Burn The Playbook

Navigating Growth in Challenging Times | Insights with Kendall Justiniano

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Navigating Growth in Challenging Times | Insights with Kendall Justiniano

As the Founder and Managing Director of Growth Arc Advisors LLC, Kendall Justiniano helps chemical clients find untapped growth opportunities through his team’s expertise in marketing & sales, value growth and strategic transformation. With over 30 years of leadership experience, Kendall is a seasoned chemical executive who has worked across multiple sectors at Fortune 100 and global companies, including Dow, Avient Corporation, and most recently as Vice President of Marketing at W.R. Grace. Known for keen strategic assessment, and results-oriented execution, Kendall's mission at Growth Arc is to help chemical executives navigate the new realities of today’s challenging business climate.


In this episode of 'Burn the Playbook,' host Marc Crosby talks with Kendall Justiniano, founder of Growth Arc Advisors, about the challenges and strategic shifts needed in the chemicals industry. Kendall, having a wealth of experience transforming and stabilizing major chemical companies, discusses the structural shifts in growth strategies, the evolving roles of sales and marketing, and the impact of AI and digital tools. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on customer behavior, re-evaluating sustainability initiatives, and the need for businesses to re-triangulate their strategies amidst a prolonged downturn. The episode concludes with a engaging 'Burn It or Build It' segment, where Kendall shares his insights on current industry trends.

00:00 Introduction to Burn the Playbook
01:17 Kendall's Industry Insights
02:37 Navigating the Chemical Industry Downturn
04:45 The Role of Sustainability in Business
10:41 The Future of Sales and Marketing
17:25 Cost Cutting and Strategic Shifts
19:12 The Importance of Regular Segmentation
21:10 Effective Segmentation Strategies
22:08 AI and Segmentation: A Reality Check
23:36 Navigating Unprecedented Times with Fundamentals
27:13 Burn It or Build It: Industry Trends
33:15 Final Takeaways and Upcoming Events

Growth Arc Advisors https://www.growth-arc.com/

Kendall Justiniano Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendalljustiniano/

The Chemical Summit https://thechemicalsummit.com/speakers-2/

Views expressed are our own and do not represent any organizations

© 2025 Digital Rebels Consulting. All rights reserved.


Alright, welcome in. This is Burn the Playbook. I'm Mark Crosby and my guest today is Kendall Houston Yano, founder of Growth Arc Advisors and veteran operator in the chemicals industry. He spent 35 years leading growth transformation and turnarounds across some of the biggest names in the space from Dow to Poly One.

To the most recently VP of Marketing at Grace. He shifted a $700 million business from acquisitions to organic growth. Stabilized a $450 million division of Poly one for carve out and help Dian break [00:01:00] into the composite sector. Kendall has seen it all and done it at a high level. Welcome, Kendall.

Thanks, mark. Happy to be here. Awesome. Looking forward to the conversation. Excited to unpack a lot of the great things that you're doing for the chemical industry and just all the sales and marketing expertise that you've done over the years. And now you work in a lot of legacy businesses, chemicals, materials, industrial manufacturing, sorts of businesses, and a lot of changes in the chemical business these days.

So what's the biggest mindset shift organizations need to make in this tough environment with the chemical downturn? Yeah, I think I think it's a couple of things. I think first off for organizations that are looking for growth growth is gonna be harder to come by.

From this point forward, I think that's a structural shift. And I think it's gonna be long lived. And the kinds of tactics you might have used 10 years ago, five years ago, that ended up being successful for growth aren't gonna be successful for growth in this new environment. From a sales standpoint, I think.

There's a, there's been a lot of changes [00:02:00] both in customer buying habits and technology. I think sales going forward is gonna be more about really focusing on the core of sales, which is the effectiveness at changing people's minds. And that's the human element. That's never gonna go away. It's not gonna get replaced by ai.

It's not gonna get replaced by your favorite chatbot. But it means you're gonna have to be really good at that core competence of sales. Yeah, there's certainly gonna be some opportunity for improvement on the sales front, just as not only the industry shifts, but also just agents, ai, augmenting sales, and just how do you reshape the sales teams?

Yeah. To include marketing too. But there's a lot of different shifts that are gonna have to happen. This year, next year, this has been the longest downturn in the chemical industry. For many years, if not decades. I think we've talked about over the last like year or two as far as maybe next quarter will be better, maybe next quarter will be better.

Now they're talking about this, rebound could be years, or the downturn's gonna be years. So you talk to leaders in your business for growth arc, what are they still holding onto as far as just maybe hope? And what [00:03:00] realities are those leaders avoiding? Yeah. I think in a lot of ways the, the chemical industry and materials in general used to be a cyclical industry.

When I first came into materials outta school every five years or so, you'd see the, capacity get overbuilt in some sector. You'd have a point in time where costs were, low prices were low. You struggle with margins, and then you'd work your way back out again.

In a lot of ways we've forgotten what that's like. And I think, the last 10 or 15 years haven't really had a lot of cycles. And if anything if there were any downturns that hit, people tended to hunker down. It's gonna last a couple of quarters. Three quarters. We'll keep going as we are, maybe some light cost cutting.

And as you said, if you look at all the forecasts we're talking about, I, I've heard as long as, in, in some sectors like poly elephants, this is like without any consolidation. It's a 10 year cycle. Consolidation brings it down to a five year. Trough. Just hunkering down's not gonna be enough, right?

So not [00:04:00] only are you gonna have to do the down cycle things that we used to do, cost cutting and headcount reduction stuff, but you're gonna have to figure out your strategic competence and invest in that, even during this trough to be able to come out sooner than others. Yeah, and the strategies certainly need to shift.

I was just at a a coatings conference recently and there's just a lot of doom and gloom, a lot of doom and gloom. But I also think that I didn't hear as far as like how, sales and marketing teams are going to be, shifting their strategies and what that looks like. I just had think you have to release a little bit of the hope and kind of re-energize your strategy.

Yeah. And what. Sales and marketing looks like in this new environment, and it's gonna take a lot of time. I think, companies are gonna need support, whether that's internal strategy development or bringing in external people like you in order to re triangulate what their focus should be.

And as far as that goes, I think on a couple other podcasts I heard you speak on I think it was Victoria Meyer, he talked about portfolio. Fundamentals, I think it was on the chemical show. And what does that mean to our audience As far as what portfolio fundamentals means? Yeah.

Whether it's in the chemicals [00:05:00] industry or just in business in general. Yeah. Yeah. When I think of fundamentals analysis, I guess the short way to think about that is, is avoiding bandwagon effects, right? If this is a new reality. The companies that are slow to take account of what the new realities fundamentals mean for change that has to happen.

The ones that are still running the oh one Playbook, the ones that are still running as though the bandwagon's still running, those are the guys that are gonna be late to the game. And so I advocate with most of my clients is. Form follows function. If you go back to the fundamentals, you'll understand better what you need to have going forward.

An example of that is sustainability. I think in the last five years, sustainability has been significantly oversold. And I'm an optimist when it comes to su sustainable initiatives, but sorting out which ones. Are gonna need to be rationalized and which ones have the chance to continue going, requires you to look at the fundamentals, not look around you and see what everybody else is doing.[00:06:00]

Yeah, and I think that's a problem in not only the chemicals business, but a lot of different industries is that you're looking over the shoulder trying to figure out what somebody else is doing, but probably in the wrong way. If you're following the leaders, you're not really differentiating yourself in order to have a competitive advantage.

And I think that's where, the difference lies, which I think is also when you're looking over your shoulder, comparing yourself to everybody else, that's why all the websites tend to look the same, and everyone's just. Saying we're, we're innovative, we're best in class, we have sustainability solutions.

And everyone's saying the exact same thing. But I like that you pulled out sustainability. 'cause I think it's an interesting conversation because I feel like it wasn't too long ago, we were talking about net zero goals and, scope one, two. Yeah. And I just haven't really heard that much more.

I think I've read more in, in the headlines as far as just sustainability pullbacks, and it's not as important anymore. The consumers don't want it. Obviously in Europe it's a different narrative than probably other parts of the world. But what do you think is gonna, trend forward as far as sustainability for companies, especially in this challenging economic environment?

When everything for is sustainable is just more expensive [00:07:00] anyway. Yeah. The real question, obviously there's a pullback that's required, for executives that have invested in sustainability initiatives, you gotta be careful that, have you invested in one that's gonna end up being rationalized?

And the sooner you can assess that, figure it out and pull the plug, the better. And at the same time, if you've got one that's got a chance of survival, knowing that and knowing how to play it through this downturn is gonna be absolutely critical. So when we think of fundamentals, and especially when I advise clients on sustainability issues.

I, I really say you gotta go back and reevaluate your model on three different factors, right? How does the, how does your business look? If you're in a cost constrained environment, how does your business look if you're in a capital constrained environment? And how does the business look if you have regulatory headwinds and pullback?

Most of the sustainable material initiatives, for instance, aren't necessarily tied to fossil fuels, but if the next best alternative is a fossil fuel based polyethylene or polypropylene, for instance, man, the price of those alternatives is at rock [00:08:00] bottom right now. How does your offering survive?

Regulatory headwinds are the same way. Regulatory stimulus is never permanent. Or you, it might be there for a while, but at some point, governments, you can be expected to pull it. And that's the way that a lot of trends are headed right now. So I remember a long time ago at Dow I was looking for my next job and Dow at the time had an initiative around solar shingles, right?

A lot like solar City does today. And I remember asking the business director at the time. What does the business look like if there's no help or no support for solar? And the answer was a $15 million business. What does the business look like if there's, if you, if the current regulations stay in place, it's a $500 million business.

Ultimately, those supports for solar disappeared and the business ended up turning into a $50 million business, and it was ultimately. Ultimately disinvested uninvested. And so that's the potential that folks are looking at these days. And so that, that's the fundamentals evaluation that I usually advise clients on sustainability.

Gotcha. So if you look into your crystal [00:09:00] ball, how many years out before sustainably sustainability is in vogue again? I'm a fundamentals guy so whether it's in vogue or not, I don't care. I think there are areas of sustainability. That still have promising fundamentals. You know what I advise people, for instance, in circular economy is look for the smallest circles you can find, right?

You don't wanna be doing something that's a chemical recycle of polymers that turns, polymers into. Pyrolysis Oil sends it all the way back to the front end refinery, and you have to go and reprocess it all through. You have all sorts of other issues, but just the idea that you've got a very large circle in that circular economy.

So smaller circles are better. I think the real core of sustainability has always been for the chemical industry, making things less energy intensive, making things more efficient. Lightweighting. These are. These are things that are good bets in general as opposed to some of the more exotic sustainability types of plays.

Yeah, and that's a good, um. Something I would think about as far as just selling, I think that for [00:10:00] sales and marketing teams, they're selling sustainability. But as you were saying, they're not selling like the real benefits of sustainability, which I always found as like that opportunity that's been missed.

They're, you could be selling lightweighting, you could be selling all these. Other benefits and opportunities for businesses, but you're selling, lower PCF or low VOC. And I don't think that really moves the needle for a lot of companies because that doesn't translate to the bottom line.

So you could sell sustainability, but I think you have to have, frame it in a way where there's an ROI. Or savings or, less waste or less, yeah. Production cuts or whatever that looks like for your business. But there's an opportunity there to, I think to reframe the sustainability sell, so to speak, even if sustainability is not in vogue.

What is in vogue is that a lot of purchasing people don't want to talk about or talk to salespeople. And everyone wants, that digital, seamless frictionless experience, kinda like Amazon. And I've seen that too. Where, just our buyers never wanted to talk to me.

They just want, they want a price, they want a volume, they didn't wanna move on to something else. But how do you see that playing out as far as [00:11:00] like the chemical business and how do customers wanna buy from your perspective and your leaders that you've talked to?

Yeah. Yeah. I think, and a lot of the data points to this as well, but I think with the rise of digital technologies, with the rise of information ubiquity. If I want to, if I want to understand what the best competitors are in a particular chemical sector, I can, frankly, I can go to chat GPT and it'll gimme a summary.

You see that. And the data all shows this sales reps are brought in later and later in the sales cycle. Information's ubiquitous and frankly, our selling approaches haven't kept up because. If we're still doing the old types of selling methods and view that, that initial call or that initial touch point as the point where we get to start selling, we're almost too late.

The customers started to make an assessment and started to frame up what they want and how they want to think about it, right? From my perspective that digitization is really tearing apart. What we think of as a traditional sales cycle, and it's gonna tear apart the sales [00:12:00] role.

And it's gonna open up some room for marketing to begin some of those conversations that, that that are inaccessible to the sales guide today. Yeah, typically we talk that sales and marketing is, misaligned, not aligned at all. And so I think that there's certainly an opportunity to reshape how they work together.

'cause they're gonna frankly need to as the sales roles shift and especially as more buyers want a digital experience, they want the 24 act. Seven access and with all the digital platforms. And something that I've heard also is that some companies think that they can just AI sales.

A 100%. So in a lot of these businesses, there's an opportunity if they don't want to talk to a sales person. Could you just, especially for companies that might be like on, or products that are like on formula pricing where everything is just, it's by the ebb and the flow of oil and raw materials and things like that.

Do we need salespeople? Yeah. Yeah. I think that goes to one of the insights I mentioned earlier, which is, if you assume that the sales conversation start later and later you can treat that one of two ways. If you follow it and [00:13:00] just say, okay, that's our lot and that's what we're given you start to see a very reduced role for sales, and it's always transactional at the back end.

It's by the time purchasing is calling you in not when you're dealing with the front end. The other way to think about that is to think about leading into the digital tools letting marketing start the conversation. So that conversation can be started earlier. That's shift in marketing's role. 'cause marketing used to be all about awareness. We're just educating the customer about our products. Now we're actually want to think about them starting the conversation, the sales conversation. And we want to think of them uncovering those leads and sales picking up.

Those leads and those conversations and continuing them on. That's a radically different role for marketing. And it really is a radical, radically different role for sales. I think there's a lot of transactional activities in sales. That are gonna go away. But I, as I said at the heart of it, selling is about persuading people and changing people's minds.

And that I think will always main be maintained as a face-to-face type of activity. That's where the [00:14:00] relationship piece is. You're changing people's minds. Yeah. And also that's what say is gonna have to get really good at. Yeah. And they have to step up their game because, you know if the buyer is already 90% there, 95% there, before they even reach out to a salesperson, you only have five to 10% to really maximize that face time and whatever that looks like.

Yeah. And by the time the buyer gets to you. You and sales and marketing better have your act together as far as what you're saying to those people. Because if you're not, then you know, you get a little of a hesitation as far as just the message that your company is sending out there.

Yep. So I think there's an opportunity to shift, and just for the record, I'm not advocating that we get rid of salespeople as being a, career salesperson myself. I still think that you have to have a human in the loop, so to speak, but you just have to shift as far as what those teams are actually focusing on, because.

That's gonna change. I don't think that we're necessarily gonna have less salespeople just as far as, tracking orders and providing price quotes and things like that. Hopefully all that stuff's just automated because that's a colossal waste of time. And you're focused more on partnerships.

You're focused on [00:15:00] adding value, you're focused on top to top meetings. And from an organizational standpoint, the sales and marketing executive leaders, they're all working together. I know that we typically talk about, silos and just how we're over siloed in a lot of cases.

And there's a. You can't, rely on the ways of the past in order to get you to the future. I think there's a huge, there's a huge role for sales there. I think. I think the new sales is gonna be much more consultative. People are, I said information's ubiquitous. People are overwhelmed with the amount of information.

And so there's a real opportunity for sales to be the. That helps customers make sense of what they're seeing, the information they're finding. And as I said, I think it's a, it's gonna be a joint conversation between sales and marketing with the customer. Absolutely. There's a lot of best practices and I've seen this and I think you've said it as well as far as SaaS and technology companies as far as just commercial excellence and, strategies that they should borrow from the tech industry.

What exactly do you think that would translate well to the manufacturing materials and chemical industry and what wouldn't [00:16:00] translate? Yeah digital has done some really interesting things. A lot of, I'd say the essence of what they've figured out is to pay attention to what customer behavior is like through the selling process.

Okay. We've always done marketing as awareness marketing. We've done selling as push product selling. And tech can fall into that trap too. But the one thing that they've really fi bumped into and figured out empirically is paying attention to what moves customer behavior.

And then deploying technology to start to make little changes in the way a customer behavior favors their products and services, right? So this idea of behavior led. Understanding of your customer I think is a real innovation. Now the problem is that most tech plays in mass markets, right?

And so you can watch behavior digitally. You can use data. Behavior led looks a little bit different when you apply it in industrial setting. But if you're reorienting toward behavior, you start to really focus on [00:17:00] what points in the customer's buying process really materially make a difference to your sales outcomes.

And you disproportionately focus on those behavior touch. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And as we talked about replacing sales or, there's a, the debate's out on that, a lot of companies are cutting salespeople, they're cutting teams, and you've seen it over the last year or two just as far as companies that are just looking to not lose as much money for one reason or another.

And, cost cutting happens to be a big part of that strategy. Yeah. What does that look like as far as, do you think that's effective? Do you think that some companies over rotate as far as cutting too many people? What do you see the effectiveness of yeah, cost cutting in business in general.

So I think the economic climate you can't you've got to do cost cutting. I'm not at all saying that you can't, the realities of most p and ls today require that you get some sg and a out of the p and l at least for the next couple years. But if you think about it, if you start from a perspective of how is your sales and marketing have to change in terms of [00:18:00]capability.

That's gonna affect significantly where you cut and what you cut. I know with many industrial clients I deal with, digital marketing, for instance, has been something that folks play with. But they still haven't made the connection between how can this change customer behavior and actually material affect sales outcomes.

And so if you start from the perspective of I don't see the connection, I'm not sure how that's gonna happen, you end up cutting that kind of resource. But as I said, if you think about focusing on behavior and using those tools to understand how to affect behavior change, it now becomes a strategic advantage, right?

In one scenario, the old case scenario, you would've cut that almost dismissively, frankly. But if you spend some time to think about the fundamentals, look at where capabilities need to go, you end up cutting different things. Yeah. As far as fundamentals, I think that segmentation is a huge part of fundamentals that probably is not widely used enough.

And I think that [00:19:00] as we talked about, the shift in the manufacturing industry, chemicals industry, Yeah. Could be here for years. And so segmentation is something that I think that you work with quite frequently. With, your leaders. So tell me a little bit about what that process looks like.

When you deploy it, how often should people be doing segmentation activities? Yeah. So when we go in and talk to clients, almost every materials client we talk to has some sort of segmentation, right? It's usually based on some variable like application. Sometimes it's based on regional differences, right?

So I think most leaders understand the value of segmentation. I think the blind spot is segmentation is never a one and done exercise. So most folks who have a segmentation haven't dusted it off for the last five years, and there's all sorts of opportunities sitting in your existing markets and in markets that aren't very far away from your existing markets, simply by taking another, let's say next layer pass at segmentation.

So we find that clients can consistently [00:20:00] uncover growth. Both in home markets and adjacencies to the tune of two extra current growth rate. So if you got a 1% market, you can make it a 2% growth rate for your p and l. By doing that fundamental next pass on segmentation those first passes can be very easy.

Often you're doing a one variable, one dimensional segmentation. But your organization actually has intra in has information about differences in customers based on a couple of different variables, right? They might have application, they might have regional, they might have organizational or business model type of understanding.

And when you synthesize those together, we've seen this very often. You literally can take segments that you thought you knew, take an average 3% growth rate and find subsegments of that segment. That are growing at 5%, growing at 6%, right? Those are invisible sources of growth to you if you don't do that next layer of segmentation.

And many companies have done their segmentation and basically [00:21:00] disinvested from their marketing resources, right? That's one of the things we often see. And they're leaving growth on the table because they aren't in a position to peel the layer multiple times on their segmentation.

How long should a segmentation exercise take and who should be involved in it? So ideally, it should be led by marketing. The way I think about segmentation is in layers. Okay? So if I was gonna design, the nth degree, kinda segmentation, that would take a long time to get there. But the reality is you iterate it.

You peel one layer, you take two months, three months, you peel one layer. There's always insight in that one layer that you can use to drive growth immediately. So we think of it more with an agile mindset, peel layer, drive, growth, peel, layer, drive growth. You may not revisit that segmentation for a year 'cause you're taking the insights from the first peel.

And implementing them. Folks who try to do bite off too much generally, get impatient 'cause they want to see the results of it. And what if you bite? If you bite too many [00:22:00] layers deep, you're committed to go all the way through the whole peel before you get the insights.

And that's something we often see that as a failure mode for segmentation exercises. Can I just put a prompt into chat, GPT and just say what my industry is, what my target market is, and then just have an output. And then there's my segmentation. Is it that simple? It is not that simple.

I spent some time on LinkedIn trying to parse AI strategy and how it relates to materials and how it relates to marketing. I've seen people try that. And then we maybe get to a chance. It may, we may get to a point where that's possible. With tools like ai, there's so much low hanging fruit.

Before you ever get to that, why would you take the time to try to be bleeding edge? When you could be leading edge doing what AI, is known to do very well? So the other thing I'll find is you have to remember that. AI is trained generally. And so if you think about it, it's it's as though AI has read every marketing textbook out there.

And so very often, and I've seen this happen, somebody wants an industrial [00:23:00] strategy and what they get, because the most prevalent marketing work being done today is in tech, right? So what they get is a tech strategy. Now, the complexities of dealing the value chain and materials, right?

Tech in a lot of ways enterprise tech sales is super simple because a value chain's very simple. You don't want to be going to market with a tech-based marketing strategy when you've gotta deal with the complexities of, in an industrial value chain. It's not the most prominent training data foris.

So I think it's caveated mTOR, if you're gonna run AI to try to do that. Good luck. That's not the place I would start for getting ROI from your ai. As we talk about in the beginning, what we're seeing in the chemical industry and manufacturing and the, and all the geopolitical tensions, a lot of it's unprecedented.

And so if, all these models are based on historical sta statistics and books and whatever that looks like, it doesn't have an answer for the future as far as what we should do. So I got, I guess humans still have some relevance as far as, strategy and developing that. It's a really good, it's a really good [00:24:00] point.

AI is your best. Conventional wisdom. And if and these are unconventional times. And that's why we go back to fundamentals, right? AI doesn't do fundamentals analysis. They look at what's being done and what everybody else is doing, and they recommend the best of what they can find there.

And that's just not gonna cut it in this kind of an environment. Yeah. As far as, future proof growth model for companies. What do you typically talk about I guess maybe beyond segmentation as far as how growth Arc can help your clients and, other organizations in the chemical industry?

So you know, when we talk about growth in general, and especially when we talk about, having to go back to fundamentals to figure out your growth strategy it's hard. It's a little bit overwhelming, and that's why some people kind of default to what's the conventional wisdom, what's the bandwagon on there?

But I think the real risk is standing still. It's that conventional mindset today. And so for us, it's, we help customers go through fundamentals [00:25:00] analysis on the places where they're most interested in understanding their growth potential. And that takes. Capability. It takes resources.

Sometimes clients don't have those resources, and so we, we fill those gaps, right? Or we help bring that capability to their internal resources. But for me the key then is you have to be committed to the journey. You have to do it in phases, right? I talked a little bit about segmentation in phases, peel the onion go get some money from the insight you learned.

All of this transformation stuff has to be done in phases and so a lot of what we can also bring is a way to help customers think about, instead of thinking about a three year transformation journey or a three year strategy journey is to think about what's step number one that takes three months or four months and gets me a start.

But you've gotta have that north star where you headed in place. If you don't have that, you're just gonna go wandering in the wrong direction. But you design each pa each phase for impact. As far as just one [00:26:00] thing that CEOs should focus on as far as just the mind shift change that's gonna enable them to survive the next three to five years, what would be that one thing as far as the them just changing their habits, their mindsets, and just yeah.

Burning the playbook, so to speak. If you, if I, I think it boils down to if you're gonna run the old hunker down in weight playbook. You're really at risk of not being able to come out on the other side. Okay. And success might look like survival but you've really got to approach your survival mindset with what capability underlying that that cost cutting they're doing.

What capability am I holding onto? What's the capability that I have to build while I'm in this trough? Because it's gonna be a lot longer than you think, and hoping that you've got enough. You better have a big war chest if you're gonna run the old playbook. That's my basic thing, right?

So do the cost cutting, but you've got to be understanding the fundamentals and what's [00:27:00] changing and what you need to be building for the future. At the same time you pick the wrong things to cut. If you don't. Gotcha. Yeah, there's a lot of m and a activity out there and it'll be interesting to see how all this plays out in the next Oh yeah.

Three to five years. But that brings us to our next segment. Burn It or Build It, which is everyone's favorite on the Bo the Burn the Playbook podcast. And we're gonna go through top 10 at least trends, strategies and things like that, that are at least tied to, manufacturing and sales.

And we'll just start off with number one, which is sustainability with no p and l impact. I think we talked about a little bit that in the beginning here, but are we still leading with sustainability? If there's no ROI so burn bandwagon sustainability, find sustainability that creates value.

That's really simple based on the fundamentals. Gotcha. We talked about m and a little bit as far as just what we're seeing in the space today. If that's your 2026 growth plan, burn it or build it. Burn it. Most of those m and a plans, especially private equity they're based on old playbooks.

The era of [00:28:00] easy growth through m and a is over. If you're gonna buy something, you better know how you're gonna change it. And the reality is, if you're not changing your internal capabilities in the way that you want, don't waste your time with m and a. Gotcha. Number three, I had sales and market in alignment, but I'm gonna throw a curve ball and say sales and market in alignment plus CEO.

Plus. What do you mean? Plus CEO. That's interesting. CEO has to be aligned with sales and marketing strategy, so they can't just be operating in their own silos. Do they need to align with executive leadership as far, okay. Already sales plus marketing, getting them aligned because one's gotta start the conversation and the other one's gotta finish the conversation.

That's already a radical idea. If you look at what most people do traditionally with sales and marketing. So you're never gonna make that happen unless your executive starts to see how that can work. Awesome. So build it. Gotta have that last piece. Build it for sure. A lot of talk on the news about nearshoring burn it or build it.

Build it. I think distributors are gonna start this wave, but we're [00:29:00] in a huge area of re regionalization with differing geopolitical tables, if you will. And so figuring out which table you've got a competitive advantage on and sticking to your home country's probably, or your home region's gonna be gonna be a good play for the next five years.

Local, for local, right? Yeah, exactly. Customer self service portals. So 24 access, build it, placing orders, they're looking for T ds as SDS is just everything. Self service. Yeah, I think you've gotta build it. I think don't throw out your sales team at the same time. The question is what do you switch your sales capabilities to?

And I would say it's a core selling, right? So build all the automation, build all the transactional efficiency customers want it. But make sure you know what you're gonna do with your sales team after that. Exactly. Yeah. It should be like AI just should just augment it. It shouldn't replace. Number six, EVs. EVs as in electric vehicles. Yes. I'm I'm a bear. Burn it. Burn it. And then if you look, I was working in, I've been [00:30:00] working in transportation for a long time. I was working in transportation for Poly One. We were on the lightweighting trend until we started building battery powered cars.

And now we're on a heavy weighting trend that makes no sense whatsoever. You look at electric pickup trucks, the electric versions are 5,000 pounds heavier than than the internal combustion engines. And you're telling me that's really saving greenhouse gas. Physics doesn't work. Doesn't work. Burn it. I gotta light lightweight, the batteries, I don't know. Yeah. Yes, you can do that. I'm sure they're working on that. Number seven CX hype. So customer experience, hype voice of the customer, NPS scores, all that stuff that goes into that bucket. Burner buildup.

So that's an interesting one. So I'm gonna say this one's gonna be provocative. I'm gonna say burn it. Because this customer behavior oriented mindset, customer experience is about them coming to us and making it as easy for them to go through our selling process of getting them product right.

Customer behavior orientation is about going to [00:31:00] them and figuring out how to make their buying journey better and lead their buying journey to you. They're not the same things, and I would invest, I would double down on customer behavior and I would burn customer experience. Agreed. What about social media for the chemicals industry?

I know that I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit. I don't see the chemicals industry there much. How about you burning or build it for social media As far as just marketing and this industry s so, so I'm there today. I've done a bunch of posts on LinkedIn about analyzing corporate feeds the way it's done today, burn it, but then I would say rebuild it from the ground up.

I think it's a huge. Force for customer behavior change, but not the way it's being done today. I would agree 100% the current strategy. Yeah. Just doesn't seem to add any value to anybody. Yeah. But there, there's a way to do it better and maybe somebody should ask you Ramina, how to help. I like that.

The annual summer strategy plan for these businesses. I can't tell you the number of strap plans I've done led. So Strat, [00:32:00] I'm a big believer in strategy. It's super important. The annual exercise has become not strategy, it's become a financial exercise. So we're too focused on building detailed financial models, usually one point or two points, and it all becomes an overture to negotiating your a OP.

If you're gonna do strategy, probably only needs to be done once every two or three years. And you should do real strategy work when you do strategy. And the summer start plans where you're doing a bunch of financial modeling they don't help. They don't help. Gotcha. Number 10 and final inside sales.

Yeah. I like inside sales. I, I think and I've seen materials companies have a love hate relationship. Some sort of go there and then they pull back. Some really invest hard distribution, has done more with this than straight sales. In a lot of ways, distributors are the inside sales of many corporate materials companies, right?

They outsource their whole tail. But in general build it because [00:33:00] this, the, they are part of the linkage between marketing and starting the conversation earlier with customers. They just, they use different tools and then we need to learn how to use those tools and you should build it.

Awesome. That's a wrap for burning to build it. You threw some curve balls at me. I threw some at you, but I think that worked out well. As far as the final takeaway, typically we end burning the playbook with one final takeaway that a commercial leader, VP of sales and marketing can take away, that they can implement, like right now, where it doesn't have some sort of, overture project that they need to start working on, but something they can implement like this week, next week.

Yeah. So we talked a little bit about this. I think there's a ton to be gained when customers, a lot of customers tell me we already have a segmentation, right? You've got enough information in your organization already to peel that segmentation one layer deeper. And when you do, you can action that for growth, and you can do that within three or four months.

That, that's the, to me, that's the one that's super easy and hard for people to see. How that's gonna lead. Yeah. Yeah. That's the most implementable one I can think of. [00:34:00] Gotcha. That's a good tip. Where can people find you and do you have any special events coming up at the end of this year?

We already talked about LinkedIn, so I'm all over LinkedIn, both growth Arc Advisors, and myself, Kendall Ano. And then our, we live at www.growtharc.com. That's our website. I run an executive round table and I have an executive newsletter. Those are all available on the website. So folks wanna want to go there and, and join the conversation. That'd be great. I'm gonna be at the Chemical Summit this the end of this month. That's based in Houston. That's Victoria Myers executive Summit. Gonna be hosting a panel on guess what Growth. Yeah. Non-price levers for growth. So it should be a really interesting conversation, hopefully.

See you there. Very cool. Maybe you will. I plan on it. All right. Thank you Kendall. Awesome. Thanks so much, mark. Really enjoy the conversation. Thanks. Bye-bye. We'll see you. 

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