There's no secret handshake for making the PPAI Top 100,it comes through years of work, determination, and intention and these three have been through it all!
Sandy Gonzalez grew MadeToOrder by caring more about who fits the team than who shows up with the biggest book. Michael Wolaver built Magellan by turning down nearly everyone and going all-in on higher ed. Robert Fiveash spent a decade chasing a B Corp certification which most of the industry still nods along to without quite understanding.
And yet, if you get them talking, the same lessons keep surfacing, which is the whole reason this conversation is worth your time. commonsku co-founder and president Mark Graham hosted this chat, steering all three through what finally clicked, what they'd go back and tell themselves, and how a connected workflow reshaped their teams.
What follows are a few highlights. If you want the complete uncut version, the full webinar is here.
There's no single lever that pulls a distributor onto the PPAI Top 100, and that's the most useful part of this conversation. For Michael, the turning point was deciding to specialize. He joined a one-person merch company in 2005 with no clients and no sales background, tried selling to anyone who'd pick up the phone, then reached out to UW–Milwaukee, where he'd earned his MBA. One department became several, one campus became another, and a higher-ed niche was born.
"That specialization piece really was a big unlock, and when we started going from five to seven to 10 to 20 universities, we started changing our marketing around and thinking that through."
— Michael Wolaver
Two outside forces helped Magellan turn that focus into scale. David C. Baker's The Business of Expertise program reframed how the company thinks about positioning, and an 18-year run in a local CEO roundtable reshaped how Michael recruits, onboards, and keeps a team, an area he admits was a real weak spot in the early days.
For Sandy, the growth question is really a culture question. MadeToOrder has expanded both organically and through acquisition, and she's refreshingly unsentimental about which path wins.
"One isn't better than the other. One's a little bit faster, but it impacts the entire team. The most important thing to think about is the culture fit."
— Sandy Gonzalez
She describes the company's recent acquisition as something that found them rather than the other way around, and the deciding factor wasn't the book of business, it was whether the two teams shared the same DNA. The same filter applies to a single new hire. Someone who fits the culture will get to the million-dollar club, even if they don't walk in the door with a big account list.
Brand Fuel has remade itself more than once since Robert Fiveash and Danny Rosin started the company in 1998. Asked which transformation he's proudest of, Robert went straight to the B Corp certification, a 10-year effort the company flunked on its first attempt.
"It took slow and incremental progress to get there. Documenting and updating policies, improving benefits, being more transparent internally, and tracking resource usage."
— Robert Fiveash
What makes that decade worth it is differentiation. In a field crowded with 30,000 competitors, a certification that took ten years to earn becomes an unmistakable signal of who you are and why you're worth choosing. It also feeds the harder reinvention Brand Fuel is chasing now, becoming what Robert calls a "challenger agency," the kind that tells a client they can do better instead of quietly taking any order.
His on-ramp for anyone who finds that intimidating is almost comically small. In your commonsku presentations, make a recommendation instead of fanning out 20 catalog items and hoping one sticks. Take a stand, and you're a step closer to being the kind of partner clients genuinely want in the room.
Brand Fuel was commonsku's very first customer back in 2011, when Robert and Danny took a chance on a company still finding its footing. The problem they needed solved was plain old chaos: a team where everyone worked their own way, no repeatable process, and no path to train or scale.
"commonsku obviously gave us a process that each person could follow, in a rinse-and-repeat fashion, and we've been following that path ever since."
— Robert Fiveash
Sandy came at it from a sales perspective. Her team had been stitching together one tool for research, another for orders, and long evenings spent rekeying the same project from presentation to invoice. The line that won her over came from another commonsku customer: "We're not an accounting firm." Running a project from first idea to final invoice in one place, she says, bears no resemblance to the way they used to work.
For Michael, the platform is the quiet engine behind the four-day workweek. With everything centralized, anyone on the team can pick up a project on a Friday, see exactly where it stands, and keep the client moving, so no single person turns into a bottleneck.
Curious what running your business on a connected workflow actually looks like? Join the 950+ distributors powering $1.8 billion in network volume on commonsku. Book a demo and see it in action.
[00:00:22] PPAI 100: a data-driven ranking
[00:02:05] Michael on specialization
[00:03:48] The Business of Expertise and the 18-year CEO roundtable
[00:04:46] Sandy on organic growth vs. acquisition, and culture fit
[00:07:03] Robert on Brand Fuel's 10-year B Corp certification
[00:08:20] Becoming a "challenger agency" instead of an order taker
[00:10:00] Lightning round: advice to your five-years-ago self
[00:11:35] Brand Fuel as commonsku's first customer in 2011
[00:13:12] How commonsku supports a real sales culture
[00:15:34] Running a 71%-growth, four-day workweek on commonsku
🎙️ Read Full Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] [Intro music]
[00:00:06] Bobby: Hey, friends. It's Bobby. Today's episode is a little different, but I think you're going to find it very helpful. Last week, we hosted a webinar that turned into one of the best conversations we've had all year, so we wanted to bring you a few of the highlights from it here on the skucast. Now, here's the gist.
[00:00:22] Bobby: PPAI just released a ranking of the top 100 distributors in promo. It's a data-driven measurement scored across eight categories. This year, 23% of the PPAI 100 runs on commonsku. So we brought together three of those distributors for an honest conversation about their growth, their challenges, and what advice they'd have for you.
[00:00:42] Bobby: It's part celebration and part masterclass. Our three guests are Sandy Gonzalez, the CEO of MadeToOrder, who has built MadeToOrder into one of the largest women-owned and employee-owned distributors in promo; Michael Wolaver, the founder of Magellan Promotions, who's built the go-to branded merch experience for higher education, serving more than 500 colleges and growing the company — get this — 71% in three years on a four-day workweek;
[00:01:07] Bobby: and finally, Robert Fiveash, friend, mentor to many, and president and co-founder of B Corp–certified company Brand Fuel. He's the past president of PromoKitchen and a driving force in Reciprocity Road. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of us at commonsku. Over 900 distributors powering $1.8 billion in network volume rely on commonsku's connected workflow.
[00:01:27] Bobby: Process more orders, connect your team, and dramatically grow your sales. To learn how, visit commonsku.com. Oh, and this episode is just a highlight reel, but if you want to check out the entire one-hour episode from this recording, see the link in our show notes. Now, on to our guests, hosted by commonsku co-founder and president Mark Graham.
[00:01:47] Bobby: This first highlight gets right at the heart of it: the specific changes that unlocked growth for each of these three distributors. Mark starts with Michael, then Sandy, then Robert, and closes with a lightning round on what each of them would tell themselves five years ago.
[00:02:01] Mark: Let's get started, and we're going to talk about the changes that unlocked the growth. So Michael, we're going to start with you because you're first in my panel. So Michael, it's spring of 2004. You join a one-person merch company, open a territory with literally no clients, having never sold anything. After this, you double down on promo and found Magellan. As you look back, do you see certain seasons that were significant unlocks to growing to the next level? Can you define what some of those big investments or changes were?
[00:02:37] Michael: Yeah, absolutely. It's certainly been a journey. It was 2005 — so 21 years ago — and I'd never been in marketing, never been in sales, as you said. And one of the things that was really good advice I got early on was: specialize in something. And I didn't know what that would actually do for us or where we would go. So when I first started, I just tried to get anyone to be clients and tried a couple of different areas. And then I reached out to UW–Milwaukee — the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where I got my MBA.
[00:03:12] Michael: So I said, "Hey, can I reach out and start talking to departments on campus?" And they said, "Sure." So we started working with some departments on campus and started having more success, and then we went to another campus and said, "Can we do this here?" And we found success there, and we just started building it from there. So that specialization piece really was a big unlock, and when we started going from five to seven to 10 to 20 universities, we started changing our marketing around and thinking that through.
[00:03:48] Michael: A few years ago we went through a program that David C. Baker puts on called The Business of Expertise, and he does something called the Total Business Reset. David specializes in working with marketing agencies and helping them figure out how to continue to build their business, and we worked through his program. It really helped us think through how we got to where we are and how we're going to get to that next level. Another key piece that's been really impactful for us: early on I joined a CEO roundtable. We're in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, and I joined it through my local chamber of commerce, and I've been with the same group for 18 years.
[00:04:19] Michael: I have learned so much from this group. Early on we had issues with how to recruit, how to onboard, and how to retain our team, and this group helped me tremendously. Now our retention is so much better than it's ever been. It's been really impactful — this group helping me see through opportunities and learn from others — and that's just been so impactful for us.
[00:04:46] Mark: That's great. Well, congratulations, and I certainly want to dig into some of those topics a little deeper as we move on. Sandy, moving over to you — you've grown MadeToOrder in a few different ways, organically and also by acquisition. For the owner who's watching this today and weighing those two paths, what would you tell them about the positive impact of each path on your business?
[00:05:08] Sandy: Well, first of all, I have to say that both take a lot of time and energy. One isn't better than the other, I think. One's a little bit faster, but it impacts the entire team. The most important thing to think about is the culture fit, because in the first case, doing the acquisition, we weren't looking to acquire anybody. It just sort of fell into our laps. And it felt like the right fit — like you're talking to somebody and you feel like you have the same DNA.
[00:05:53] Sandy: So we worked through that, and I'm really happy to say that I do feel we have that with the team that came on board. And it's the same thing when we're organically growing or hiring somebody. We aren't necessarily looking for the big numbers. We're okay adding somebody onto the team who doesn't necessarily have a huge book of business, but if they look like they're going to fit in with the team and have the same culture fit, what we bring to the table is going to get them to that million-dollar club. So we really focus on that. I think there's good in both of them. Right now, I think we're focused on organic growth more than anything else.
[00:06:26] Mark: Right. And I think it's such a great point about culture — that if you're bringing in an organization, acquiring an organization where there's a culture mismatch, they may have great growth, they may have great margins, they may have great clients, but ultimately, if there's a culture mismatch, it can really set you back. And so I think that's a really good point.
[00:06:45] Sandy: Yeah. Not worth it.
[00:06:47] Mark: And congrats for having successful acquisitions where that culture was great. I certainly know the folks who joined MTO a while ago — just such an extraordinary group of people, from a culture perspective. Great team.
[00:07:02] Mark: So, Mr. Fiveash — Brand Fuel, needless to say, has reinvented itself more than once since you and Danny started in 1998. Which reinvention — I know there are many — but maybe pick one or two: which was the hardest, and which are you most proud of?
[00:07:19] Robert: That's a really good question, and you're right, Mark — almost 30 years later, we've certainly changed a lot over the years. The transformation I'm most proud of... this is a hard one, because we're still sort of changing, still striving to be that optimal Brand Fuel, so we're not quite there yet. But I think the hardest was probably our B Corp certification, and that's probably not a surprise. It was a 10-year process. We failed miserably at it the first time. It took slow and incremental progress to get there, and I just want to give some quick props to Danny and Allison on our team, who really did an amazing job of gathering the data and helping us focus on the things that improved our score.
[00:08:01] Robert: And these were things like documenting and updating policies, improving benefits, being more transparent internally inside our company, and tracking resource usage, which is something that's really important. So that's probably the one we're most proud of, because it took so long, and it helps define to our customers who we are and why we're different. And in an industry where there are 30,000 competitors, that's really essential. So that's probably the one we're most proud of — probably the hardest transformation. And honestly, we're still sort of that butterfly that can't really decide if it wants to go back into the nice warm cocoon, but we're really becoming what we're calling a challenger agency.
[00:08:41] Robert: And it's really easy to take an order, and it's much harder to tell a client that they can actually do better. As a salesperson, I think we're wired to get to the yes and lock in that sale. But we've found that when we push back — certainly with professionalism and acting as the expert — clients and prospects really do appreciate that. And so if you're a little bit skeptical of that, like telling a client no, I think the easiest way to start down that path is really simple: in your commonsku presentations, make a recommendation rather than just spouting out 20 items from the catalog. Take a stand, tell the client what you recommend, and start that conversation.
[00:09:19] Robert: If you do that, you'll be one step closer to being that challenger agency, if that's a particular goal of yours. I also think your clients are going to appreciate working with somebody who's informed like that and engaged like that and willing to take a stand.
[00:09:33] Mark: Yeah — people who have an opinion about the industry you serve and the client you serve, as opposed to just an order taker. And I think that's so easy in theory, but so hard, right? You're staring down a 50,000-unit stress-toy order — I just use that as an example, because I know that Danny, your partner, has famously rejected those orders and pivoted to something else. But that takes a lot of work, and it's also a risk that the client's going to go elsewhere. Yep. Good for you.
[00:10:00] Mark: Okay, lightning round. For each of you, I'm going to ask — and I just want a short, quick, one-statement response. Think of where you were five years ago. What would you tell the version of you from five years ago that would have really helped you today? Sandy, why don't we start with you?
[00:10:15] Sandy: Trust your gut. I say that because some of the decisions I delayed, I usually made anyway — but it was later, after a pivot that maybe I didn't need. So now I say, "Go with your gut. Just do it."
[00:10:32] Mark: Love it. Michael?
[00:10:34] Michael: Mine is so similar. Relax. In five years you're going to be on a commonsku webinar talking about being on the PPAI 100. Like — wait, I would say, "You're kidding me. There's no way," right? We're the small company that's trying to figure everything out. So relax, go with the gut. Yeah, I love it.
[00:10:51] Mark: I love it. And congrats again. Robert, how about you?
[00:10:55] Robert: Those are really good ones. For me, it's really simple: stay focused and be consistent. There's really nothing else that creates quicker, meaningful results — and those two are very hard for me.
[00:11:07] Bobby: Now, that's the growth highlight. For the next one, Mark digs into the commonsku side — how these three run their businesses on commonsku, and the difference it makes with their teams. Here's that clip.
[00:11:18] Mark: All right, we are flying through this. So we're now going to move to the next section. We're going to talk about leveraging commonsku and your experience with the platform. Robert, we'll start with you. I'm going to start with you because Robert Fiveash and Danny Rosin at Brand Fuel were our first customer 15 years ago, in 2011. We were just figuring things out, and Danny and Robert took a chance on us. With that in mind, back in 2011, what were you trying to solve in the business at that time?
[00:11:47] Robert: Yeah. I mean, gosh, things were such a mess. At that time, Mark, in 2011, we probably had — I don't know — just under 10 salespeople and about that same number of coordinators. Everybody did things differently. There was no consistent process, no method to the madness. And because of that, we really couldn't train people properly. We could grow the team, we could add folks, but we couldn't create scale on the operations side, and that was really hampering our growth.
[00:12:17] Robert: So we were looking for something to help us there. commonsku obviously gave us a process that each person could follow — kind of depending on our roles — in a rinse-and-repeat fashion, and we've been following that path ever since. Today we still do offer a little bit of flexibility in terms of workflow among the team members. Everybody's a little bit different and is connected to a different situation. But the process is essentially locked in, and so anyone new is trained on that workflow in commonsku. Honestly, I think without commonsku, that never would've happened. I truly believe that. So it's really been instrumental in giving us a proper pathway for training and growth on the operations side.
[00:12:59] Mark: Well, thanks for that perspective. And I'll tell you, there's been lots of laughs along the way, and it's been a lot to us — just the history and everything we've learned from you and your team. And certainly we've learned a little bit from Danny too, but mostly from you, Robert. Sandy, one of the things I know is really important to your culture is a strong sales culture. And of course, commonsku has been built for effective sales teams. How does it help your team sell and serve clients together?
[00:13:28] Sandy: Well, I'm probably one of your biggest fans, having been in sales my entire life. I have to say that when we were evaluating systems, I spoke to one of your clients, and they said something that really stuck with me. We had come from a system that included the general ledger and everything, and we were trying to find something to replace exactly that. But I spoke to one of your clients and they said, "We're not an accounting firm."
[00:13:57] Sandy: And it really stuck with me. It made such a huge impact, because where we were coming from, as salespeople, we had one tool for research, we had another one for — you know. And I just remember all those evenings of sitting there and rekeying. First you did the presentation in one system, and then the client told you what they wanted, and then you had to come back and... So the fact that you start a project and finish it all the way through to the invoice, and it's all in one place — I'm just a huge fan.
[00:14:23] Sandy: When I see people not working in the system, or when we interview somebody and tell them we use this system, I try to explain how amazing it can be to work in something that, as a salesperson, truly supports the way you work with clients. It's hard to make them understand that. But I think it really does give our sales teams a big advantage, and we can get things to our clients so much faster than we used to. It's just night and day. I'm a huge fan. I don't know what else to say.
[00:15:10] Mark: Well, you're very kind, and it's certainly been a real pleasure — and certainly lots of laughs with your team. Hyper creative, by the way. I just love it.
[00:15:18] Sandy: Obviously, our finance team has had a learning curve and had to learn to do things differently outside the system. But as far as sales and client-facing, it's amazing, for sure.
[00:15:34] Mark: So, Michael — one of the things that's really unique about your business is that you've implemented a four-day workweek, and you've done this for several years now. So you've got four days that folks are working at your company. You've grown 71%. I'm curious how commonsku contributes to making that all work for you, so the business is growing and successful.
[00:15:57] Michael: Absolutely. And a lot of it was like what Sandy mentioned — how you can take all the information and have it in one central spot. And, like Robert talked about, consistency across the team, so that someone can jump in on a project if need be. So, like, when we have someone on call every Friday to make sure that if something needs to be attended to, anyone on our team can jump in, see what's going on in the project, and get it to the next level to keep the client happy.
[00:16:26] Michael: So the ability for us to have that centralized system — without that, we would not be able to do what we're doing. And that's just the efficiencies we get through it. The efficiencies that we know are coming with commonsku will make that even better and more exciting for us, so we're super excited about all the ways the system has helped and will continue to help our business.
[00:16:47] Bobby: Thanks for joining us today. That's just a taste of the entire one-hour conversation. Mark and the panel get into even more topics, such as breaking through the sales ceiling, their thoughts on merch as a medium, and their perspective on AI. To hear the full episode, check out the link in our show notes. I'm Bobby Lehew. Our executive producer is Ritz, and we'll see you next time.