The Winning Formula for Customer and Investor Success With Mark Gatto

Mark Gatto is the Co-founder and Co-CEO of CION Investment Group, a leading manager of alternative investment solutions designed to redefine how individual investors build their portfolios and meet their long-term investment goals. CION manages CION Investment Corporation, a leading BDC listed on the NYSE (NYSE: CION), and sponsors, through CION Ares Management, CION Ares Diversified Credit Fund, a globally diversified interval fund. Mark's diverse experience ranges from executive roles at international companies to founding a specialty business consulting firm and practicing law. His leadership is characterized by a people-first mentality and a commitment to providing access to institutional-quality alternative investments for individual investors.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [1:58] Mark Gatto shares CION Investment's unique vision for making institutional-quality investments accessible to individual investors

• [3:21] What are alternative investments, and why are they crucial for a diversified portfolio?

• [10:33] Insights into the various asset classes within alternative investments and how they manage risk

• [14:44] How CION Investments measures and ensures exceptional customer service during market uncertainties

• [20:03] Mark explains the value of authenticity in cultivating customer loyalty during economic downturns

• [22:58] The critical importance of building and leading a strong team that embraces your company's vision

• [23:53] How artificial intelligence can improve efficiency without replacing the human touch in customer service

• [25:50] Mark's leadership style and approach
  

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered how the elites' investment strategies can unlock new potentials for the everyday investor? What if there was a way to democratize access to these sophisticated opportunities? Are our traditional views on stock and bond investment holding us back from financial greatness?

Mark Gatto, an experienced professional in the investment industry, breaks down the barriers to institutional-quality investments for individual investors. He shares the philosophy that led CION to pioneer access to alternative investment solutions, overcoming challenges of affordability, transparency, and accessibility. His commitment to educating financial advisors and individual investors about the dynamic landscape of alternative investments is evident as he outlines the impact of these strategies on risk management and portfolio performance. Armed with deep industry knowledge, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a football coach's leadership lessons, Mark exemplifies how embracing adversity can foster growth and solidify customer trust.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Mark Gatto, Co-founder and Co-CEO of CION Investment Group, about democratizing alternative investments. Mark talks about alternative investments and why they are crucial for a diversified portfolio, the various asset classes within alternative investments, how they manage risk, and the business philosophies and strategies that have made CION Investments stand out in a competitive market.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quik! 

• Richard Walker on LinkedIn  

• Mark Gatto on LinkedIn  

• CION Investment 

• "Maximizing Customer Success Through Intelligent Cash Management With Michael Halloran" on The Customer Wins 

• "Unleashing Your Potential as a Breakaway Advisor With Jason Barber" on The Customer Wins 

• "Growing Through Active Listening and Good Communication With Mike Row of Future Capital" on The Customer Wins 

• Michael Reisner on LinkedIn
  

Quotable Moments:

• "When there are problems, we don't shy away from them, and we're very transparent."

• "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."

• "If you're in a storm and you're on a boat, the leaders are the ones who show that they're not scared."

• "AI will help us perform better for our clients, but human beings are still first and foremost."

• "Building a great team around you is key; you can't do everything yourself."
  

Action Steps:

1. Embrace education as a tool for customer empowerment: This fosters informed decision-making.

2. Prioritize transparency, especially during challenging market conditions: Transparency builds trust and loyalty among clients, as evidenced by CION Investments' proactive communication strategy in uncertain economic times.

3. Leverage technology like AI to enhance business operations without replacing the need for human connections: Integrating technology can streamline processes while preserving the personal touch essential in financial services, which balances efficiency and client relationships.

4. Invest in building and nurturing a strong team that aligns with your business values and vision: A dedicated team can extend the founder's leadership and continue delivering consistent customer experiences.

5. Continuously adapt and evolve your investment strategy to keep pace with market trends and customer needs: Staying current and flexible in your approach can capitalize on new opportunities and better serve clients' financial goals, as demonstrated by CION's commitment to evolving their investment products.

Sponsor for this episode...

This is brought to you by Quik!

At Quik!, we provide forms automation and management solutions for companies seeking to maximize their potential productivity.

Using our FormXtract API, you can submit your completed forms and get clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate.

Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.

Meanwhile, our mission is to help the top firms in the financial industry raise their bottom line by streamlining the customer experience with automated, convenient solutions.

Go to www.quickforms.com to learn more, or contact us with questions at support@quikforms.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:02 

Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.

Richard Walker 0:12 

Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Michael Halloran of Max My Interest, Jason Barber of Uptick Partners, and Mike Row of Future Capital. Today, I get to speak with Mark Gatto, who is co-founder and co CEO of CION Investments. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik! using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context, rich data that is 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started.

All right, I'm really excited to talk to today's guest, Mark Gatto is co-founder, co CEO, co-president of CION Investment Group and CION Investment Corporation. He's also a director and CO CEO of CION Ares Diversified Credit Fund, and he serves on the Investment Committee of both of his companies and the Investment Allocation Committee of the credit fund. Mark has also been an executive for a leading international product development and marketing company, a specialty business consulting firm, and an attorney in private practice. Mark, welcome to The Customer Wins.

Mark Gatto 1:38 

Thank you, Richard. It's a pleasure to be here today.

Richard Walker 1:40 

I'm excited to talk to you. So for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they've built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. Mark, let's understand your business a little better. How does your company help people?

Mark Gatto 1:56 

So CION Investments, we are a open, architectured investment solutions provider, alternative investment solutions provider. And I think it's an important distinction, because when we think about investment management, when we think about alternative investments, we typically think of high profile names, the blackstones, the KKR, the Apollos of the world that really have serviced institutional investors, large organizations, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, pension funds, ultra high net worth, individuals and historically, there's been zero access for individual investors.

And we, as a firm, focus on that part of the market. We are exclusively dedicated to providing these interesting, appropriate alternative investment solutions to individual investors through their financial advisors. So we're trying to help not only the financial advisors win, but ultimately the investor win by giving them access to institutional quality alternate investments in structures and wrappers that address the historical shortcomings of traditional alternative investments. So we are highly, highly focused on, on that market.

Richard Walker 3:12 

Okay, so let's understand a little bit better alternative investments. So what does that encompass for you guys? I mean, you're not stock pickers, I guess.

Mark Gatto 3:21 

No, we're not stock pickers. So if we look at the investment landscape, you people are very familiar with traditional investment, stocks and bonds and historically, individual investors, especially, they would allocate capital to what we would call the traditional 60/40, portfolio allocation, and their advisor would recommend 60% of that portfolio in stocks or funds of stocks that trade daily and give investors access to their capital on a daily basis. And also they would recommend investing in bonds, whether those would be bank loans or high yield bonds or US Treasuries, but effectively liquid securities that would provide the return that historically, investors would need to plan for retirement and do things of that nature, however, alternative investments have been a major part of large institutions portfolio allocations.

Ultra high net worth individuals would allocate a substantial portion of their portfolio to alternatives, so their portfolio allocation makes would look more like 50, 40, 10 or 40, 40, 20, with the smaller portion of that being in alternatives. And these alternative investments would drive the returns of their portfolios to exceed what an individual investor would experience in their portfolio. Now, for many, many years, this was sufficient for the individual investor. Stocks and bonds could give you a healthy return. But as you as you move forward and you look at the more recent times, that hasn't been the case where traditional assets have not performed in that way, especially on the fixed income side.

So your bonds and your bank loans and high yield bonds have not been able to deliver the types of yields that people are accustomed to. We've been in a very, very low interest rate environment up until recently, and as a result, alternative investments have been a needed portion of a portfolio. The problem has been that individual investors could never access the types of alternative investments that institutional investors were taking advantage of, and that's because there were incredibly high minimums you would need seven figures to get into an investment with a traditional alternative asset manager. There was no liquidity, so money would be locked up for many, many years, seven to 10 years, and you couldn't get access to it. There was very little transparency around these types of investments, so they weren't really appropriate for individual investors. And we're talking, looking back now into the early 2000s when we started this business, we felt that there was a huge opportunity to service the individual investor.

We kind of went against the grain, if you will, where a lot of asset managers were focused on institutions as their source of funds and their source of capital, and that was not only because of the type of investing that we were doing, but we were able to build a distribution franchise that had access to these investors through their financial advisors. So with those two pieces of a puzzle, we felt that we could do that. And when you fast forward a little bit, and you go to sort of the 2010 ish, 2000, late 2000, 2010 2011 legal structure, fund structure, started to evolve, and they started to develop in a way that individual investors could get access to these types of products and structures such as a business development company, which is a fund that we have and manage interval funds, which is also a structure that we have on our platform, investors can get in for as little as $1,000 so they have incredible access now to alternative investments, and also, with respect to these types of structures, there is limited liquidity so they can get access to their capital and not have to wait seven to 10 years to see a return on their investment.

Specifically, these types of funds offer a quarterly redemption program that allow the investor, on a quarterly basis or periodic basis to get capital if needed. So today, a typical individual investor will have an allocation to alternative investments, and that's a groundbreaking thing when you think about it, historically speaking, because they haven't had those opportunities, and if they did have those opportunities, they were always the one left holding the hot potato, if you will. Right? They would get into the opportunity way too late. The institutions would have milked all the juice out, or squeezed all the juice out of that opportunity. But now they're getting in at the same time, in the same deals, on the same terms, and it really is groundbreaking, and it's something that we take a lot of pride in that we were at the forefront of that, and we continue to focus on that.

And I think the best evidence of our vision, if you will, is that the big firms are now in our market, the Black Stones, The KKRs, as I mentioned before, the Apollo, the carlyles, they are all looking to access retail investors and provide alternative investment solutions to them. And we like to think that, we kind of started among others, but we're probably one of the last ones standing there, still an independent firm open architecture. We're here for that individual investor and the financial advisor, right? We make sure that the financial advisor is educated about these investments. We want to make sure that they can communicate the reason for these investments to their clients. And that's what we do. Not only do we structure these investments, not only do we manage the capital, make the investments, identify other managers that would be appropriate for our community, but you know, we're there for that financial advisor to really help them through the process. Because it's not uncommon, people will say, well, what are alternative investments?

Richard Walker 9:40 

Well, it's funny, because in what you said, so I was a financial advisor, but I haven't been for 20 years, and being in financial services with a forms tool to help people fill out forms, you just helped me realize something I feel financially dumb at the moment, which is great that I have seen the rise in alternative investments, because our customers keep talking about, do you have these forms. Do you have that forms? Can you get this form done? We keep adding these forms into our library to help our customers transact more. But I didn't know why Mark and you said it the interest rates were so low that the bond portion of their portfolios were not performing.

So how are they going to juice it up? How are they going to get better performance, right? And so I've always thought of alternatives. I think back in the 80s, it was the real estate investment trust that really brought it to the fore. But aren't there a lot of different types of alternatives, like equipment rentals and buildings and land?

Mark Gatto 10:32 

Yeah, so there are all different types of asset classes within alternatives, right? You have, I think the most sort of famous alternative is the private equity fund. Right? People have always talked about private equity, and you read about in the news about how this private equity firm bought this company and they turned it around and went public or flipped it, and they made a bunch of money and a lot of institutions have taken advantage of that over the years. But in addition to equity, so you have stocks which are public equities, and then you have private equity, which are the equities of private companies. Then you have credit, which is another asset class, and you have your public credit, which are your bonds. And then you have private credit, which come in a lot of different forms, right? There's middle market lending, which is what we do. So these are loans that are made to private companies that are of a certain size. We focus on a 25 to $75 million of earnings for a private company. There's structured credit, which is more exotic way to access these types of investments. There's special opportunities and distressed companies. There's, I said, Back security.

So there's a whole bunch of things to do there. And then you have real estate, which is, really the 800 pound gorilla, everybody in some shape or form, believes or thinks they understand real estate, even if you're not a real estate investor home and so many, many individual investors back in the 80s and even up until recently, were invested in these types of structures, the REIT, the real estate investment trust, and that was really sort of the gateway to all these other things, but these things have evolved right, back in the 80s, whether it was a real estate product or credits product or equipment leasing product, the structures and the way compensation was delivered wasn't really that advantageous or beneficial for the individual investor, but the evolution of the marketplace have brought down fees, so the individual investor aren't paying exorbitant fees to get into these products. The liquidity provisions have increased tremendously. The transparency.

Richard Walker 12:59 

I have to imagine that there's so many different asset classes that also helps manage risk in a lot of different ways, right?

Mark Gatto 13:05 

Yeah, there's a lot with that and that's the blessing and the curse at the same time, right? There's so much out there currently, there's so many different types of products. There's so many managers professing to be able to do all these things for your portfolio. It's hard to really sift through all these things, and that's where a good partner comes into play, where a firm like ours, where we're not necessarily pushing the things that we do on our own right, we bring other managers. We have different types of people that are involved in the business, but that's why we play such a high importance on education, right?

Because I can come in you and say, we have the best returns in the world, and you should do this product, but if I'm not willing to sit there and educate you about the product, educate you about other things that you can invest in and tell you why it's good for your client's portfolio. Well, then I'm not as valuable to you. And that's where I think the focus needs to be, because a lot of the managers that are in the space now the retail alternative investments are good managers, right? We're performing.

Richard Walker 14:18 

You're really hitting on where the rubber meets the road. Part, because there's lots of different ways to make investments. There's a lot of different money managers, hedge funds, etc, like you've talked about. But if you're able to win advisors and individual investors, that means that you guys are providing service at a whole different level. How do you guys measure your success with that kind of service, and making sure that you're engaged with your customer, that they like what you're doing, right?

Mark Gatto 14:45 

So, I mean, obviously, the most telling barometer of that is the capital you're raising sales, right? If you're raising, you must be doing a good job. But is this sustainable? Right? Is this sustainable? Are you strengthening your relationships with current advisors? Are you bringing into the play new producers and things of that nature? So we do a lot of analysis around that. We want to make sure that we're servicing our current customers, but the same time, we're out there and we're paying attention to prospective customers as well. And, and when you look at our business, and we raise capital, $50,000 a clip, right? So these are not big investments.

We have 1000s and 1000s of advisors that we work with and multiple 1000s of that of individual investors. So we really need to be efficient. We really need to tell a crisp, clear story to our advisors, so it's understandable, they can digest it and then regurgitate it to their clients to be efficient. So listen, I think you know that when you're on the road, you're at conferences, you meet investors, or you meet advisors, and they come up to you and they tell you what a great job your wholesaler is doing and how much they like them and they appreciate this piece that you put out. So you get a lot of that. You also get a lot of feedback from other asset managers in the space right that want to kind of replicate what we've done, and that's really flattering. And then ultimately our phone rings off the hook because there's an institutional asset manager out there that wants to be in retail and the hardest part about being in retail is the access and right?

And how do you market these products to advisors and managers call us all the time and they want to say, can we do business with you? How do we get into this business? And, that tells us we're doing a good job, and plus, we've been doing it for over 20 years, and there aren't a lot of franchises that we used to compete with back in the early 2000s that are still around. So we've stood the test.

Richard Walker 16:54 

It does say a lot that withstanding test of time is a really, really big deal, but something else you said that really caught me, which is, I think, critical to having good customer success. And you said it, well, your message has to be crisp and concise, because that message is what you're giving them to help serve them, and they're using that to serve their customers as well. And if that's cloudy by any means, if it's vague, how do they communicate that? Because in financial advisement, a lot of it's psychology, helping your customers off the cliff, etc, so I think that's really smart. Did you know that going into this business because you have a marketing background, or is that something you guys figured out along the way?

Mark Gatto 17:31 

So listen, I'm a people person, right? I'm in investment management. I make investment decisions, but at the end of the day, I'm a people person, and I like to communicate, and I like to meet people, and like to hear what they have to say and what they're thinking. So I think that's important if, if you want to be in this business, and you want to stand behind a Bloomberg terminal and look at the stock market and the bond market and so forth. Well, you're going to have a difficult time, resonating in this business, you need to be someone that can communicate to people. So I think that's part of the passion that we bring to the table, whether it's me, whether it's my partner, whether it's the people that we hire, is that we're people. We're people, people, right? We want to be out there.

We want to be talking with people. We want to hear what their problems are, or what they're looking for, and can we deliver a solution? So I think it's just about being that being an entrepreneur. I started my own business prior to really getting into this area, and that was very helpful when you start your own business, and you have to make ends meet every day, and you have to bring clients to pay the bills like, it humbles you, right? You know how hard you have to work, where I think a lot of people in the investment manager space, especially at the upper end of the market, they've never had that experience. And I think that's a real advantage that we have, is that not only do we build this business from the ground up, but I also have an entrepreneurial background, where I knew what it meant to have to pay the bills.

But if you're a Wall Street guy, work at a big bank, and then you move over to one of the big firms, alternative investment firms, today, I don't think you identify with your customer in the same way that I do, or my firm does. So I think it gives us a great advantage.

Richard Walker 19:33 

Yeah, you're reinforcing something I keep learning from others on this podcast, which is that if you don't love your customer, you'll never deliver the best experience for that customer. And you chose to do this, this is the customer you love. I want to ask you a question I've never asked of an investment manager. I don't know if I've heard the answer from an investment manager, and I don't mean it to be a difficult question or something like that, but how do you deliver great service in the market downturns? I mean, you can't win every quarter, right? Yeah, right. Maybe you do. I don't know your investment history.

Mark Gatto 20:03 

Well, nobody wins all the time, right? In investment management, there's always down markets. Hopefully you're not as down as everybody else, and you look good because of that. But I think the most important thing is to effectively communicate with your client during those periods of times, right? A lot of managers, they run in the opposite direction, they don't want to talk to their client when the market's down. And I think we probably do that better than anybody else is getting in front of issues, communicating with our clientele, helping them understand why things are happening in such a way and I think that builds a lot of loyalty.

It's not because we're really good in good times, or we're really effective on the initial meeting or sale, or whatever you want to call it, it's because when there are problems, we don't shy away from it, and we're very transparent, and we hope to solve it for them, right? Sometimes you can't look at look at Covid, right? Covid was scary. It was scary for a lot of investors and financial advisors. It was scary for everyone. But in particular in our industry, people were really concerned. And, you know, we got out in front of it. We were very honest with people about what could happen, and we were telling them what we were going to do to address it.

And fortunately, we came out of that. We came out of it successfully. But I think that's the thing is, you have to face problems directly and not run away from them, and that's what helps and we really pride ourselves in that. And we've noticed in our funds, where there is this feature for investors to redeem their shares that we always are very low on that scale compared to a lot of our peers. And I think it's because our level of communication is second to none, and they understand that if there are issues in the marketplace, we're telling them what's going on, and they feel confident that we're going to navigate those waters for them successfully.

Richard Walker 22:22 

I think there's an interesting parallel to what you've just said, which is, you face the fear you get in front of it. You communicate about it. But isn't that what personal development is, if you can face yourself in the mirror and face your fears, be honest about it, then you can improve. And somebody else said this to me recently, that the growth of your business is highly dependent on your personal growth as a leader, as a founder, as a CEO. So I love that corollary. You guys take the hard times and you face up to it, and you act on it, and you help people understand it. People are going to make the choices they make, right? But if they're better informed, and they feel like you're on their side, they're more likely to stick with you through the storm.

Mark Gatto 22:59 

Yeah, and if you're in a if you're in a storm and you're on a boat, the leaders are the ones who show that they're not scared, right? Even though they are, show they're not scared. And then you get through those situations. So we're very thoughtful about those types of environments, but the same time, we want to show our clients that, we're there for them, and we're thinking about it, and we're gonna do what we what we need to do to make the most of it.

Richard Walker 23:27 

Yeah, all right, let's switch gears a little bit for up until two years ago, anytime I heard about AI, it was alternative investments. ChatGPT came out, and now it's all about artificial intelligence. So I'm curious, from your perspective, being an investment, you've got these companies running, how do you see artificial intelligence playing a role in your customer experience, and how you deliver on customer success, or just impacting the customer experience with these types of investments?

Mark Gatto 23:53 

Sure? Sure, sure. So I said, I told you before, I'm a people person, so I can't claim to be a an expert on AI and all the technicalities behind it, but I will say it is a force, and we are looking into it to help us be more efficient in our business, but behind the scenes, right? We feel AI will be a technology that helps the financial services business, without a doubt, but at the end of the day, when you think about what we do, we still believe that it is a relationship business. It is a one on one business with two human beings interacting with each other. And we're going to continue to do that, and we're not going to rely on technology to take over that part of our job. And I think a lot of companies need to think about it that way.

I think a lot of them tend to think that AI is going to displace human interaction, or reduce their reliance on human beings, employees, and maybe lower their costs. And that may be true for some industries, but when it comes to financial services, whether it's our side of the business or financial advisor, people want to talk to the person that is managing their money right, and that they don't want to talk to a computer. So I think that we as a firm need to evolve and need to use AI to help us perform better for our clients, but ultimately, we still need to place the human being first and continue down that path, because that's what's going to make a difference in the future, I think, or it makes a difference now it's going to continue to make a difference in the future.

Richard Walker 25:37 

Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna throw one more question I was thinking about, you've got multiple leadership roles across a couple of companies. You're a people person. So how do you structure time to make sure you stay in front of customers and interact with them?

Mark Gatto 25:51 

That's a good question. I think it's just about really, it's really about loving what you do right, and being around your team all the time, not being, sort of behind the closed door, listening to what's happening out there. I sit right next to the sales desk, and I hear the guys talking all the time, so I can help them deal with clients on a real time basis. I don't have to be out there in the field, but it's just a balancing act. It's also, quite frankly, it's about building a good team around you, right? Yeah, I can't do everything. My partner can't do any everything.

But if you build a great team, and you have great people going back to, AI is not going to change our, change our business, if you have great people around you, then, then those things get done. And if you can set the example for those people, well, they can carry out the mission. They can carry out the vision of your firm, even though you're not there. So I think that's the most important thing. You can't do everything. And if you want to do everything, I think you're going to fail. You have to delegate, but you got to make sure that the people you're delegating to share your vision believe in what you're doing. And that's what I think we are able to do with our people.

Richard Walker 27:12 

Yeah, no, that's awesome. I love it all right, so before I ask my last question and wrap up here, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?

Mark Gatto 27:20 

So it's pretty simple. You can follow us on social or on LinkedIn and Facebook under CION Investments, but ultimately, just go to our website, cioninvestments.com, and you'll see everything that we have to offer from the investment solutions that we provide our business development company called CION Investment Corp, our interval fund called CION Areas Diversified Credit, and our soon to launch interval fund that focuses on infrastructure assets, called CION Grosvenor Infrastructure Fund. And you'll also find our other ancillary products, the value add businesses that we've mentioned our podcast, Advisor Lab and our martech platform called Advisor IO. So if you get a chance, go to the website, you'll see everything that we do for financial advisors and individual investors. And if you have interest, please contact us through the website.

Richard Walker 28:21 

Mark, I love all the things you've accomplished and all the things you've set up to help people. Is great. So my last question then is, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?

Mark Gatto 28:33 

That's a good question. I would say, when it comes to my leadership style, I have to give a lot of thanks to my high school football coach, Chuck Palah Vecchio, great man. He took me under his wing when I was a very young man, and we had a great run as a football team in high school. Was a really great story. My high school football team had the longest losing streak in the country at the time, and Coach Palah Vecchio came in my sophomore year, former Penn state American played in the NFL, and not to belabor the story, but his influence had a great impact on me. But we ended, my senior year, we ended up playing in the state finals against one of the top teams in the country, Elizabeth High School, in New Jersey, and we only lost by 10 points, right?

So it was a big, big milestone, from going from the one of the worst football teams in the country, high school football teams in the country, to playing in the States, against one of the best teams and competing, and he just had a major, major impact on my life. Taught me how to be a leader. He made me captain of the football team as a sophomore, which was like unheard of back then. And I take a lot of those lessons learned through football and sports in general, and other coaches. And obviously my parents have been a huge influence as well. And you just try to take that work ethic, right? Hard work beats talent all the time. And I think I as football player, that's what I was. I was talented, but I wasn't the most talented, but I would outwork you, and that was the reason for my success. And I try to take those same lessons into business.

Richard Walker 30:25 

I love asking this question, because I always get these different stories. And part of your story that's intriguing to me is that your team had a massive transformation over those couple of years that you were in there, and that must have cemented the leadership you were learning, because it's one thing to see it, see somebody leading and be like, Oh, he's a good leader, or whatever, but to feel it, because you saw the transformation, both with your team and probably yourself, I have, yeah, that's amazing.

Mark Gatto 30:49 

And the reward at the end, is worth all the effort, you know, and that's the thing, you know, if you work hard, you'll get that, that reward at the end, and when, you do get it's the best satisfaction you can have. It really is, and it's the same thing in business, right? Nothing comes easy. You have to work hard, and you're going to go through a lot of ups and downs. We have as a firm, over the years, talking 2020, plus years, we've had a lot of ups and downs. But ultimately, when you work hard, you'll get it right, and then the reward is everything.

Richard Walker 31:24 

Ah, this is a great way to end this episode. Thank you so much. So I want to give a huge thank you to Mark Gatto of CION Investments for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Mark's website at cioninvestments.com and don't forget to check out quik at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, will click the Like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Mark, thank you so much for joining me today.

Mark Gatto 31:53 

Richard, thank you. It was a pleasure, absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Outro 31:58 

Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.