Transcript of How to Scale From a Business Startup to $1B Without a 5-Year Plan New

Welcome back to the Vault Unlocked. I'm Kavon K, and today we're diving into something most businesses get completely wrong: differentiation. Everyone says they're better. Everyone says they're the best. Everyone says they're number one. But if you sound like everyone else, you disappear with everyone else. My guest today is Roy Oasing, the mind behind the movement, be different or be dead. He took an early-stage data company and helped scale it to a billion dollars in revenue. A business A business that today is worth $18 billion, not through hype, not through luck, but through ruthless differentiation and execution. We're talking about why most strategic planning is broken. The three questions that actually drive real growth, why being the best is a losing game. If you're scaling, if you're stuck in a crowded market, if your message sounds sharp, but your revenue isn't moving, this conversation will challenge the way you think about growth.

Let's unlock Roy, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here.

For the listeners that don't know who Roy is, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you came from, and how did you get to this concept and this idea, a methodology of be different or be dead?

Yeah. So I'm a Canadian. I'm from Vancouver, and born and raised in DC and worked in the telecom space when, in fact, the business was changing very rapidly from monopoly to competition and technology was changing quickly. And I was asked to undertake the role as President of this company that already had a bit of a data business but was asked to actually take advantage of the Internet as it was coming on stream. So my challenge was, Level up, gear up, and let's try and take advantage of this. And so the be different or be dead thing was really like a strategy that was driving what I did as a leader, because differentiation, quite frankly, is not done very well today by most businesses. All you got to do is look around. Everybody claims they're better, they're best, they're number one, they're leaders, and quite frankly, cave on us crap. It's not believable, right? Yeah. And I have a solution for that, which we can talk about. So I was asked to come in, and the whole drive for me has always been differentiate, differentiate, differentiate. Entreprene have a challenge for that. New startup CEOs, people looking to bump their career, presidents of companies, doesn't matter whether it's small, large, for profit, not for profit.

The challenge of separating oneself from our competition is critical. And yet you would think that people would do it well just by virtue of the marketplace we're in, and they don't. They don't. It's done mediocre at best. Hence, my challenge now, after leaving this company, which by by the way, is no longer a billion dollars a year, it's $18 billion a year. So my challenge now is to try and do what I'm doing with you, spread the word, have a conversation about why differentiation is so important and how to do it.

Well, let's go a little bit back there because you said you took a billion dollar company and it's now worth $18 billion.

Yeah. So we took an early stage data company and grew it to a billion in annual revenue. And that business today has now run up the $18 billion.

You took a startup and brought it to a unicorn's company. Yeah. All from this idea of being different?

Well, the major back was on be different, but there's a whole lot of moving parts in that. It's like people keep asking me, well, what is the one secret to success? And I go, no, there's a whole bunch of things. What's the one thing that you did that you succeeded? No, there was a bunch of stuff. What was the biggest failure? No, there was a bunch of stuff. I mean, so business and leadership is a highly complicated thing. It's an art form, right? And so you need to learn your way to maneuver through it. And the first thing you learn is there's no silver bullet. There's a whole bunch of little things, okay, that rely on people and their passion to actually get you to where you need to get to. And so as a leader, you need to have the energy and relentless tenacity to just keep driving, driving, driving, driving. And that's what we did. We did different things, a whole bunch of different things.

So looking back, and I love it because I love There's no silver bullet. There's no one thing. It's multiple things, multiple tries, multiple failures. But if you can look back on that, just that journey of going zero to unicorn status, a billion dollars, what were a couple? I would say, what would be the highlight things that stuck out for you that did make a little bit of more of a movement than all the little things stacking up?

Yeah, and that's a fair question. And again, it's within this context of being different. Because that's always been my mantra since I was a kid. Through my whole young life, is to just figure out a way to be different than everybody else in a way that people care about, in a way that mattered. I don't want you to think this is narcissism because it's not. Narcissists do stuff for themselves. That's not what I'm talking about. Being different is about being special in a way other people care about. Going back to this challenge, we had to look for, literally, in every nook and cranny of this business, we had to look for opportunities to be different. It started with the planning process. So I remember thinking, wow, this is a huge... I'm not going to either make this thing or it's going to break me one or the other. What am I going to do? I don't have a strategy. And so I looked around at traditional planning models, and none of them were helpful. It took too long, they were too complicated, and they were way too expensive. So I had to create my own.

And the other thing that drove me behind the be different thing is the need to actually do something, not ponder it to death, but execute, execute, because that's where performance comes from. It doesn't come from the left brain. It comes from the right brain and actually keeping the feet moving and doing things. So I said, okay, my planning process has got to be fueled by that. So I built this process called strategic game planning, and I coined it. It's built to execute. It's like execute first, plan second. And it was a process that literally today with small businesses and clients, I do in literally 48 hours, Kavon. It's remarkable. 48 hours, wow. 48 hours, and you have a strategy coming out the other end. It's based on the notion of execution is prime. And so I talk about things like, let's head West, let's get the plan just about right. We live in an imperfect world. Why are you trying to perfect and formularize something that's imperfect? That's nonsensical, and it's an idiot's way of trying to run a business. And so it's actually created by answering three simple questions. When I tell you, you'll go, What?

First question is, how big do you want to be? That's a question about growth, and it's all top-line revenue. It's not net income. It's not profits. Because I can give you whatever profits you want by manipulating an income and balance sheet. So it's, How big do you want to be in 24 months in terms of top-line revenue. I don't believe five-year plans exist because the fourth year never shows up. And it just gives you a reason for putting stuff off, which, of course, is the antithesis of meaningful execution to drive performance. Requirements. So my question is, if you're at a million today, in 24 months, where do you want to be? Now, why do I start with that question? It's because the growth declaration drives the character of the strategy. You can't take an incremental strategy and apply it to an absolute step function growth. So it makes sense, but nobody else does it that way. So that's the first question. Second question is, where are you going to get the money? So the question is, who do you intend to serve? So this is a question about customer groups. Others might call it market segments.

The problem with that is it's too general. And people love generalities in marketing because they're basically lazy. I want to see the YTS of people's eyes that I'm going to target because the next question I'm going to ask is, what do they crave? Who do you serve? What do they crave? Not what they need. Needs are basically satisfied. And typically, if you want to compete in that space, it's going going to be price sensitive, and there's going to be a lot of competition. Cravings, on the other hand, Kavon, are what you lust for, what you desire, right? What you covert. Those are all emotional triggers. And guess what? They're typically Insensitive to price, relatively speaking. And there's nobody else playing in that space. So my view is always, I'm going to where people crave something. I'm going to figure out organizationally how to do that, which we can talk about. And then I'm just going to target, target Fit and focus, focus. Those are the first two questions. Third question is the kicker, and this gets at the differentiation piece, okay? And it's how are you going to compete and win? In those who groups you've just defined with the cravings that you've discovered?

And this is where you get into being different and the differentiation piece. And this is where I created this really cool strategy called building the only statement. In other words, you don't want to be the best of the best. You want to be the only one that does what you do. And so the The quest here is to have a binary thing going on. You are either the the only one or you're not. And that's the beauty of this. It gets the kids off the street. There's no judgment involved in terms of, are you better? No, it says, are you the only one, and you trot out data to actually see whether, in fact, that individual or company is telling the truth. That particular model guided us to get going. We had pretty stiff growth goals, and even if we didn't make them, because we didn't make them all, we still did a hell of a lot better than a scenario where we didn't have audacious growth goals, right?

Absolutely, yeah.

The who to serve really got us focused on high value customers. And the craving angle actually allowed us to re-vector our customer service organizations and our sales organizations, where we actually covereded information around what people craved. Now, we didn't ask them, cave What do you crave? But the conversation was skewed and tilted in a way that I was trying to discover something special about you. I kept a record of it. And somebody gave me hell for violating privacy laws. I said, Oh, bullshit. Get out of my face. That's not that. This is a conversation. And eventually, and I can tell you a story of how we actually saved a $10 million a year account by using that information, it becomes part of the marketing process. The only statement is pitch. It becomes your elevator pitch, we are the only ones who. And then you have a wonderful conversation about, Well, why did you pick that? What is that all about? And can you help me understand what you're doing that would prove that you're doing? A wonderful It was a conversation, but it was all based around differentiation. So that's just one piece. I mean, there's a whole bunch of other stuff in here, like hiring for goosebumps, cutting the crap, killing dumb rules, all line of sight leadership, all sorts of other small little things all targeted to change behavior and raise performance.

And we just did a whole bunch of those. And nobody else were doing them because they were following strategic planning 101 textbooks. Okay, Vawn, that's the problem. And if Everybody's reading the same textbook-In the textbook, you're going to get the same results.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

No, I agree on that. So I just want to make sure we're clear here, because what I'm hearing is your framework is the first question is, how big do we to be? So let's break these questions down a little bit. When we ask that question, how big do we want to be? I would say most people are actually scared to go big.

I know.

That's right. Or they want to be big with no plan. So for me, if you ask, so you ask me, and this is one of my, probably my demise, you go, Kaven, how big do you want to be? My question is more.

Yeah, that's not good enough. If I could either be one or two or a billion. And the reason it makes a difference is the size of the challenge without knowing how to satisfy it drives innovation. So my belief, and this is part of the be different thing is, you don't innovate by using a least square's regression model, using 10 years of data to project where you think you're going to be and accept that as the forecast of revenues. Okay, because that's nonsensical. That assumes that tomorrow is going to be the same as yesterday. We all know that that It doesn't work. So this is literally as a leader, and it is scary.

Is this your BHAG you're talking about how big you want to be, or is this the realistic? When I set my goals, I have my three levels. I have my target, I have my outrageous, and I have my minimum. The idea is to not hit anything but the target, and outrageous is great. Yeah.

So if I were coaching you, I would say, Okay, don't try and stratify your responses, because all that's doing is you're trying to hedge your bet. What I want to know is, When you wake up in the middle of the night, what would your dream be of your 24 months revenue target? Just pure. I'm not asking you to be realistic. In fact, I want it to be unrealistic because realism drives nothing. Unrealism drives innovation. And this whole planning process, you didn't get to a billion dollars by not being innovative. The whole planning process is meant to drive innovation. And so if you're sitting at five million a year, Okay, you go cautiously and perspiration is coming down your face and you say to me, Roy, I want to be 20. I go, Good. I said, Do you have any idea how to get there? And if they say yes, the number isn't big enough. If they say no, I say, All right, let's take the 20 mil. Now let's go figure out which customer groups have the potential to get there. What do they crave? Blah, blah, blah. How are we going to compete and win?

It all starts with that.

We get the now. As I said step one is get that number. And that number isn't from data. It's actually what you want. What is it you want? And then once we have that, so if you're a $5 million company and you want to actually get the 20, you want to get the 50, you work with them and go, Okay, great. $50 is a great number. It makes you scared? Great. We're in the right department. Second question, which is the strategic question, who are we going to serve that's going to give us 50 million? And what do they crave? I just want to make sure I'm clear on that.

Yeah, right. So the other part of that, just if I might, excuse me for interrupting, but as we go through this, the tendency is going to be to try and be too broad when you try to describe who you're going to serve. So what I try and do is narrow you down because you don't have an infinite number of resources to do this. So I want as few customer groups as possible. So my question to you might be, Kavon, can you give me one customer group that will get the 50 mill? And knowing full well that you're going to say, well, no. I said, okay, how about two? How about three? So we start that way as opposed to treating it mass market and then hack it up. And you still are left with big segments that are really mass markets anyway.

It's niching down, right? I think people are are afraid to niche down. We could talk about that, but I feel people are afraid to go niche. There's different names for it, ICP, Ideal Customer Profile. But the idea is going down to the one person that you know what they're craving. So that comes to that second question is, just because I think I know what they're craving, doesn't mean it's what they're actually craving. So do you work with them to understand? Because you can think it and go out there and be brutally wrong.

Yeah, and that's part of it. That's part of the risk. And so, don't try and overcomplicate this thing. People talk an awful lot about the old customer research vehicles, like focus groups. I mean, they're still magic. Okay, and why are they magic? Their magic is because You and I actually look at one another and we have a conversation. What the hell? That actually in and of itself is a strategic advantage for organizations who have the guts to do it and a will to do it. And so simplify it. And the other thing is every customer touch point that you have, use it as a strategic opportunity to gather insights on cravings. And I used to call them customer secrets. What's their secret? What do they really desire? And then you You have a repository, and then you got the back-end dudes working the best angle of this to make the data in usable form, the cravings data or insights, so that you can actually use them in customer service, in service recovery, in marketing development. I'm not saying product development ever, because this is a this is a this is a thing that is wrapped around products and services, because products and services, quite frankly, don't matter unless they're not working.

I got it. No, I got it. People don't buy products. They don't buy services. They don't buy the next gadget. At the end of the day, people buy a better version of themselves. That's what I always tell everybody.

I really like that. I really like that. They buy an experience. They want to feel good. Organizations It's unfortunately... Yeah, exactly. Well, that's why the cravings thing, if you nail it, is so powerful because they go, oh, and one simple little technique we always use was the element of surprise. I mean, nothing will blow a customer away more it, then surprising them with something they don't expect you to do, especially if you tend to be a larger company, right? They go, wow, where the hell did that come from? And they tell people about that. And that's actually one of the main strategies we used when we screw the customer over.

What were some of the surprise elements that you use, the examples that you could talk about? I know that you're under NDA because you've not mentioned the name of the company and stuff like that, so I get that. But can you talk about some of those things that you did, too.

Well, these are really operational in nature, and it really varied in terms of the engagement that was going on. And so, yeah, there's nothing confidential about this stuff because nobody else would ever do it anyway. The biggest story I remember is we actually put the five sales restaurant, downtown Vancouver, out of business one morning. Their PBX, their switchboard just went out. So this is a huge... It was my client. And so put him out. Well, of course, I knew the CEO, he was a wonderful chap, and I was just waiting for this because I already got a heads up. When I got a heads up, 10 minutes later, he phones me and he is screaming. Looking at me. I mean, this is horrible, right? And that's fine. So I said, Okay, Michael. I said, I'll tell you what, I'm coming down. We're going to fix this. We're going to fix this in a half an hour. Don't worry about it. It'll be done. Hang up the phone. So here's what I did. I told him about this later, but it formed the element of surprise. First of all, I got a check cut for $50,000.

The lawyers went crazy because I admitted that we'd put this guy out of business. Cut a check for 50 grand. I was going to take that down. And then I called his EA, or I called my sales director and I said, Look, what is he really like? What could we do to surprise this guy? Well, it turns out for years, he was trying to get... You remember these old candlestick telephones in the day that were retro phones, and people would put them on desks and they would look really cool. Like one ringing dingy, that thing, right? In modern colors and everything, they call them candlestick phones. Okay. He always wanted one, and he was too cheap to go out and buy one. They were about $150 at a phone market in those days, right? So I said, Okay, let's take care of it. So here we go, off in our car. This is literally two hours later down to his office. We go into his... I got the phone, I got the check. Going to his office, I got my sales director. We go into his office, and of course, here he comes, and he just wants to vent.

The first thing I said, Michael, look, man, I'm so sorry. We just screwed you over royally. You know what he said to me? He goes, Oh, that's okay, Roy. Mistakes happen. But I said, Here's what we're going to do. Okay, here are the two surprises that saved the account. One, I gave him the money. I said, I know it's not enough. I know it's probably 300, 400 grand. But I said, I He couldn't get any more on such short notice. Here's a token, man. He goes, What? And I says, And here's something else. And I handed him. I'm getting goosebumps. Just thinking like, I handed him the box, man. And he opens the box, and that was what did it. I thought he was going to cry. I thought he was... He just go, I've always wanted one of these things. There's a CEO, right? Thank you, Roy. Thank you so much. I said, No. I said, Look, I just wanted to give you something that you may not I've expected, and I hope you get some joy out of this. He just put it down. He couldn't stop talking about it. To make a long story short, the story he told of our company was always that story.

It wasn't how great our Internet service was. It wasn't how great our earnings per share were. It was, wow, you wouldn't have believed what happened. These guys put us out and they recovered in this way. That's my favorite story. He told that story. He was on the circuit, right? Big business guy down here in the Lower Mainland, was on the speaking circuit. He told that story all the time. What did it really cost us for an account that was millions of dollars a year? 50 grand plus 165.

Yeah, the save it, right? You're right, most businesses wouldn't do it. They would not do it.

Well, first of all, by the time they got approval to do it, if they ever did, three weeks had gone by. If you don't recover this way in 24 hours, it's gone. You have no ability to recover that and build loyalty.

I bet you, we can all say it, but I guarantee you, even if you showed up without the $50,000, but with that phone, that probably would have been enough.

Yeah, who knows? But I wanted... This guy, he had finance as a background, too. So I wanted to make sure.

Yeah. So I want to make sure we're staying on track here because I want to really understand this. First things first, because we're learning business, 101, right? Really. Marketing 101 is how big What big do you want to be? Number two, I'm going to call it avatar, but who is your customer and what is their biggest craving, aka what are the needs? What's the thing that keeps them up at night?

Not needs. Don't use the word needs. It's desire. What are they cover? It's definitely not what they need. What are their desires?

What are their cravings? Aspirations? The little thing.

Because if you say needs, it drives you into thinking about products and services, and that's not what you want to do.

Okay, see, this This is great. Let's talk about this. Here we go. That's a huge opportunity there for people to understand the difference between the words we use and the power it has. So when a business owner confuses, what I just did, the same in this call here is, okay, we go after their needs, we go after their cravings. Well, cravings and needs are two different things. Yes, they are. Clearly, they are. But don't take that lightly, because when we go after and make strategic business decisions is based off cravings, we start seeing the world, I'm going to see the opportunity much different than if we start going after the business and think about their needs. What's the problem we can solve versus what's the thing that we can give them? Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes, absolutely. And one step further, it can be couched around the word problem, but it's done so only because the need The need to fix it is so emotional that it actually becomes a craving. So they crave that solution. Okay, whereas they may start it. It goes up the continuum of intensity to actually resolve it.

So it go back to the old saying, which is the wrong saying, which is sell features and benefits. And it's like, no, you don't sell features and benefits. You actually sell outcomes, the result.

Yeah, that's exactly... Well done. Well done. That's a great Great way to express it. And the outcome you're looking for is dilated pupils, perspiration, and just... You can feel it. They want to hug you. You can just feel it coming. And if you can get to that point, you know you can check the box. I think I've come close. And the other thing is, record it, make sure you don't forget it. Look for other opportunities with other people, because we are the same in a lot of emotional ways to actually pull the trigger on that. And Over time, what happens is the culture of the organization starts to change. It's not overnight, but it starts to change because you tell stories. I mean, storytelling is huge around this stuff.

Story selling.

Yeah, exactly.

I just want to stick in this area because this area is the make or break of what you're going to offer the market. Really this area, the question two, I think is quite the foundational questions of what we're going to do as a business. Do you have strategies or what happens when you meet a business owner who may be stuck on that? They go, Well, I can do this. We serve this, we serve this, we serve that. We have these three people. I can offer X, X, X. And then it's like, they all have problems. They all have like, How do we get down to the one?

So it starts out with saying, It's not about what you think you can do. It's not that. It's about what they crave. It's about them. And so that drives us to spend a lot of time really getting to understand who you've described as your who. Those five or six or 10 customer groups, you go through each and every one of them. With people in the business, if you don't have people in your business that can answer this question, you got the wrong people in your freaking business, dude. That's it. And I say them to them, Look, if you don't know who your high-value clients are by name, and if you don't keep in touch with them, what the hell are you doing with your time? Oh, I know. You're trying to find a way to use AI. Okay, well, I'm not saying that's not important. It might be at some point, but you need to do the strategic work in order to legitimitize all those tactical opportunities. And I find what people do is exactly the opposite. They go chasing the shiny object. They chase what I call yummy because it feels so good to eat that AI solution.

They go chase it without figuring out what the context is. So what I try and do with you is take you through the process. And I say, trust the process. We're going to get it done. And it's not about your product and service. Trust me, we're going to drag it out of you. And so, literally, out of a guy that did landscaping, lawn cutting, I dragged a property development solution provider. Out of a guy that sold boats to boat dealers in Toronto, I dragged business development advisor out of him because his clients craved comfort that they I didn't go out of business. I said, What the hell? That sounds like a... That's not really all about selling boats, although we could probably use it, use the boat as an anchor, so to speak. I led them right into, You're now a problem solver. You're a business consultant. You're going to use boats in a different way, and you're going to help them grow their business. And they're the only one that does it.

And as a result, then they get to buy the boat.

The boat will come, okay? But it's not... It's not the leading indicator here. It's almost... That's your core service, but that's not why people are going to buy. I mean, look at, all people want is a boat that floats and the electronics work. Trust me, I own four of them. It's not about anything else. Maybe there's some brand stuff if you really like Ocean Alexander's and high-end boats, but it's really not about that. Quite frankly, I wasn't the decision-maker anyways. The guy that sold me the boat, he figured it out. It was my wife.

Yeah, exactly. We were buying a home that floated, and he figured that out.

And once I saw him doing it, I thought, oh, shit.

This is good sales. This is salesmanship. That's salesmanship 101 right there. And then the third question, because we dived in, and the third question is, how do I keep? That's all I got. What's the third question?

Okay, so the third question is, relative to the customer groups and their cravings that you've just discovered and defined, how do you intend to compete and win in those segments, given that there's going to be competitors running around. So this is where the only statement, which is the ultimate manifestation of being different, is the ability to claim that you are the only one who does what you do. So this is where the solution development stuff starts to come in a way that addresses those cravings and those desires. And this is hard work, because sometimes we have to reframe frame your business, like we had to do with the boat guys. They were no longer in the boat selling business. They were in the business development solution business, which blew them away. And the same with the landscaper, moving into the property development solution business, albeit defined a specific way. So it's exceedingly important. And people will always say, Well, I'm not special at something, which is a normal thing because you haven't thought about it this way, or they can't get out of the products and services. And that's a really tough mindset to move out of.

Okay, so this brings us back to the beginning here when you said the most powerful Truth is, how do you differentiate yourself or you die, right? Exactly. What was it again? Be different or be dead. So how do you get people to be different? Or you said in the marketing, everyone's saying, oh, we're the best, but that's not making you different. So what does different mean to you? How can a business stand out in today's economy, which everybody is fighting for attention and saying, and you're saying the same thing. My industry, for instance, Everybody is saying the same thing. You don't pay. It's we're going to do X or you don't pay. It's like, I couldn't even do an ad like that. It makes me want to puke.

So we're not going to think about the manifestation of the value proposition. We're not going to think about ads. We're not going to think about any of that stuff. We're going to do the work first. Because look at, the answer is different for each and every business. Because when they do the work and they come up with how big do they want to be and who do they intend to serve and what do those people crave and have some granularity around that, that gives them now insights into what the solution that you want to be a unique provider of is. So It doesn't... This is the problem, and this is the problem I have with consulting, generally, is they take a boilerplate solution and they try and drive it down everybody's throats. And they will have a canned answer to what you just said, the And the unfortunate thing is they're being intellectually dishonest and they're lying through their freaking teeth. Because the reality is, I need to sit down with you. You need to do the work to create your strategy with a trust that you will find... You will Find the right solution.

And I'll drag it out of you because I know how to do it.

Yeah.

But no, I'm not going to give you a simple form.

I love what you just said. I love what you just said, because it really calls out a problem that I see in the marketplace, too, is a can end solution. And I believe every business is different. Every business has their unique things that make them different. Customer is different. And to do a one shop style for everything, it just doesn't feel like Like you said, it's not honest. And that's why I've always had our time with my business and working with my clients is like, we build sales teams, but we build them for their business. I don't run a sales floor. I never believed in a sales floor. They're successful, but I just never believed in it. I believe in building a unique sales floor for your unique business. How do you scale that, though? That's the problem.

I don't believe that you do need a sales force. I believe that what we're talking about is engaging with people buying. I'm not selling at all. If you do a good enough job with everything we've just talked about, and you have a relevant, compelling, unique solution Okay, that may have product components, but you don't sell it that way. You don't brand it that way. This is where the clever branding comes. And you provide it or deliver that value, the customer ends up buying.

I love it.

So you don't need a sales Unfortunately, and I've written a ton of it, just check my blogs. I mean, I beat the crap out of sales all the time because they're such a good target, right? And I actually advocate that you don't need one. Now, to replace it, okay, with a demand pulling capability is what we're talking about here. And so it's all about making the little not so subtle changes to an organization, this leadership and its culture to make it happen. One of the things that I did, because we were flogging sales Salesforce, and we never, ever did make the right angle turn that I wanted to see before I left. But one of the things I did was I started to incorporate little things, like to your question earlier, what are those small, little audacious things? So I put secret gathering in every performance plan of every salesperson in my organization. And I had about a 700 person Salesforce. So a secret gather. Secret gathering is all about identifying your client's craving. I just call them secrets, right? And so I said to everybody, okay, it's going in your performance plans. It's going to have an impact on your bonus.

And guess what? And they said, well, how are you going to measure it? How are you going to measure? I said, you're going to show me your secrets manual for every one of your clients. And if I don't see anything in it, guess what? You're done. If I see something in it, we're going to have a conversation about what you learn. So we started that way. Well, let me tell you, sales guys, they ran to their caves. They thought their life was over because they were all used to doing other things. But I just asked them to do one little thing differently. The other thing I did was I included the customer in rating the salespeople. Okay, so we did a lot of customer perception research, right? And so you can see what I'm doing. I'm moving away from how much did you sell in the last quarter towards, okay, I want to know how much you sold because that was yesterday's world. But I also want to talk about how many secrets have you got out of your top five clients? Let me see the customer report card that they filled out on you.

Of course, we architected it around behaviors, non-sales sales behaviors that were consistent with the culture we were trying to create, i. E. Exactly what you and I have been talking about, caring people, right? Who give a shit, human being lovers, all that stuff, as opposed to wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. Secrets.

I just I just wanted to make sure I was understanding this. The secrets are talking about, a. K. A, the example of the guy that wanted the telephone. Is that what you mean? I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, okay.

I cloaked it differently.

It's a hard one for me to hear this because As a professional salesperson, so I love it because we're going to battle this maybe because my last professional, what do you call it, corporate job was I was the number one pharmaceutical sales rep for the largest company in the world. And I did not, and I tell people this, I did not know one, one molecule that I sold. Then I don't know how to even say the names. But I was the number one. And why? Because of what you just... The secret. Yeah. Business. And I learned this at a very, very... I was very fortunate to learn this at a young age. I was in an interview. I tell people this. It's a good I was in an interview, long story short, and I was young, cocky, full of piss and vinegar, telling the guy, I'm going to be your number one salesperson. You just put me in the spot. I'm going to kill it. The entire interview, he didn't say a word. He didn't say a word, not answer anything. He didn't ask me anything. I just went off and off. And he wrote on a piece of paper and he slid it across the desk.

I picked the piece of paper up and I looked at it, and all it said was, People do business with people they like. And I looked at that, I looked at him, I shut up, and he said, I'll see you on Monday. And I learned that lesson. It's not about how great you think you are. It's not about all these things, the products, the features. They're not buying that. They're buying you, and they're buying the idea of who they can become after they buy through you. So it's interesting. So you made your salespeople who probably had no idea how to actually have real conversations with people and even have the hard conversations for them, which is learn a little bit more about your customer.

Yeah, well, and be a human being. This is a function of leadership of the organization. I mean, it's not a sales. It's not the salesperson's fault. They're doing what the organization is asking them to do. They got six months or three months quotas, and they're all unit sales of products, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you and I know salespeople. You throw a bonus plan in in front of them, they will make it. And the problem is, if the plan isn't right in terms of long term goals, you're screwed. You are really screwed. And so what we try to do is start. It's not finished. I check in now and then. It's not finished. It probably never will be. It's a journey to cultural change of getting humans doing business with humans. Technology doesn't make it easier because unfortunately, you run into tactical people that want to use all that technology as instead of saying, how can I use the technology to satisfy my overall human being goals?

Use the technology to create the craving. Use the technology to create the connection.

To lay into them.

Using the technology to be able to have the real conversations instead of use technology to make more sales. I believe it works for a short time, but as you know, it's not a long term plan. I think you're always going to be chasing with that type of mindset. So when working with businesses and they're bringing you on, let's say, and you're going to start working them through this process, what do you find is either the biggest gap or the biggest resistance you get on average when working with the founder or the business as a whole?

Actually, a good question. I don't find anything specific. What I do find is once we start the process, the very fact that they're asking me for help is reassuring to me that they are wanting to break away. They're wanting to break away from the shit that they're in the middle of. I had one guy say, Roy, you got to help me. I don't know what I'm doing. Okay, that cry for help, that's good. I find that people come with that, and so they're bought in and they trust the process enough. And it's because it's proven itself. It's not a theoretical process. When I say to them, Look, I'm sorry, we just got a billion out of using this. What is it you want me to say? When people say, Well, how can that work? I say, Well, something is like gravity. We know it exists, but we can't explain it, really. It's like the human being lover thing that we did. It works. Don't ask me how it works, but it And so I have people leaning the right way. They're willing to put the work in. I find they're very willing to accept the results because they created the results.

And so it's not... I mean, I'm not facilitator. I'm like a content provider, dragging stuff out of people's heads that they already know. I'm just giving it some framework and language, because language is so powerful and it's never used right in planning. Everybody wants to make it so complicated. If you make it simple, people understand it and they're willing to go forward. They trip over the how big do you want to be when I push them on top-line revenue. I get them to perspire a little bit. But I tell them, I said, Look at it, if you're not sweating, we're going to keep going. We're not stopping yet. And it is a fun experience. That's the other thing I want to say, Kavon. It's a 48-hour fun experience with remarkable outcomes, I think.

So be different, be dead, to me, from what I'm hearing from you, it sounds like it's more about creating the authentic, real relationship and connections with your, I'm going to call them your prospects or your clients, depending on the business model, and being able to create a little bit more human-centric, I call it human-centric selling, where I'm from, but like a human-centric connection with these people. How are you different, though? When you are selling yourself, people don't know you. If I were to come to your website or if I were to try to understand you a little bit more, what are you doing specifically to make yourself stuff different so you don't die?

Well, I'm the only one that talks about audacious ways to get to a billion dollars in sales, annual sales. Nobody else that does that. And I've got the credentials and the platform to prove it. Nobody else is as simple as I am. I mean, nobody else can take something like an esoteric idea and dumb it down so the people actually can understand it. And the only reason I can do it is I've been doing this for 40 freaking years. This is not... I didn't come down from yesterday's rain call. When somebody says, Roy, why should I choose you to help me in consulting? I say, First of all, I've been there and I've done it so you can trust me. This stuff works. Oh, you don't believe me? Okay, what part of the billion don't you get? And we have that conversation. So it's nice to be able to point to a performance and an end result that is meaningful to business people and top-line revenue and revenue growth really is. But there's many pieces to this. I mean, we've We had service strategy, so I know how to build service strategy. Basically, other than the CFO, I've pretty well done using be different or be dead as my manager, everything in an organization, including internal audit, because I believe that service credit people can actually differentiate an organization because most of them are assholes.

And all they want to do is collect money. I wanted to build a relationship with people that owe me money. And I got all sorts of money from them. So it just seems to be that I'm the only one in that space. But I do use the platform of the billion as a way sometimes to get people to pay attention because it's the only way they'll do it. But most of the time it's like having a conversation and giving them a book.

It's not even just a billion. The billion is now 18 billion as a result of the foundation. Hey, you didn't get to the first bill, you went to got to the 18 billion, right?

Yeah, run rate. We know what run rate is, right?

And Dan, let me ask you this then, what type of businesses do you currently work with? What size are they? What industry are they in?

It doesn't matter. It can be not for profit. I just completed some work for a not-for-profit called Dan's Legacy. They're in the mental illness space in Tawassin. And we did a strategic game plan for them because they They weren't happy that they were getting the results that they wanted. I knew the executive director, and she just reached out. I'm not knocking on doors to do this. I don't need to work.

I feel like, yeah, like I was going to say, you're the type of guy, you don't go looking for businesses. Businesses find you when they're ready.

Yeah. And that's a good thing for my... Because I don't need a filter then. So if somebody's talking to me about being interested in doing this, then I know they're leaning in. Okay. And that's good. But I will say, though, I have said no to businesses that have not convinced me that they're willing to do anything with the results that I helped them achieve. And so they're not really serious about implementation. They want to plan, but they don't want to put the work in to actually do the execution. And so I said, I'm not seeing that your skin is in the game here, and maybe you can find someone else.

Yeah, I hear that because a lot of businesses that want the idea, they like the idea that they're doing something different. Or the idea that they're working on the problem, but they don't actually want to work on the problem. Why do you actually think that is?

Oh, man, I don't know. That is so true, though. I think it makes them feel good. It actually it strokes their ego and it makes them feel like a big boy or a big woman or a big whatever. If they're doing this stuff because somebody has told them that it's important to do it, and so they're trying to do it, but they really don't want to do it. And what they don't realize, it's so easy to spot these people. I mean, they're so disingenuous. It's just unbelievable. And of course, then they use the buzzwords and that just right away. It does it for me. I mean, seriously, you open your mouth and you prove that you're stupid, right?

Yeah. Totally get it. I love it. I love it. It's quite interesting because you did take something that is complex, and you could tell you just making it pretty easy with three very specific questions. But I just saw the audience, there's a lot of depth in those questions. I think we can agree on that. They're not just as simple as, how big do you want to be? Who do you want to serve? What are their cravings? And what's that last one? I always keep forgetting that last one.

How are you going to compete and win?

How do you compete and win? How do you compete and win? Because underneath those questions, there's depth and there's things that people need to really understand.

Well, the other thing it points out, if you don't mind, is I'm always learning about my stuff. This is an evolution over time. Working it and working it and thinking about it and trying it and tweaking it and what works with this client, et cetera. When we actually were growing the business, that was a huge learning experience because we were unionized. Most of the workers in the business were members of a union. So trying to craft this in a way that was going to work in that environment and yet still yield maybe 85 % of what we wanted in year four or five. That was hard going, but we just had to do it. Again, I go back and say, if you're looking for silver bullets, there are none, guys. You got to in in the work.

I love that. I think we can end on that idea because I think a lot of business owners that I definitely work with and speak to, they're stuck waiting or looking for that silver bullet because they see their competitor doing it or they've seen someone else in the other industry try it. I always say just because it worked for them does not mean it's going to work for you. You just can't do it. What would you say to business owners that are just There's got to be the one. There's one thing that's going to change everything for me. You and I both know, no, there isn't. There really isn't.

Well, I mean, what I would say honestly is, well, I mean, try it. You might get lucky, but do me a favor. When it fails, do your work. Okay, because all you've done is proven the fact that buying single stocks, sometimes you get lucky, but most of the time you don't. I'm here to help you if you don't. Because the stuff that we're going to talk about in the process that we've created here is tried and proven. It was loved by frontline people and every element of the business. So it has the human factor. It lit fires in people. And that's why we got to a billion. Not because it was a cool strategy. We didn't know it was going to be a billion, but all we knew is it was huge. We had a big base of customers. And so the strategy, okay, was to hold and grow, hold and grow, and deflect using the approaches that you and I just talked about because it was people. The technology piece was easy. I mean, we were a telephone company, for God's sake. We knew about technology. What we didn't know is about cravings, is about demand creators, all of that stuff, which defined the new world we were going into.

And the relationship building piece was never, ever a key element of our culture. And it had to be, in my view, we had to get there real quickly.

And that was-Well, because you're asking everyday people to continuously pay you month after month after month. There's no reason why. You want to talk about LTV.

Exactly.

If you do that right, and they will stay.

Yeah. And we knew who they were. We had the classic modeling stuff going on. And so we had the right information. It was what we had to do with that information to augment Dent it the way you and I have just been talking about and then deploy it in a meaningful way in the organization and get advocates. I mean, part of my problem was at the executive level, getting advocates for what we were doing, because a lot of people thought we were crazy. I mean, how could you create a strategy in 48 hours? Roy, should I really believe that? I said, I'll tell you what, let's base your opinion on performance. Okay, if we're not able to perform, then you have a point. But to throw something out because it's an idea that's different than yours is ridiculous. We're going to make this work. Why do I know that? Because it appeals to people.

48 hours. You're hanging on that. So 48 hours. I'm just going to say, a business that's stuck at 10, 5, 1 million, 100 million. And they know, the business owners know, you know that something needs a change. 48 hours, we can come up with a plan, ask them the questions, and you can come up with a strategic plan based off of a strategic, I'm going to call them a customer or relationship or the, again, who do we want to serve question. And in 48 hours, we can start executing.

Yeah. So the process is, what I do is get the leadership team in a room. Okay, I can do it on Zoom, but it's very powerful face to face. The leader and the team. And the process I have is basically every member on the team has equal decision making responsibility. It's not just the boss. The boss is just another member of the team, and sometimes they feel uncomfortable with that. But look at, I know how to play this. I know who the CEO is. The process works. It just works. It's unanimous. Every decision gets voted on. I go through this thing to understand and agree. Let's say we arrived at how big do you want to be, and it looks like I can sense that 10 million is something that people are okay with. We all agree, yeah. What I will do is I'll go to cave on Okay, it's 10 million. Do you understand and do you agree? If you don't say, I understand and agree, we stop. Because either you don't understand, and we want to make sure we get you about that, or you don't agree, and we want to know why, because then it's your job to convince your colleagues around the table.

I love it. And so when I get a UNA from everybody, everybody gets that language, right? Hey, I got UNA, but I make them say, understand and agree, because it's the part of the problem.

And I love it because it goes the saying is, he who battles the plan, he who plans the battle, sorry, doesn't battle the plan, right? Absolutely. And you make them feel like they're all part of it. They won't battle it. They'll actually help implement it.

Well, it's an incredible team building exercise, by the way. But yes, in 48 hours, you have the strategic game plan statement, but you also have a set of objectives. To get at the implementation piece, so I make sure we have enough time to drive down into the only statement, for example, and say, All right, we need to understand a little more about what those words mean, because this is a communications issue here. We're going to make sure. And then we drive out marketing objectives, which are customers. How are we going to get to 10 million in 24 months? In 12 months, what's the revenue target. We're having that conversation right now, and it's not linear. Anybody says it's linear, it's full of shit. You got to get it all. Get as much as you can right up front because you want a run rate going into the next 12 months. They're not used to having that conversation. I used to do this all the time. I want the fast run rate, and that leads me to my other concept called fast and easy. So when you're looking at the who to serve, one of the concepts that we talk about is fast and easy.

I want to get fast and easy up front because I want the run rate going into year two. I want it up. I don't want it down because then I'm chasing. I don't want to chase. So we get through it.

Is fast and easy always the right way, though? Is that always the right one fast and easy? Does that fix the short term problem and not the long term?

Well, 24 months is short term. But I would advocate that long term growth is about meeting short term goals. Don't ever try and tell me that it's in the 10 year plan because it's freaking not. The 10 year plan is an aspiration. It's based on analytical quantitative tools that are function of the past and algorithms and formulas that have never proven in the the real world. What's been proven in the real world is people produce results that you build on and you build on and you build on. But if you have a five-year plan, it's not execution-focused. And in my world, never did anything. Somebody says to me, while you're being short-sighted, I say, Thank you. Okay, and then we're going to be short-sighted again. And then we're going to be short-sighted again. And guess what? In 10 years, you will have five phases of being short-sighted and thank I helped you achieve your 10 million. Boom.

I can't argue with that.

Well, it's hard to. It's so common sense. So this is not- I can't argue with that because how many times have we seen businesses play the 5, 10, and they never get there versus here's the two.

So what happens when a business... Okay, so what about this? What happens when businesses do the short term, two year plan, and they don't get there? It doesn't work. It breaks. It goes sideways.

You redo the plan.

You just keep redoing it until you make it work.

Part of the process is a three-month review as well. So you want to be execution focused. You got to be all over the numbers. Okay, so every 90 days, look at the numbers, look at the numbers. Start making revisions and tweaking as you go. You don't wait for the end of the two years. But we do have an annual formal review of the strategic game plan where we say things like, How do we feel about the how big? If we change it, and it's okay to change it, We change it as a team, and we have the argument, and I'm going to be, Darth Fader here, I'm going to be your worst fucking nightmare when it comes to this. Okay?

Because if we're changing it, it's changing it to make it bigger, not to make it smaller.

Or something, we've learned something that we didn't know when we started out. And doesn't that make sense? You don't know everything when you start out. That's why it's a just about right plan. That's why it's a head West plan. You execute, learn and adjust. Execute, learn and adjust. So if there's a way and a good reason to change, of course it gets changed. Nothing is... It's always a draft. Let me put it to you that way. That's a concept some people really have difficulty with, because, quite frankly, we've been taught to get it done, it's over, it's complete. Now let's move on to something else. That's not the world we're in. The planning world, if you want to execute the plan, is not a world where the plan ever gets done. It's alive, it's amorphous, it's organic. It's like the strategic planning document is got blood on it from paper cuts, if you happen to have it in paper form. Because you use it. I mean, how many planning documents have you seen sitting and sitting on top of somebody's credenzas in an office? No. Got to be used. I used to ask salespeople for a copy of their sales plan.

A lot of them would Towed out, never been opened. Oh, Jesus. Anyway, that happened just once with that guy, and we moved on. But yeah, so you have to accept the fact that things can be changed. Once people understand that, it Almost... They feel, Oh, okay.

Yeah, there's a little bit of pressure. Because you got to be adapted. We know you have to be adaptable. You have to be okay with the plan changing. But I really do like the idea of you're going to have a Five-year plan or you're going to have a two-year plan. Execute the two-year, make another two-year, and then make another two-year. After five years, where are you going to be? Probably where the five-year plan was going to be anyway.

It'll be way more than what you were talking about.

Probably more, yeah. I agree. Any last thoughts for our listeners as we come to an end here?

No, I would just say I need you to think about this whole notion of differentiation more, because it's not being thought I love. And when you think about having competitive advantage, it's all about differentiation. And come and visit me on my website. There's lots of tools there. I've been writing about this stuff since '09. I blog literally 2-3 times a week around this stuff, and I'm learning more about it, and email me and ask me questions. I'm totally happy. It's roy. Osing@gmail. Com. Start to ask yourself the question personally when confronted with a challenge. How am I going to do this It's a simple little question. I used to do this all the time. I call it my be different lens. Every time I got hit with something, I would always say, Okay, take a deep breath. How am I going to do this differently? And that drove my thinking. And quite frankly, I think the quality of the solution, because it would be typically a solution that others wouldn't arrive at, and that in and of itself added value to it that nobody else had. And it's just the beginning. So if you could do that for Uncle Roy, I would appreciate.

I love it. So for Uncle Roy, the next time we have a challenge or you're looking at the business, put on your be different lens. Roy, thank you so much for having me, for being here.

Appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.