me like I just have so much respect for that woman. Awesome. I sort of copped out on that, but
Anne Candido 58:51
he after seeing the Martha Stewart documentary, I’d like to see Martha Stewart play April. Interesting.
Max Branstetter 58:59
This is a fun depends how much you want to dive into that. One more
April Martini 59:03
about that. What does that mean? We’re going
Anne Candido 59:06
off the rails. I just think you kind of both have, like, that same kind of, like little like truth telling way about you. So I think she’d be able to capture who you are pretty easily, because I think it would come naturally and not in a bad way. That is totally not in like a put down whatsoever, that is a total compliment in what she’s been able to achieve and all that kind of stuff. So I did have a totally newfound respect and just admiration for her after that documentary. So now we’re given props for that, but I have a whole new lens on her, and, man, she has some one liners, so I appreciate that, but you’re not she’s not as funny. April’s not as funny as I am. So she’d have to probably tone that down a
April Martini 59:46
little, no. And I mean one liners like, like, in the way that you said, of like, just putting a point on it and being like, look, this is a thing nobody else is going to say. Here you go. I’ll say, Yeah, April’s really good at that, and it gets me in trouble.
Max Branstetter 59:58
Well, in the spirit of ForthRight, thank you both so much for doing this. This is awesome. I learned a ton about you. I know the audience is absolutely gonna love it as well. And you know, like how much I love partnering with you guys and working on your podcasts, and it’s a ton of fun every week. So in the spirit of that, thank you guys so much for coming on and being willing to do this hot seat, the unusual Hot Seat. And I know if anybody wants to learn more about your business, they can do so at ForthRight-People.com and then you want to shoutout ForthRight Business as well?
Anne Candido 1:00:30
You can get to ForthRight Business through ForthRight People, yep, so they can find out about us there. And
Max Branstetter 1:00:35
then Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business on your favorite podcast platform. Anything else you guys want to shout out, obviously, you can connect on LinkedIn, but any other CTAs, you got to go all marketing nerdy.
April Martini 1:00:46
We I mean, the biggest thing is, and especially like for me, I still really inherently enjoy meeting new people, and I know we both enjoy having conversations, and so don’t hesitate to reach out, because, as you’ve hopefully heard here, you never know what’s going to happen when you do that, but I just really I get so much of my energy when I meet someone new and interesting. So agreed, I did know that. Perfect
Max Branstetter 1:01:10
last thing, Final Thoughts, it could be just a few words of advice, whatever you want, send us home here. I
April Martini 1:01:15
think my big thing is, don’t waste your time doing something you hate. And I know we’ve all been in jobs where we’ve had to do it for a period of time, and I’m sitting in a seat where I’m an entrepreneur running my own show, but I feel like more and more in coaching, I’m spending time talking to people about, yes, their work, but also how they can be happier day to day. And I personally am always working to be more in the present, and like paying attention to those moments. And then the other thing I always say is, please take your vacation. Don’t let it just sit there and actually be on vacation.
Anne Candido 1:01:47
I was actually going to have something similar, because my word for this year is freedom. And so I think a lot of people get stuck in doing everything that they feel like they should go do, and they fail to ask themselves what they really want to go do. So I would encourage everybody to consider and do a little bit of a life assessment of, are you doing all the things that you want to be doing, that you feel called to do, and it needs to be something that’s central to your own why not just raising a family and those sorts of things? So assume those things are already part of what you want to leave a legacy on. But think about what your personal legacy is too, what you want to give back to the world that’s beyond your kids and those sorts of things,
Max Branstetter 1:02:35
and what a legacy Anne and April are creating. And as you can tell, in this podcast interview, there were no laughs had. It was all frowny faces and throwing food at each other, and I don’t, don’t even know where I’m going with this. And in April, thank you so much for coming on the Wild Business Growth podcast, sharing your Wild stories, your ForthRight People stories and Strategic Counsel, and thank you, Wild Listeners for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to fFollow the wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite podcast platform and Subscribe on YouTube for the video versions. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter You can also find us on Goodpods, where we are the number one all-time creativity podcast. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship meets puns, akin whatever to this episode. And you can Subscribe to that at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter Until next time, Oh, wait. I teased at the start of this episode that there will be a scheduling update for the Wild Business Growth podcast for the near term future. And the reason for that is, drum roll, please. Dana and I are having a baby! We are having a baby girl. Some of you know the news. Some of you may not know the news, and we’re obviously over the moon, excited. Can’t wait to meet the little one. And at the time of this recording, we just moved into our new place, got a little bit more extra space with the baby in mind, and we just can’t wait for the next chapter. I’ve been thinking about what to do from a “podcast paternity leave” standpoint, and decided that two months was a good time frame to take a pause on the podcast and focus on, of course, the baby, focus on Dana and on the On the work front. Make sure the focus is on my podcast production clients. And with that, taking a two month break from the podcast, taking a two month break from the newsletter as well as I. Yeah, a good amount of the social media marketing stuff I typically do on my social media channels. So what this means for you? The next Wild Business Growth podcast at the time of this recording will be coming out in April 2025, so a couple months off. As I mentioned, I’m going to set a record for saying two months in the meantime, this is an awesome time if you’re craving more Wild Business Growth content, to go back and check out some of the previous episodes that have been out there into the world. I know some of you have been with us since day one, and I like, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And for those who are recent, newer listeners, you know there are 321 episodes now, at the time of this recording, scroll through the catalog and Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also check out and hit Blog at MaxPodcasting.com and see many of the episodes, there great places to start are the episode specials. So like Episode 100 Special, Episode 200 Special. Episode 300 Special. Those are great, awesome moments and returning guests from those blocks of 100 episodes. And of course, Thanksgiving, every year we do the Thanksgiving Special, where I interview a family member and a family business focus. So, super exciting times ahead. Thank you so much always for tuning in. Can’t wait to get back at it. But in the meantime, we are so excited to welcome our little one into the world whose name is….I’m just kidding. We’re not revealing her name on the podcast just yet, but until next time, catch you on the flip side, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
