EPISODE 213 WITH ANDREW DUPY: THE ART OF BUILDING BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

Ready Yet?! Podcast Episode 213 with guest Andew Dupy: The Art of Building Business Relationships 

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: All right. Hello. Hello. And welcome to this episode of the ready yet podcast with my guest today, Andrew Dupy and we, I always ask people like, what do you want to talk about? How do you want to launch this? Is there anything, and we’ve just had an entire conversation about both of our teams screwing up both of our schedules, the holidays, the tech not working the real life of people.

Erin Marcus: And then I said to you, well, let’s talk about connecting as a human first, because like. That’s the human side of business. Absolutely. And it’s like, this is how this works. So I can’t wait to talk to you about that, how it applies for your team, how it applies for you. But before we all get in all that, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit officially what you, what you do, who you are, all the good stuff.

Andrew Dupy: Yeah. Well, great, great introduction. Yeah. I love. That we are already having a good conversation. So, yeah, I’m Andrew Dupy. I’m the chief relationship officer at Leaders Press. And what that means is a very fancy way of saying I run the podcast. Right.

Erin Marcus: I get to do this all day long. I just talk to people.

Erin Marcus: That’s what I do.

Andrew Dupy: Well, you know, there’s more to it than that. I also help with our joint ventures and our referral programs. I mean, there’s a whole lot of hats that. That I wear. But my biggest goal in running a leader that my part of leaders press is to help make connections and help people be able to get their books made if they want to make a book.

Andrew Dupy: If they want to write a book, we’re a hybrid publisher. And what we do is help CEOs and entrepreneurs produce the book of hopefully their dreams that Goes on to become bestsellers and be able to actually use as either a lead generator magnet or as a legacy piece, just anything that they need that book to integrate into their business.

Andrew Dupy: That’s what leaders press does. It helps them get there. Love

Erin Marcus: it. Love it. And I do really like the fact that the company even has a relationship, right? Someone in charge of relationships. I was at an event last week in Salt Lake City and the whole intention was just connecting. Who’s in the room and how can we help each other?

Erin Marcus: Who’s in the room and how can we help each other? And as much as I absolutely, hands down, agree that a book is a fantastic tool. It can be used in so many ways. The bottom line is connecting as a human, like, how can I help you? What can we do? And it, to me, it’s like a business hack. It’s a shortcut.

Andrew Dupy: Yeah, it is.

Andrew Dupy: And one of our early authors is books behind me, Chris Katranis. He wrote Sorry, give me one sec.

Erin Marcus: Which one

Andrew Dupy: of these is it? This is the first time I’ve ever drawn a blank on a book. That’s

Erin Marcus: hysterical. Welcome to my world. You’re in good company.

Andrew Dupy: We can fix that. One of our early clients, Chris Katranis, one of the things that he said to us when he was writing his book was that he wanted to replace his business card.

Andrew Dupy: When he goes into a room because he worked for a battle on telecom, he goes into rooms with a lot of people to talk about in the Middle East to talk about building infrastructure, building tech infrastructure. There’s a lot of people in that business. And what better way to build trust, that T word, than to start by giving a book away to give someone your story that you can sit and read and then, you know, by the time you’re done with it, you know the person.

Andrew Dupy: And so you’re right. It’s about building a relationship. It’s about actually building that connection way more than you can by sitting in a room for an hour and trying to

Erin Marcus: talk with somebody. Absolutely. And I like the approach of using the book as a business card because People who think that writing a book is going to make them millions.

Erin Marcus: That’s not really how that

Andrew Dupy: works. No, it’s not really. If you’re going to try to make millions of dollars writing books, get into romance. Young adult.

Erin Marcus: Get in a young adult, you know,

Andrew Dupy: romance. Get into fiction. Get into those kind of things that are producing and actually have like an entire industry around how those generate royalties.

Andrew Dupy: Nonfiction doesn’t really generate royalties very strongly. I mean, they can for, for, but for every one chicken soup of the soul, that’s going to make Canfield millions and millions of dollars. There’s a thousand nonfiction books that aren’t going to make that kind of thing in sales. But what a nonfiction book can do is become that part of your business that can lead you into other ways in which you make money, different ways to get ROI.

Andrew Dupy: And that includes speaking engagements, coming on podcasts. I mean, that’s why we have our podcast. It’s not just to meet new people, but to help our authors promote their books and actually begin to start making those connections and making sales. There’s all kinds of things you do with the book. Yeah.

Erin Marcus: And the thing about books that is, to me, similar to podcasts, and I think that’s why they go so well together, is it’s such long form content that you do actually get to know the person. Yes. Absolutely. Right? You do actually. It’s the thing that I love about podcasting over, say, even just going to a quick networking event.

Erin Marcus: Because by the time you and I had our connect call and then I’m on your podcast and you’re on my podcast and you know, you talked before and you talk after you actually know the other person and it’s the same thing with the book. You feel like, especially nonfiction, you feel like you know the person.

Andrew Dupy: Absolutely. The thing about it, it’s all about the concept. If anybody’s in sales, they understand the concept of pre framing. They want someone that comes into the room that they’re going to sell to. They want them to be prepared when they come into the room to buy. They don’t want to have to actually go through the process of teaching them about the product and why you should trust me, why you should connect with me.

Andrew Dupy: So that’s really what books podcast speaking does is it creates that idea. You can kind of hack that old pre framing process and

Erin Marcus: build that report. It’s one more tool. And I say that, you know, I say that in my marketing, my goal is to be so authentically me, not just in my personality, but in my knowledge and in what I do.

Erin Marcus: So that by the time you and I do talk, it’s a confirmation conversation, not a consideration conversation.

Andrew Dupy: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s even more important with books because There’s a long journey that a person goes on before they’re going to sit down and write a book, or asks a company like ours to help them write a book.

Andrew Dupy: You know, ghostwriters, writing professionals, helpers, all the kind of things that you can bring in to make that book happen. But you don’t Usually start with, Oh, I just want to make this happen and go. You’ve got to come up with the idea. You’ve got to come. There’s a long process. There’s a lot of wheels that turn before anybody actually sits down and does it.

Andrew Dupy: So the more we can educate people about why you should do it, what the benefits are, that really helps. The people that are on the fence that are trying to decide, you know, is this something good for me? It gets them to that stage. And if I’m the one that helps them decide that, and they decide to actually buy a book from my company, then hey, more power to it.

Erin Marcus: And if not, we’ll point you in the right direction for whatever

Andrew Dupy: it is. Yeah, and we do. I mean, we have a fictional label as well, but if someone comes to us and says, Just doesn’t fit with us at all. Well, guess what? That’s what chief relationship officer is for. I love referrals.

Erin Marcus: A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Erin Marcus: So I got to ask, how did you get here? Because I remember from our conversation, this didn’t make sense for you. I can’t remember the details, but it’s not the most obvious path in the world.

Andrew Dupy: No, it was not the most. I was a history teacher. I was a history teacher. I was in school administration. I had spent

Erin Marcus: many years.

Erin Marcus: Loads of fun. You’ve got to be so happy.

Andrew Dupy: Oh, I, I, the worst job I ever had

Erin Marcus: was principal. If the stories I see on Tik Tok are true, you must be so happy to have made

Andrew Dupy: that. Oh yeah. I tell you if every, everyone that’s listening right now, that’s an ex principal or a current principal knows exactly what I say.

Andrew Dupy: It’s the worst job in the world because you’re a bad guy to everybody in the room. Every single teacher, every single student, every single parent, you’re, you’re the bad guy. And you have to be in many cases in those situations, but yeah, that was what I was trained in. I mean, I, I had degrees in history and English, so I did actually do my literature stuff in, in, in college.

Andrew Dupy: I’m not completely new to the

Erin Marcus: articulate sentences together with an intention. Yeah.

Andrew Dupy: I was published before I worked for the leader’s press, but in history though, but yeah, it was, it was that situation though. It was, it was the burnout of public education. It was the burnout of school administration and all throughout.

Andrew Dupy: my life, I had also worked in sales because teachers have to usually carry you to jobs, and I was very good at it because my dad grew up as a salesman, and he taught me how to be a salesman. Just, just hanging around him, I learned every single sales by opmosis, and I walked, probably seen Glengarry Glen Ross a hundred times and enough to realize that it’s a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.

Andrew Dupy: And my, my ex wife my current, my wife at the time bound Leaders Press and said, you know, this is a brand new startup. It’s in a field you worked in before. It’s in a field you’re trained in. Talk to Alinka and see if they need a salesperson because she’s doing this all herself. And she did. So

Erin Marcus: how, I want to get into that a little bit more because I talk about leaving corporate or leaving institutional jobs, right?

Erin Marcus: Whether it’s corporate, whether it’s education, these are longstanding set paths and doing something more entrepreneurial, whether you own it or whether you become part of it. And I think one of the things, and I don’t know how long ago you did this, but I think one of the things we’re seeing now is people, we always thought those more institutional jobs were the definition of security.

Erin Marcus: Right. And we’re seeing that that’s

Andrew Dupy: not the case. No, no, it’s not the case. And I got out right at the right time. I’ve been with Leaders Press now for a little over five years. So it was 2019, 2018, 2019. Kind of a little bit of a fuzzy year when I actually started. But yeah, but then 2020 was right around the corner.

Andrew Dupy: And at that point Those institutional jobs became not, not,

Erin Marcus: I mean, oh my God, I can’t even imagine. I can’t even, and being

Andrew Dupy: a history teacher as well. Anybody out there that is, has or ever been a history teacher realizes that the liberal arts are not as secure and even less secure than the, yeah, even less secure.

Andrew Dupy: So it’s. Yeah, it was a leap of faith and yeah, it was a challenge and yeah, it was kind of scary because there was a time when, when this company started up and I was full time and I was leaving my salary job and I was making three or 400 a month for a very, very brief window. Yeah, it was a little scary, but the opportunity, I mean, I could just see that this field was growing so much that to turn down the opportunity when it was there to get into it was.

Andrew Dupy: Far worse than Continuera was and

Erin Marcus: yeah, so what’s been the biggest, what’s been the biggest surprise benefit to it? What, what’s a part of leaving a traditional job and going into more that you were like, Oh, I never expected that. And this is amazing, the connections I was going to say, I was going to say, if you let me, if you need me, I’ll go first.

Erin Marcus: And that’s mine. The, the people you meet, networking, connecting. is so amazing.

Andrew Dupy: It’s invaluable. I mean, all those authors that I’ve sold behind me that’s, that’s the tip of the iceberg. People I’ve worked with that I never would have been in the same room with like Alex Mendozian, Dan Cushel and many, many others that I’ve learned so much from.

Andrew Dupy: John Kilcullen, the founder of Four Dummies, who’s Well,

Erin Marcus: and the other piece that I’m sure you’ve seen this, if it hasn’t been articulated, the other piece that I’ve noticed is regular jobs are inherently competitive, right? Because you have a hundred, you know, take principals, you have a hundred people at this level and only three get promoted and only one get promoted.

Erin Marcus: It’s inherently competitive. But when you remove those constraints and everybody can just. Create whatever they want and as much as they are willing to, there’s no reason to be competitive.

Andrew Dupy: No, no, it’s, you’re, when you’re locked into an institutional job, yeah, you’re, you’re never, it’s almost pays not to get noticed in those jobs.

Andrew Dupy: In fact, it, it is a teacher, especially. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Erin Marcus: Let me just frame this up. I come out of Chicago public schools in the 70s and 80s. So whatever you’re thinking, mine was worse. Like I have a real skewed opinion and experience that’s worse than average for public schools.

Andrew Dupy: I can imagine. Yeah, I definitely can. But yeah, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna want to go out and and work to actually have SEO give you your own Google search category.

Andrew Dupy: You don’t want to have all of those things that bring you don’t want to have 10, 000 people on your LinkedIn because the more noticed you are, the more you rock boats, the more there’s people, the more they’re The more opportunities for the bureaucracy to find issues with who you are, what you say, when they really just want you to be in the classroom and be a babysitter.

Erin Marcus: Well, and they really do, whether it’s the teachers or the parents or whomever, it does look like people are looking for those opportunities to harm others.

Andrew Dupy: Yeah, it does. And you know, I’m absolutely that’s why I’m the biggest fan of teachers in the world. It’s one of the hardest jobs in the world. And we need we need more help for them to give them more freedom to do what

Erin Marcus: they do.

Erin Marcus: So let’s flip it and go the other way. What is something you’re like, Yeah, this sucked, didn’t want it. Just don’t do this and you’ll get farther along than I did. Like, I love sharing the failures because it shortens people’s learning curves.

Andrew Dupy: Oh, yeah. I mean, I tell you the, the, I guess the hardest thing that it was getting into the business.

Andrew Dupy: I don’t know. I’m trying to really think of something that absolutely sucks about what I’m doing now and it’s really hard to find it, which is

Erin Marcus: great, which is great. Like, but I, you know. In the process, I think the shiny object syndrome, the not, the, the thinking you have to know everything like I watch and I think about my mistakes like a lot of the mistakes I think we make as small business owners.

Erin Marcus: Yes, they have an effect on our revenue, but truthfully they have a bigger effect on our feelings, emotions, right?

Andrew Dupy: I think that the in the early going, I mean, even now I’m not going to say early going because every single company has its ups and downs. Every single company has its successes and failures.

Andrew Dupy: And I think the worst thing is always when we come up with some kind of an idea, you know, the executive staff gets together or Lincoln and I are on our weekly meeting where we just we literally brainstorm for an hour just every single week. Her and I and, you know, when we come up with something just.

Andrew Dupy: Man, this sounds like a bang on, a bang on plan. This, this new mastermind that we’re going to put together or this, this new initiative with this, with a certain book, and then it just doesn’t work. And for whatever reason, and you 10 steps back when something like that happens, especially if it’s a really big project that you put a lot of effort into, it happens to every single solitary company.

Erin Marcus: And I think it happens consistently. I think people don’t, you know, there’s one thing in this that’s happened over the last decades is we have so vilified failure that when you experience that, you think the world is coming to an

Andrew Dupy: end, right? Yeah, you do. And the dangerous thing to do, and we Almost had this learned this lesson the hard way is to ignore it when something really goes wrong and to say, you know, we’re just going to keep going the same way that we’ve been going.

Andrew Dupy: And we’re, and we’re just going to, we’re just going to push through it. That’s actually why our biggest competitor went out of business two years ago. Abruptly. One year ago now. Yeah. They, they, they, continue to expand, they continue to push, they continue to just keep trying to do the same thing over and over and over again when the market wasn’t there and wasn’t willing to accept what they were doing.

Andrew Dupy: And we changed when that happened. We actually looked at them and said, okay, goodness, we’re doing the same thing they were doing. Our trajectory could be the same way. So let’s pivot. Let’s change. Let’s make hard decisions. If we have to, you know, some of the executives are going to have to take some pay cuts for a little while so that we can do some things.

Andrew Dupy: And that’s that’s what you have to do. That’s what you have to make the hard choices. And when you do that, then you have the benefit of learning from the mistakes. Rather than the mistakes being what brings you down.

Erin Marcus: Well, and one of the things you’re talking about without saying it, then you’ve mentioned it several times is how much effort you guys are putting.

Erin Marcus: And it’s, I’m from Chicago. So it’s all you guys. I know the founders, y’all down here, you guys up here. So, but how much effort energy intention that you guys are putting into strategy and analysis. You’re not just, Buried in the business. You try to take that step back and look at it externally.

Andrew Dupy: Yeah, you always have to do that.

Andrew Dupy: A strategy, I mean, the strategy is one of the most important things to have in a company. That’s why you need to have a diverse group of people, not just at the top. I mean, I’m not just talking about the executives. I, people on my staff I listen to, people in our sales staff that, that we, we listen to their feedback all the time, all the way down.

Andrew Dupy: To just the people that are building the books, the ones that are on the ground all the time, they have the most answers because they’re the ones that are talking to our clients every day. They’re the ones that are actually interfacing with the editors. They’re the ones that are doing the actual real groundwork on everything.

Andrew Dupy: So my gosh, I really want to hear what they have to say. So you want to have a room that’s full of different personalities. You want to have somebody that’s the spreadsheet person that just loves to bury their head in numbers and be able to analyze something or somebody like me, that is. That when I see a spreadsheet, I kind of wet myself and run and

Erin Marcus: scream at you.

Erin Marcus: One of the things we talked about, like, and I love that you’re saying this because I just had this conversation with my COO because in my coaching programs, in my consulting programs, she is part of the program. She is part of all of my programs because we want not just the strategy that I bring to the table, but the implementation that she can bring to the table.

Erin Marcus: And too many times you don’t get that and It’s a, it’s an ongoing joke with my clients. They know when, when I say, okay, well, we’re going to do this, this, and this, and this would work great for you. And they say, well, okay, so what do I need to do next? And then they’ll look right at me and go, well, we know it’s not going to come from, you know, we know we need her.

Erin Marcus: The next step is her and. It’s that easy, like, I talk a lot about, there’s a lot of people out there telling you to own your worth, and, and, and that’s fantastic, but you can be just as emphatic about what you don’t know how to do. It makes your life very easy.

Andrew Dupy: Yeah, it is important, the way that you fix that is you don’t let yourself compartmentalize too much.

Andrew Dupy: Because I mean, with our company, we’ve got operations, we’ve got sales, we’ve got technical, and we’ve got what I do, which is a hodgepodge. And then, you know, link is of course at the top overseeing everything. But when we’re in a sales meeting, I’m in every single sales meeting, even though I’m not over sales anymore.

Andrew Dupy: So, but I I’m still there and I still do sales occasionally that helps. Operations is so integral to what I do because I need to interface with our authors. I need to know when our books are coming out. I need to actually have operations be out there looking for connections like connections with you or connections with other podcasts and say, Oh, hey, there’s a podcast looking for You want to start doing a quid pro quo or building the referrals.

Andrew Dupy: And then technical, of course, brings everybody together. So all those heads need to be in the room and we need to have people like me that are a researcher that, I mean, that’s history degree. I learned how to do research. So I constantly am digging and learning and things.

Erin Marcus: And what you’re also talking about is that there’s people on the team that.

Erin Marcus: Are aware of the business, but they’re not doing all the business, right? They’re the ones listening to everything that’s going on so that they can cast the next vision for the business.

Andrew Dupy: Exactly. Yeah. And, and that and you want to hear what everybody’s voice is about, you know, what are the future because when a link that brings a big picture idea because that’s that’s her job as the CEO, she needs to, she needs to see where we’re going to be in 10 years.

Andrew Dupy: And my job is to advise her and continue

Erin Marcus: your job is to bring her back to like two years.

Andrew Dupy: Oh yeah, exactly. But, but yeah, but, but we, we need to have the voice of, you know, what, what does the big vision mean for operations? What does the big vision mean for sales? How are we, how do these people have, what, what is our head of sales and whatever head of ops, what are their opinions on what they can do?

Andrew Dupy: Or, or do they have their own big vision? Is it wrong? And it’s important to have people in the room to say, and I’ve said it many times to Alinka, it’s like, no.

Erin Marcus: And my team will tell me when I’ve completely, like, really? And you need that, right? I mean, that was one of my big worries leaving corporate was I was in such a collaborative business company that I’m like, okay, me sitting here with my Animals, my cat, my dog, whatever is not where these ideas are going to come from.

Erin Marcus: And I do watch even in and going back to what it is that you guys do with your books, even going back into a business, which is effectively in some cases, a subject matter expert speaking or consulting or doing their thing, it’s still dangerous for that person to be the only thought in the business.

Andrew Dupy: Absolutely. And, and that’s, and it’s really important in what we do because we need to always be thinking of our authors. Our authors, they pay our bills, they’re the ones that write our books, they’re the ones that run everything. We really don’t sell a product. In fact, that’s what my book Don’t Buy the Watch is about, is we don’t sell products, we sell partnerships.

Andrew Dupy: And when somebody comes into the room that is an author, we need to know what they need. Everybody and every single author is different. So that’s why it’s all the way down to even the project directors that their voices are so important in what we do because we need to know what every single book is.

Andrew Dupy: We need to know what every single author’s goal is. Some of them are going to want a speaking engagement. gigs. Some of them are going to just want to have this book so that their kids can read it in decades later. Everybody has something different. So we always have to have, our big vision has to always think about that, you know, bread and butter.

Andrew Dupy: And I

Erin Marcus: really want to, you know, for people who are listening to this, look at your own business. Where are you too myopic, right? Where are you not getting the other side of a potential story? And, right, it’s one of the things I talk about is how do you get over the bridge from solopreneur to business owner?

Erin Marcus: This is how you do it. And the other thing it sounds like your company has done, which I love, is the way I phrase it is hire for horsepower. Don’t hire task rabbits. Yeah. Right. Don’t hire people just to check a box and take things off your to do list because now you’ve just replaced doing the thing with managing the thing.

Erin Marcus: That doesn’t actually move you further ahead.

Andrew Dupy: And that’s really been integral and that’s how we have generally found people. It’s not really been a, oh, we’re just going to get somebody that’s a cookie cutter fit for this one thing. We’ve, we’ve grown as much from within as we have from without. And that’s, I mean, I started as a salesman.

Andrew Dupy: Our chief operating officer started as an interviewer. It, we, we, it, it all. One

Erin Marcus: of the things that I’ve learned, it was a horrible thing to learn when it happened to me, but it makes so much sense now, is for those of us who were successful in our jobs, whether you were the principal, whether you were, you know, whatever it was, in corporate, whatever it was, Once you leave, you realize you were highly successful on a very narrow path that somebody else created.

Erin Marcus: Yes. And once those bumpers are out of the gutters, once you have to create your path, it’s a whole different world. Now, it can be absolutely amazing. Yeah. It can also be a bit of

Andrew Dupy: a, you know, One piece of advice I will give, and this is something that Alinka learned very early on, and I learned this working under her, and we use this for everybody.

Andrew Dupy: I use this for my staff, operations uses this for theirs. Don’t think that the person that’s in your department is necessarily going to be the perfect fit for the one little job that they have. Always think about other things they could do, like myself. I started in sales for a while. I ran the sales department, but that wasn’t what I was best at.

Andrew Dupy: And that wasn’t the thing that I was the best fit for in the company because the link is calls me the camera allowed you to grow exactly. And you should always do that with your employees, find the places that they can grow, learn about who they are. If you have somebody that’s a fantastic spreadsheet person that that’s doing really well at it, but then they’re practicing in the mirror.

Andrew Dupy: And, and, and you hear them making funny voices and they seem to be very gregarious, talk to them about, Hey, maybe do you want to do something more than just do data entry? Is there, are there other things that you have or other abilities that you have? Maybe, maybe you should be the podcast host.

Erin Marcus: This is something that I don’t talk to a lot of people about, but.

Erin Marcus: The idea, one of the amazing things of being a business owner, then so different than corporate is the ability to be flexible with people and give them their dream jobs. Like how freaking amazing is it when you have team members who are able to self actualize within the company?

Andrew Dupy: That is, that is so important because I, I worked in between the, at one point in between teaching, I worked for several years as a fraud investigator.

Andrew Dupy: It was during, right after the whole, you know, the, the the Fannie Mae Freddie Mac collapse. Teaching job did not went away. And of course, fraud investigators were being hired everywhere. So as a researcher, I got that job, but it was very corporate. It was very bureaucratic. And it was very much everybody do their thing, sit in their cubicle.

Andrew Dupy: You know, you to, to, to move up, you’ve got to do a pitch to middle management and middle management needs to the next level to the next level. And there’s all the structures and nobody get out of their place. Nobody, nobody take initiative. Everybody do, do your thing. And. Man, that can really stifle people.

Andrew Dupy: And I think a lot of people get burnout and they think that that’s, that’s the only way that it can be. And in America, we have this concept of if somebody doesn’t work, if you’re in a big corporate thing like that, like I was in a training class of 10 people of which two made it. And then of those two, I was the only one that stayed there for more than a year.

Andrew Dupy: And that’s because they didn’t give anybody a chance. They’re like, okay, these five people don’t work as investigators. They’re fired this one. Now they’re not, they’re fired. And they just move and they churn where, you know, maybe they should have asked, well, what other thing in our company can they do?

Andrew Dupy: And that’s what we do internally at leaders press is we’ve had people that we’ve hired, they haven’t really worked out at their job, but the next step isn’t fire them and go hire another person. The step is sit around and talk to the managers. What do they do well? Is there something we have where they might be able to grow more?

Andrew Dupy: And that is the beauty of being an entrepreneur, is that you can create that kind of culture in your company from the very beginning. Well, and to me it

Erin Marcus: leaks externally because if that’s how you’re treating people internally, imagine how amazing you’re treating the clients.

Andrew Dupy: Exactly. That, that, That is exactly what creates a company that’s unique selling proposition is people.

Andrew Dupy: That’s, that’s what I mentioned in the very beginning. I think that’s our unique selling proposition because your clients are going to understand the difference between, like, say our former competitor, I’m not going to mention their name, they’re gone, but who was very corporate, very bureaucratic, very much That exactly what I’ve described and very much cookie cutter.

Andrew Dupy: It was the books, the books were clone stamps. It was coming out like that versus a company where they’re going to be coming in and they’re going to know the people. They’re going to talk to the people are going to trust the people, and they’re going to have direct interface with project managers that they know are there.

Andrew Dupy: Because they, because they’re good at it.

Erin Marcus: Well, and if you’re going to treat your internal people as individuals, you’re going to treat your external people as individuals.

Andrew Dupy: Exactly. And that’s what we want our authors to be able to see is that we, we take our own personnel seriously, so seriously. Because we want to deliver the best possible product.

Andrew Dupy: That is the end goal of everything we’re doing. We’re not, we’re not doing this just to be humanitarian and say, Oh, wonderful. Let’s, let’s, let’s give everybody their dream. You’re not doing

Erin Marcus: this to just say, so what makes you different? We care about our,

Andrew Dupy: that’s what you’re going to have a vested reason for caring.

Andrew Dupy: I mean, I will be completely open and honest. We want to make money,

Erin Marcus: but you can make money and be a good human. Or you can make money and be a crappy human. And who do you want to surround yourself with?

Andrew Dupy: You, I believe very firmly that you can make more money being a good human than a crappy human. It might be harder and it is harder and not might be.

Andrew Dupy: But I do believe that be by having that kind of North star and internal accountability and, and being able to say, Hey, let’s continually do right by our customers. That to me, good business begets good business. I believe that very firmly. I know there are people that are, that disagree with that. I’ve been in rooms with people that have said, never, never do that unless you want to go to the poor house.

Andrew Dupy: I disagree.

Erin Marcus: I, I 100 percent you and I agree on that. So if people want to reach out to you, learn more about how you can help them, work with people who don’t just say they care about you, but like actually walk their talk, what is the best way for them to get ahold of

Andrew Dupy: you? Well, we have the web, we, we got the EORL, no Cyber squatters for us, so it’s leaders press.com.

Andrew Dupy: Very easy to go to leaders press.com, everything is there. That also links to our, my podcast, which is Leaders Talk. Got the branding, . Yes. Good job. Good job. Yeah, you can, yeah, it’d be down at the bottom of the link to our podcast, so you can come and hear me, talk to people like Erin or. Many of our other guests whose brains I pick all the time.

Andrew Dupy: And yeah, you can directly contact me through leaderspress. com. If you want to ever talk to even me about having a book I’m always willing to have that conversation. You know, don’t have to go through the sales staff. Come right to me. I’ll have it.

Erin Marcus: Love it. We’ll make sure the link is in the show notes to make it easy for people.

Erin Marcus: Thank you for hanging out with me for a while today and your stories and your time and your energy. Cause you know, it’s fun. It was fun. Thank you. Awesome.