We were lucky to catch up with Marc Angelo Coppola recently and have shared our conversation below.

Marc Angelo, appreciate you joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I think when it comes to my career a lot of the hard work really came in the scaling up phase.

In truth I still feel like I am scaling but there’s no doubt been a huge journey for me to bring my business and brand to another level but a little known hack for me that has allowed me to truly leverage the skills of others has been mentorship.

I used mentorship not only as a way to hire amazing talent but to also become a revenue stream from the apprentices themselves as I teach them the ropes of storytelling, content creation, online branding, marketing and more.

As an entrepreneur I truly believe one of the core skills you need to develop is not just in yourself but in what you see in others.

I feel like I can see the talent and super power of others and help them build the confidence, wording, brands, offers and skills they need not only to execute the work but to also deal with the clients they are doing the work for.

Removing people out of a paid per hour mentality I teach my apprentices about all aspects of life as an entrepreneur and freelancer and by taking the time to truly mentor people over a minimum 6 month period it has truly also enabled me to build teams with processes and talent that also serve a larger ecosystem for my own offerings.

I find it tragic that we don’t do more mentorship in today’s culture and that we send people to school to learn skills without ever actually exposing them to what the job is like and requires in the real world.

I firmly believe that I will grow when I make others around me grow and also when I myself become an apprentice of others who are further down the path than I am.

Mentorship is my magic wand of scaling and anyone who isn’t finding their own mentors or doing it for those who walk the path behind you is missing out.

Marc Angelo, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My story has always been about creating a space and brand online that thinks with a long term thinking mentality and community first focus.

From building and selling and indoor skatepark in suburbs of Montreal, to buying a farm and starting up a community on 88 acres 20 minutes from the Montreal downtown core to building and scaling 2 marketing agencies my career has been a very dynamic one in many ways.

I have always been a geek who is particularly passionate about branding, design, aesthetics and story and I have built a career with my ability to tell my own story of my own entrepreneurial journey through the use of my camera and lens.

From being a passionate videographer and photographer for years – I was able to capture the essence of a person or brand as well as my own journey and have always had a document first approach while being on the leading edges of what works in terms of format on social media.

I feel like my philosophy is to tell not sell as that is what distinguishes storytelling from marketing and sales and I’ve watched this work for countless brands that I have been involved in launching, promoting or building teams for over 16+ years as an entrepreneur.

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

I personally believe a lot of people get into entrepreneurship seeking freedom but eventually become a slave to their own careers.

We have heard the concept of working 12 hours a day as an entrepreneur so we don’t have to work 9-5 for someone else’s business but when it comes to successfully selling a business (which I have done a few times in my career) my first piece of advice is to always dedicate time in your week to work ON the business not IN the business.

Working on the business looks like building systems, standard operating practices, ways where you can take out repetition out of your routine and automate it or hand it off to others who specialize in supporting you.

Second thing I would say is you should always update your business plans, models and strategies on an ongoing basis. The more you have this laid out the better you will be able to recruit, train, scale and SELL your business later.

By creating a user manual to how your business functions as well as projecting your path forward you will have a much better time being able to sell it in the future.

Lastly – if you business depends on you – you built yourself a job not a business. How can you find ways to provide value to others without always having to be the hands on person doing the work. Building a business is about finding leverage and focusing on your strengths while building a well oiled machine and team that does what they do better than most.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I believe the definition of being an entrepreneur is to be ready for a pivot or direction change at any moment.

My career is filled with stories of pivots and shifts within what I was offering but I always approached it like I did anything else.

Commit to a pathway and some theories and assumptions and test them.

Let the market and people’s genuine reaction provide the feedback and cut away what you didn’t like and didn’t work and continue putting focus and energy on the things that did.

For me pivoting isn’t an action you make just at one moment but more of a mental state on how you approach business on a day to day basis. Test, validate, check the data and adjust again.

The best marketers and entrepreneurs are consistently pivoting and following the path of least resistance if they are building something sustainable for themselves.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://marcangelocoppola.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcangelocoppola/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Philanthropreneur/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcangelocoppola/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarcACoppola
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ValhallaMovement

Image Credits
Taken by Steve Walsh for farm ones and Glorianna Baron for others