Mario Lanzarotti runs the Sovereign Advisor Group out of Cape Town. He was born in Germany to an Italian father, and his parents ran an Italian restaurant for nearly thirty years. They worked until one in the morning and there was nobody to watch him, so he spent his childhood evenings asleep in the storage room on top of the supplies. Mostly pizza dough.

He moved to New York in 2015 and talked his way from intern to co-founder of a custom shoe company. Then he spent five years running its operations badly enough to become the thing holding it back. Redoing work his team had already finished. Getting pulled back into client accounts. And telling himself, the whole time, that he didn't have time to build the systems that would have given him time.

It ended with a panic attack in the middle of his own influencer event. He walked out, sat down in Bryant Park, and called his girlfriend in Germany.

He sold the business in 2019. Since then he's worked with more than two thousand founders across fifteen countries, on two things at once. The operating standards and acquisition systems a business actually needs. And the reason the founder never gets around to building them.

He's also my advisor, which I should probably admit up front. He made me do the calendar exercise you'll hear in this episode. I didn't like the number.

Find Mario on LinkedIn, where he posts Monday to Friday. His site is mariolanzarotti.com, and you can apply there for a free diagnostic session or join the Founders Room, a weekly session he runs for founders.

Hosted by Ashley DePiano, Duct Tape Marketing certified fractional CMO.

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