The Value-Cost Equation to Decision-Making with Entrepreneurial Agency Leader Marisa Ricciardi
From launching her career as a trader to becoming an entrepreneur, Marisa Ricciardi has combined her in-house and agency experience with her capital marketing, financial services, and marketing acumen to build a successful business, The RicciardiGroup (RG). On this episode of “The Cred Podcast,” host Mack McKelvey and Ricciardi discussed Ricciardi’s approach to decision-making and why it’s paramount for leaders to understand the value that each decision carries so they give it the appropriate amount of rigor, deliberation, and consideration.
Ricciardi shared how she has adapted her decision-making style as a business owner, relying on her trusted team and outside counsel to provide their expertise and help her “see past corners that she may not be able to on her own.” Additionally, Ricciardi talked about building her team to augment her own decision-making style, as these diverse approaches lend themselves to stronger, more favorable outcomes.
Keep reading to learn how Ricciardi differentiates her approach to decision-making based on the situation, how she’s learned from mentors on leading a team during a crisis, and how she filled a unique market need with her business.
Filling a Market Gap for Highly Regulated Industries
Starting her career as a trader at a mutual fund, Ricciardi’s role evolved into what is traditionally known as back-office marketing. Because she acutely understood what clients needed, she became entrenched in working on the fund’s acquisitions and communications before joining other large companies in a hybrid finance-marketing capacity. From there, she spent a number of years working both in-house and at agencies where she was involved in capital marketing, financial services, and marketing.
Nearly 10 years ago after having her first daughter, Ricciardi went out on her own and started her business, RG. Despite only being on the agency side for a handful of years, Ricciardi identified a market need that her business could uniquely fill.
“Being the client for all those years, I saw a need for agencies to be both creative and strategic in [solving your] business problem,” she said. “We’d have amazing agencies but it’d take such a long time for us to explain to them about business or our products, so I wanted to create a firm where that didn’t happen.”
And so, RG came to fruition and continues serving B2B clients in highly regulated industries, like fintech, insurance, and more. As the company has grown, so has the team. RG has 25 full-time team members and 50 partners.
“These partners are not just freelancers, but true partners that we’ve worked with throughout the course of RG,” Ricciardi said. “This allows us to be a deliberate, lean, strong, and mighty team that can flex up and down as needed. We actually call it the ‘RG Multiplier’ where we can add on to projects to custom create the right team for the right assignment.”
Getting Methodological for Bigger Decisions
Reflecting on her career working in fast-paced, highly regulated environments, Ricciardi noted that she generally made decisions based on where she could thrive, grow, move quickly, and learn. Now as a business owner, however, she has shifted her approach.
“I also am more methodical [in my decision-making],” she said. “Like I say to my daughter, slow down and think about it more carefully. I wasn’t necessarily able to do that in my previous roles. You’re making decisions and you’re moving so quickly that you’re not actually thinking through the decision tree of ‘what are the best outcomes?’”
As a business owner, she relies on decision trees to help her navigate the potential outcomes associated with different paths and determine what will generate the optimal results for her clients, team morale, and her company at large. Collaboration with fellow trusted leadership is also an important part of Ricciardi’s decision-making process. She cited a philosophy around cognitive decision-making that focuses on three pillars: feeling, thinking, and acting.
“I tend to think and then act. I am lighter on the feeling side, so I’ve hired my team to augment different parts of that triangle,” she said, adding that RG has team members take Strengthsfinder assessments to see how their strengths and skill sets complement each other.
“For important business decisions, we’ll have someone like my CEO at the table who is super analytical, full of empathy, and may approach a problem completely differently [than I might],” Ricciardi said.
Evaluating Decision-Making’s Value-Cost Equation
When it comes to smaller decisions, Ricciardi tends to deploy a different approach due to the limited number of hours in each day.
“For those smaller decisions that don’t require as much deliberation, we move quicker,” she said. “I always say to my team and myself that, ‘I’d rather we make a decision and have that be the wrong decision than be stuck and never made a decision at all.’”
The higher costs decisions require more research and conversation whereas you can make lower costs decisions at a much faster clip.
“If I was evaluating whether we want to continue with our office space, that is a really high-cost decision and we would need to do a lot of digging into the data,” Ricciardi said. “But, if we’re looking at what days of the week we’ll be in the office, that’s a medium-value, low-cost decision where we can move a lot quicker.”
Using Your Network to Weigh Your Options
Both Ricciardi and host McKelvey had similar experiences in that they have not had any formal decision-making experience, which is common among most executives and leaders. Rather, they’ve modeled their decision-making after bosses and mentors whom they’ve admired.
“I’ve had great bosses and mentors who I’ve emulated more and I’ve found my own style that works for me,” McKelvey said. “But, I especially watched how they approached major crises and how they rallied people together. I saw how they took external input and matched it with some of their own [gut feeling] to reach that final decision.”
Ricciardi echoed this sentiment, saying that she has emulated many of her mentors and leaders as she navigated the workforce during challenging times from the 2008 financial crisis to COVID and beyond.
“As a marketer and a communicator, you’re making different decisions that you’ve never had to make before,” Ricciardi said. “Now running my own business during these macro and micro issues, I’m leaning in and leading the team based on what I’ve seen from previous leaders and bosses at my other firms.”
When it comes to leading and decision-making in tough times, Ricciardi champions leaning on outside counsel whether that’s board members, therapists, or business coaches.
“Getting that outside perspective is helpful, especially working in an intense city like New York,” she said. “They can help you make sure that you’re on the right track or can help you see around corners that you yourself can’t see.”
When Outcomes Hang in the Balance
Many decisions, even the ones with unfavorable outcomes, present a learning opportunity according to Ricciardi. The RG, for example, has been involved in a large RFP and as the founder and CEO, Ricciardi had to weigh the pros and cons of her team diving all into the pitch as it could detract from their creative and strategic efforts with the agency’s current clients.
“I decided that we wouldn’t start the project until I knew that it was the right opportunity for us,” said Ricciardi. “What that meant is that we wouldn’t participate in tissue sessions or some of the other things that agencies were doing because it would be more costly.”
In the midst of the process, Ricciardi reflected on this choice and noted that her tactic may cost them the business in the end.
“Maybe by the time this episode airs, we’ll know if we won the RFP or not but I stand by my decision even if the outcome is favorable or not,” she added.
One recent decision that Ricciardi firmly stands behind is turning away business that didn’t align with her and her business’ core values. The prospective client treated RG more like a vendor, versus a partner, propelling Ricciardi to decide not to work with them.
“Truthfully, it was a very profitable piece of business and we did lose revenue during a difficult financial market,” she said. “I was really torn [by this decision], but ethically, I look back now and I am glad I made that decision because I think it was the right one.”
Listen to Marisa’s full episode here.
