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

I'm Cave on 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 Ocing. 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 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. Just unlock it. 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 BC and worked in the

telecom space. When in fact, the business was changing very rapidly from monopoly to competition and technology was changing quickly. 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. My challenge was level up, gear up, and let's try and take advantage of this. So the be different or be dead thing was really kind of 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, came on as 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. Entrepreneurs have a challenge for that. New startups, CEOs, people looking to bump their career, presidents of companies, doesn't matter whether they're 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 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, let's cool a little bit back there, because you said you took a billion dollar company and it's now worth $18 billion dollars. Yeah, so no, so we took an early stage data company and grew it to a billion in annual revenue and that business today has been running up to $18 billion. You took a start-up and brought it to a unicorn's company.

Yeah, sort of this idea of being different. Well, the, the major back was on be different, but there's a whole lot of moving parts in that. People keep asking me, well, what is the one secret to success on I go, no, there's a whole bunch of things.

What's the one thing that you did that you succeeded in, but 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 in 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.

I mean, we did different things. Oh, bunch of different things. So looking back and I love it, because I love your, 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, you know, a billion dollars, what were a couple, I would say, what would be like the highlight things that took out for you, that did make a little bit of more of a movement than all the little things that could happen. 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, it's just figure out a way

right? I don't want you to think, this is narcissism, because it's not, okay, narcissists do stuff for themselves. That's not what I'm talking about being different is about being special in way other people care about, okay?

So 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, and it started with the planning process. I remember thinking, wow, I mean, this is a huge, I'm not going to either make this thing

“or it's going to break me, wonder the other, what am I going to do?”

I don't have a strategy. So I looked around at traditional planning models, and none of them were helpful, okay, 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 to 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 action keep in the feet moving and doing things. So I said, okay, my planning process has got to kind of 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, okay, well, it's, it's remark or 48 hours, 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 formulaize something that's imperfect?”

That's non-sensical, and it's an idiots way of trying to run a business. And so it's actually created by answering three simple questions, and you'll, when I tell you 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, okay, 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. 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, right? 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, okay, and people love generalities and marketing because they're basically lazy, I want to see the whites of people's eyes, okay, that I'm going to target, because the next question I'm going to ask is, what are they crave?

Who do you serve? What are they crave? Not what they need.

“These are basically satisfied, okay, and typically if you want to compete in that space,”

it's going to be price sensitive, and there's going to be a lot of competition, cravings on the other hand, okay, on or what you lust for, what you desire, right? What you covet, 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 wear people crave something, I'm going to figure

out an organization and how to do that, which we can talk about, and then I'm just going to target target and focus focus. So those are the first two questions, third question is the kicker, and this gets at the differentiation piece, okay, and is 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, it's, you don't want to be the best of the best. Do you want to be the only one that does what you do? And so the quest here is to have a binary thing going on, either are either the only one

or you're not, and that's the beauty of this. It gets the kids off to street. There's no judgment involved in terms of are you better? Do you are you reading it? The quest is, are you the only one, and you're taught out data to actually see whether

in fact that individual or company is telling the truth? That particular model guided us to get going, okay, 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

Yeah, probably, yeah, the who to serve really got us focused on high value customers, right? And that the craving angle actually allowed us to re-vector our customer service organizations and their sales organization where we actually coveted information around what people crave.

“Now we didn't ask them, cave on, what do you crave?”

But the conversation was skewed and tilted in a way that I was trying to discover something special about you, right? And I kept a record of it, right? And somebody gave me a hell for being, you know, violating privacy laws. And 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 dollar year count by using that information, it becomes part of the marketing

process. The only statement is your pitch, right? It becomes your elevator pitch. I wear 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 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 goose bumps, cutting the crap, killing down rules, all sort of line a site leadership,

all sorts of other small little things, all targeted, right, 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, well, that's the problem. And if everybody's reading the same text book, you're going to get the same results.

Oh, thank you. 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 want to be?”

So let's say, I mean, let's break these questions down a little bit. Like when we asked that question, how big do we want to be? I would say, most people are actually scared to go big. I know, they want to be big with no plan. So for me, like, you know, if you ask, like, so you ask me, and this is one of my

demise, you know, probably my demise, you go, okay, on how big do you want to be? My question is more. Yeah. Yeah, that's not good enough. Okay.

I could either be one or two or a billion, and the reason it makes a difference, okay,

is the size of the challenge without knowing how to satisfy it drives innovation. So my belief, and this is part of the big different thing is, you don't innovate by using a least squares regression model, using 10 years of data to project where you think you're going to be and accept that as the forecast revenues, okay, because that's an oncensical. A lot of soon to tomorrow is going to be the same as yesterday.

We all know that that's it's not worth. So this is literally as a leader, okay, and it is scared.

“Is this my big, like, is your behavior you're talking about how big you want to be?”

Or is this the realistic, like, you know, I said my goals, I have my three levels, right? I have my target, my high my outrageous, and I have my minimum, right? The idea is to not hit anything but the target and outrageous is great. Yeah, so if I were, if I were coaching you, yeah, I would say, okay, don't try and stratify your responses, because all that's doing is you're trying to hedge your bed.

What I want to know is, okay, when you wake up in the middle of the night, okay, what would you dream the of your 24 months revenue target? Just pure. And I'm not asking you to be realistic, I, I, I fact, I want it to be unrealistic, because realism drives nothing, unrealism drives innovation, and there's old 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, 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 mill. Now let's go figure out which customer groups have the lead potential to get there, what are they crave blah, blah, blah, blah, how are we going to compete with all starts with that? So we get the, I said, step one is get that number, and that number is in from data. It's actually, what is, like, it's what you want.

What is it you want? And then once we have that, so if you're a 5 million dollar company and you want to actually get the 20 pack, you want to get the 50, you've got, you work with them, go, okay, great. 50 is a great number. It makes you scared, great.

We're in the right, right, we're in the right department. The second question, just a strategic question, okay, who are we going to serve? That's going to give us 50 million and what do they crave? Is that I just want to make sure I'm clear on that. Okay, right.

Yep. So the other, just to find my excuse me for interrupting, but as we go through this, I mean,

you're going to serve, right. 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 to as few customer groups as possible. So my question to you might be a came on, can you give me one customer group that will get

the 50 mil and knowing full well that you're going to say, well, no, I said, okay, how about two, how about three? And so we start that way as opposed to treating it mass market and hack it up. And you still are left with big segments that are really mass markets. And you know, it's reaching down, right.

“I think we under it, like it's people are afraid to niche down.”

We could talk about that. But I feel people are afraid to go niche and there's different names for it, right? ICP, you know, ideal customer profile. But like the idea is going down to the one person that you know what they're craving.

So that comes that second question is just because I think I know what they're craving.

It 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 brutal at wrong. Yeah. And that's part of it.

That's part of the risk. And so, you know, I mean, don't try and over complicate this thing. I mean, people talk an awful lot about the old kind of like customer research vehicles, like focus groups. I mean, they're still magic, okay.

And why are they magic? They're 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, you know, 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 use to call them customer secrets. What's their secret? What are they really desire? And then you have a repository and then you've got the back end dudes work in 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. And I'm not saying product development ever, because this is a, this is a, this is a thing that just wrapped around products and services. Because product and service is 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. The budget at the end of the day, people buy a better version of themselves.

So that's why I always tell everybody.

So I really like that. I really like that. They, they want, they buy an experience. They want to feel good. Yeah.

Okay. Organizations, unfortunately. Yeah. Exactly.

“Well, that's, that's why the cravings thing, if you nail it is so powerful.”

Because they don't, and one simple little technique, I, we always use was the element of surprise. I mean, nothing will blow a customer away more than surprising them with some thing they don't expect you to do, especially if you're, you tend to be a larger company. You're able to go, wow, where the hell did that come from?

Yeah. And they tell people about that. And that's actually one of the main strategies we used when we screw the customer over. Well, some of the surprise elements that you use is examples that you could talk.

What I, I know that you're under NDA because you're not mentioned the name of the company and stuff like that. So I get that. But can you talk about some of the, like, those things that you did to? Well, these are really operational in nature.

And it, it really varied in terms of the kind of engagement that was going on. And so yeah, there's, there's nothing, there's nothing sort of confidential about this kind of stuff because nobody else would ever do it anyway. But the biggest story I remember is we, we actually put the, the five sales restaurant downtown Vancouver out of business one morning.

Or PB actor switchboard just went out. So this is a huge, it would be my client. And so what I'm out, while of course, my new 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. I mean, I mean, I mean, this is horrible, right?

Yeah. 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. Okay.

We're going to fix this in a half an hour. Don't worry about it. Don't hang up the phone. So here's what I did. These, I told him about this later, but 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, we put this guy out of business. Cut a check for 50 grand, I was going to take that down. And then I call his EA, I call my sales director and I said, look at what does he really like?

“I mean, what, 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 kind of retro phones and people would put them on their desks. And they would look really cool. Like, like, you know, one ringing dingy, those are that kind of thing, right?

And modern colors and every they call them candlestick phones.

He always wanted one and he was too cheap to go out and buy one.

They're about 150 bucks at a phone mark, you know, and those are great. 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 the, going to his office, and of course, here he comes, right?”

And he didn't want to vent enough. First thing I said, Michael, look, man, I'm so sorry. We just screwed you over, royally. And you know what he said to me? It goes, oh, that's okay, Roy, I mean, mistakes, mistakes, half.

But I said, you know what we're going to do, okay, here are the two surprises that save the account. One, I gave him the money and I said, oh, I know what's not enough. God knows, he's probably three, four hundred grand. But I said, I couldn't get any more in such short notice, here's his token, many goes,

what? And he's, and I says, and here's something else, and I handed him, I'm getting goosebumps. Just think it right. I handed him the box, man, and he opens the box. And that was what did it.

He just, I thought he was going to cry.

“I thought he just, he just got, I've always wanted one of these things to see, y'all, 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 have expected in. And I, I hope you get some joy out of this, and he just put it down and he couldn't stop

talking about.

Make a large story short, the story he told of our company, right, was always that story.

It wasn't how great our internet service was. It wasn't how great our earnings per share of war. It was, wow, you wouldn't believe what happened. People, these guys put us out, and they, they recovered in this way. So that's my favorite story.

He told that story. He was on the circuit, right, big business, big business guy down here in the lower mainland, was on the speaking circuit. He told that story all the time.

“So what did it really cost us for an account that was millions of dollars a year, 50 grand”

plus 165 to save it, right, and 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. And if you don't recover this way in 24 hours, it's gone.

You have no ability to recover that and build, I bet you, you can all say, but I guarantee you, even if you showed up without the $50,000, but what that phone, that probably would have been in there. Yeah, who knows, that I wanted, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was a, it was a, he had finance as a background too, so I wanted to.

Yeah, so I want to, I want to, I want to make sure we're, we're staying on track here,

because I want to really understand this, like first things first, because we're learning

business of 101, right, really marketing 101 is how big do you want to be, number two, who is you, I'm going to call it avatar, but who's your customer and what is their biggest craving, aka, what are the needs, what's the thing that keeps them up and I want the needs, not needs, not that they'll use the word needs, it's, it's great, it's great. What are they, what are they, what are they definitely not what they need, and there's

more of their cravings, aspirations, the little thing that they need, it drives you into thinking about products and services, and that's not what you want to do. Okay, see, this is great. Let's talk about this. Here we go.

You just, 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, you know, in this call here, is, okay, we go after their needs, we go after their cravings, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, cravings and needs are two different things.

Yes, they are. Clearly, they are, but don't take that lightly, because when we go after it makes strategic business decisions 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 an anary? Yes, absolutely. And one step further, it can be, it can be, it can be couched around the, the word problem, but it's done so only because the need, the need to fix it is such a, so emotional

that it actually becomes a craving. So they craved that solution, okay, so it's, yeah, it's, it goes up the continuum of intensity to actually resolve it, okay, so there's a go back to like the old saying, which is the long saying, which is, South 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 way to express it. And the outcome you're looking for is dilated pupils, perspiration and just, you can feel

point, you know, you can check the box, okay, 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 kind of the same in a lot of emotional ways to actually pull the trigger on that. And, you know, 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 their stuff, stories, yeah, so how do you, 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.

“Like this really, this area that the question too, I think is quite the, the foundational”

questions of of what we're going to do is a business. So, do you have strategies or what

happens when you meet a business owner who maybe stuck on that? Like, they, they, they, they, they go, well, I can do this, we serve this, we serve this, we serve that, we have these three people, like an opera, X, X, X, and then it's like, they all have problems, they all have, like, what, how do we get down to the one? You know, so it starts out with saying, it's not about what you think you can do, okay, it's not that, it's about what they create.

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, okay, those five or six or ten customer groups, you go through each and every one of them, okay, with people in the business, I mean, if you don't have people in your business that can answer this question, you get the wrong people in your freaking business, dude, that's it. And I say them side, look, if you don't know, okay, who your high value

clients are by name, and if you don't keep in touch with them, what the hell you do 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 legitimatize 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. Yeah, 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, okay, and it's not about your product and service, trust me, we're going to drag it out of you. And so

you know, like literally, out of, out of a guy that did landscaping lawn cutting, I drag property development solution provider, out of a guy that sold boats to boat dealers in Toronto, okay, I drag business development advisor out of him because his clients craved comforts that they wouldn't go out of business. And I said, what the hell? That sounds like a, that's not really all about selling boats, although we could probably, we could probably use it,

use the boat as an anchor, so to speak. And I let him write into your now a problem solver, your business consultant, you're going to use boats in a different way. And you're going to help them grow their business. They're either 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 the leading indicator here. It's, it's almost, you know, that's your core service, but that's not why people are going to buy. I mean,

look at all people, one is a boat that floats and the electronics work. Trust me, I own four of them. Okay, it's not about anything else. And maybe there's some brand stuff if you really like, you know, ocean Alexander's and high end boats, but it's really not about that. And 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's float it and he figured that out. And once I saw

him doing it, I thought, oh, shit, this is good. That's like salesmanship 101 right there.

And then the third question, because we, we dive in and the third question is, how do I keep

this 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

“in win in those segments? Given that there's going to be competitors running around, right?”

So this is where the only statement, okay, and 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, right, in a way that addresses those cravings and those those desires. And this is hard work, okay, because sometimes we have to reframe your business. Like, like we had to do with the boat guys in the boat selling business, they were in the, in the,

in the business development solution business, which blew them away. And the same with the,

way. So it's exceedingly important and people will always say, well, I just either, I don't,

I'm not special at something, which is, 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. Okay, so it brings us kind of back to the beginning here, when you said the most, you know, the powerful truth is, how do you differentiate yourself or you die, right? They exactly

“was, what was it again? Yeah, be different or be dead. So how do you get people to be different?”

And or you said in the marketing, everyone's saying, oh, where 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, it's, we're going to do acts or you don't pay. It's like, I can't even, I couldn't even do an ad like that. It's just,

it makes me want to puke. So let's, 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. Okay, because look at the answer is different for each and every

business. Okay, because when they do the work and they come up with how big did they want to be and who do they intend to serve and what are those people crave and have some granularity around that, that gives them now insights. Okay, into what the solution does you want to be a unique provider of is. Okay, so what doesn't, this is the problem. I mean, you know, and this is the problem I have with consulting, generally, is they take a boiler plate solution and they try and drive it down to

everybody's throws. Okay, and they will have a can to answer to what you just said. The unfortunate thing is they're being intellectually dishonest and they're lying through their fricking 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 do it. 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 canned solution. And I will leave every business is different, every you need, every business has their unique things that make them different, customers different, and to do a one

shop kind of style for everything. I just doesn't feel like it's, it's, I think 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, I'm a sales floor. I never believed in a sales floor. They're successful, but I just never believed in I believe

“in building a unique sales floor for your unique business. How do you scale that, though?”

Yeah, that's a problem. I don't believe that you do need a sales force. I believe that what we're talking about is, is engaging with people buying, I'm not selling at all. I mean, if you do the bad, 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, you provide it or deliver that value. The customer ends up buying, so you don't need a sales, unfortunately, and I've written time to just check my, my blogs. I mean, I beat the crap out of sales all the time, because there's 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 yeah, all about making the little, not so subtle changes, right,

to an organization, this leadership, and it's culture to make it happen. And so one of the things that I did, because yeah, we were a flogging sales force, 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 sales person in my organization,

and I had about a 700 person sales force. So a secret gathering, secret gathering is all about identifying your client's cravings. 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 say, well, how are you going to measure it? How are you going to measure?

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 all used to do another thing. But I just asked them to do one little thing differently. The other thing I did was I included the customer in rating the sales people. Okay, so we did a lot of customer perception research, right? And so you can see what I'm doing. I move in a way from how much did you sell in the last quarter towards, okay, I want to know how much to sold,

because that was yesterday's world. But I also want to talk about, you know, how many secrets have

you got, your top five clients, right? And at least see the customer report card that they

filled out on you. And 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've been talking about, caring people, right? Give a shit. Human being lovers, all that kind of stuff,

“as opposed to Wambam, thank you, man. Like, so secret, there's one, make sure I was understand,”

is the secrets you're talking about, aka, the example of the guy that wanted the telephone. Is that what you mean? I figure, I just wanted to make sure, yeah, okay, I just, I cloaked it differently. It's a hard one for me to hear this, because as a professional sales person, so I love it, because we're going to battle this, maybe, because you might, you know, my, my, my last like whole professional, we'd you call a corporate job was I was like the number, I was the number one farmer

suitable 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 no, I'd even say the names, but I was the number one. And why? Because of what you just, the secrets, business. And I learned this at a very, very, I was very fortunate to learn this at a young age. I was in an Indian, I tell people this, I was in it's good story. I was in an interview, long story short,

and I was young cocky, you know, full of piss and vinegar, telling like, I'm going to be your number one sales person. You just put me in this spot. I'm going to kill a la la la la la, the entire interview. He didn't say a word. He didn't say a word, not answer anything. Like didn't ask me anything. I just went off and off, and he wrote, he wrote on a piece of paper and he's slid it across the, 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 progs, the features. They don't, 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 has learned a little bit more about your customer. Yeah. Well, and, and, and be, be a human being. Yeah. And this is a function of leadership of the organization. I mean, there's, it's not a sales. It's not the sales person's fault. They're doing what the organization is asking them to do. They got six months or three months quarters. And they're all unit sales of products, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you and I know sales

people. You throw a bonus plan in front of them. They'll do, they'll, they'll make it. And that problem is, if the plan isn't right in terms of long-term goals, you're screwed. You are really screwed. Yes. Well, what we try to do is start. It's not finished. You know, I check in now. And then

it's not finished. It probably never will be. It's, it's a journey to cultural change

of getting humans doing business with humans. Technology doesn't make it easier, because, unfortunately, you're running 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?”

Right. Yeah. You know what I'm trying to create the cravings? These are technology to create the connection using the internet. Yeah. The technology to be able to have the real conversations instead of using technology to make more sales. Right. And it works. I believe it works for a short time, but it's not, 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, you know, when

specific what I do find is once we start the process, the very fact that they're asking for me for help is reassuring to me that they're 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've got to help me. I don't know what I'm doing. Okay. That cry for help. That's good. So I find that people come with that and so they're kind of bought in and they trust the process enough. And it's because it's proven

itself. It's not a theoretical process. I mean, when I say to them, look at, I'm sorry. We just got a billion out of using this. What is it you want me to say? Right? When people say, well, how can that work? I say, well, some things, it's like gravity, right? We know it exists, but we can't explain it really. It's kind of like the human being lover thing that we did. It works. Don't ask me how it works, but it works. And so I have people leaning the right way. They're willing

to to put the work in. And I find they're very willing to accept the results because they created the results. And so it's not, I mean, I mean, I'm not a facilitator. I'm kind of like a content provider, drag and stuff out of people's heads that they already know and just giving it some

giving it some framework and language that because language is so powerful and it's never used

right in planning. Everybody wants to make it so complicated, right? If you make people, people understand it and they're willing to go forward. So no, I mean, yeah, they sort of trip over the how big do you want to be when I push them on top line. And I get them to inspire a little bit. But I tell them, I said, look at if you're not sweating, we're going to keep going. We're not stopping you. And it is a fun experience. That's the other thing I want to say, K-1. It's a 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 is 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 and being able to create a little bit more, you know, human centric, I call it human centric selling and where I'm from, but like a human centric connection with with with with these people. How are you different though? When you are selling yourself,

people don't know you like, you know, 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 different so you don't die? Well I'm the only one that talks about podacious ways to get to a

billion dollars and sales and you'll say, oh, so nobody else that does that and I've got the credentials

in 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. Okay, this is not, I didn't come down from yesterday's rainbow. So it's 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 had, we had service strategy. So I know how to build service strategy. I mean, basically, rather than the CFO, I 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 and I wanted to build relationship with people that owed me money. And I got all sorts of money from them. So it just seems to be that I'm the only one kind of in that space. And 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, the billion is now 18 billion, right? I have a result of the foundation. Hey,

didn't get to the first billion, you went to got to the 18 billion, right? Run rate. We know what

run rate is, right? And let me ask you this, then. What type of businesses do you currently work with? Like, what kind of size are they, what industry are they in? Doesn't matter. It could be not enough. I just completed a some work for a not-for-profit called Dan's Legacy. They're in the

Because they weren't happy that they were getting the results that they wanted. And I knew the

“executive director and she just reached out. Like, I'm not knocking on doors to do this, right?”

Like, 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 if, and that's a good thing for my, because I don't need a filter then. So if if somebody's talking to me about being interested in doing this, and I know they're leaning in. Okay, and that's that's good. But I will say, though, I have, I have said no to businesses

that that have not convinced me that they're willing to do anything with the results that I helped them achieve. And so like 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've said, you know, I'm not seeing that your, your skin is in the game here. And maybe you can find someone else. Yeah, I hear that. Because a lot of businesses, they want the idea, they like the idea

that they're doing something different. Yes. Or the idea that they're working on the prom, but they don't actually want to work on the prom. Why, why do you actually think that is? Oh man, I don't know.

“That is so true, though. I think it's just, yeah, it makes them feel good. It actually,”

it's sort of like strokes the ego and it makes them feel like a big boy or a big woman or a big whatever. You know, 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 not just right away. It doesn't for me. I mean,

you know, seriously, I mean, you open your mouth and you prove that you're stupid. Right? Yeah. Totally got it. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, it's, it's quite interesting because you did take something that is complex. And you could tell you just making it pretty easy with like three very specific kind of questions. But I just sort of the audience, there's a

“lot of depth in those questions. They're not, 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? You know, what are their cravings?

And what's that last one? I can always keep for you now. That's one. How do we even compete and win?

Yeah. And how do you compete and win? How do you compete and win? Because those are 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, it's like, like, I'm always learning about my stuff. Okay. Like, this is an evolution. It's over time. Okay. I mean, working it and working it and thinking about it and trying it and, and tweaking it and what works with this kind of

client, et cetera. What work, when we actually were growing the business, that was a huge learning experience. Because we were unionized. I mean, most of the workers were getting the business, were members of a union. Okay. And so trying to craft this, right, in a way that was going to work in that environment. And yet still you'll maybe 85% of what we wanted in year 45 or not. That was hard going, but we just had to do it. Again, I go back and say, if you're looking for silver bullets,

they're all in none, guys. It's got to put in and work. I love that. I want to, I think we can end on that, that idea because I think a lot of business owners that I definitely work with and speak to. They're like, they're stuck waiting or looking for that silver bullet because they see their

competitor doing it or they've seen someone else in another industry try it. And I always say

just because it worked for them does not mean it's going to work for you. They just can't do it. Why? Well, you know, what would you say the business owners that are just like, just got to be the one? There's one thing that's going to change everything for me. And 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, you know, buying single stocks. Sometimes you get lucky. But most of the time you don't. And I'm here to help you if you don't. Okay, because the stuff that we're going to talk about in the process that we've created here is tried and proven. And it, it is, 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.

customers. And so the strategy, okay, was to hold and grow, hold and grow. Right? And deflect

“using the kind of approaches that you and I just talked about, because they were, there it was people.”

The technology piece was easy. I mean, we were a telephone company for God, so we knew about technology. What we didn't know is about cravings, is about demand creators, all of that sort of stuff, which kind of like define the new world we were going into. And so, 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 kind of, if you were asking every day people to continuously pay you month after month after month, there's no reason why you want to like talk about LTV. Exactly. You do that right. Yeah. And they, they will stay. Yeah. And we knew, we knew who they were. We had, we had this, 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 it the way you and I have just been talking

about and 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,

“so Roy should I really believe that I said, I'll tell you why. Let's base your opinion on performance.”

Okay. If we're not able to perform, then you have a point. Okay. But it's a 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. 40 hours. You're hanging on that. So 48 out of business is that our style, I'm just going to say a business that's stuck at 10, 5,

1 million, 100 million. And they want, they, they know the business owners. Now, you know that,

like, there's something needs to change. Yeah. 48 hours, we can come up with a plan, ask in 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, you know, 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, it's a powerful,”

voice face 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. Okay. The boss is just another member of the team. And sometimes they feel uncomfortable with that. But look, I know how to play this. I know who to see. Oh, so I can, you know, I can, the process works, right? It, it just works. And, and it's, it's unanimous. Every decision gets voted on. And I go through this thing to understand

and agree. So let's say we got, we arrived at how big do you want to be? And it looks like I can sense

the 10 million is something that people are okay with. Yeah. What I will do is I'll go to cave on

okay. It's, it's, it's 10 million. Do you understand and do you agree? And if you, 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 to bat that or you don't agree. And we want to know why, because then it's your job to convince your colleagues around the team. And so when I get a UNA from everybody, everybody gets that language, right? Hey, I got UNA, but I make them say, I understand and agree, because it's the part of it,

because it goes the, the saying is he who battles a plan doesn't buy, he who plans the battles or he doesn't battle the plan, right? Absolutely. And you get, 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, and 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 okay 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, right? I make sure, and then we drive out marketing objectives, which are customers how we're going to get the 10 million in 24 months. Okay, 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 in. Get as much as you can right up front, because you want a run rate going into the next 12 months for 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. Yeah, I want to get fast and easy up front because I want the run rate going into into year two.

Right? And so yeah, we get through it. It's fast and easy. Always the right way though. Is that always

the right one fast and easy? Does that fix a 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 to 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. Okay, that are function to the past and algorithms and formulas that have never proven in 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 in my world, never did anything. Somebody says to me, well, 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 you. I helped you achieve your 10-million. Boom. I can't argue with that. Well, it's hard, too. It's so common sense. So this is not- Yeah, I can't argue with that, because how many times have we seen businesses play the 5-10

“and they never get there versus years or two? So what happened to the business, okay? So what about this?”

Yeah. 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 and tell you to make it work. Part of the process is the 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 between as you go. You don't wait to the end of the two years. But we do have an annual sort of 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 Vader 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, right? That we didn't know we started out, and isn't that, 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 about, 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 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 with the planning world. If you want to execute the plan, it's not a world where the plan ever gets done. It's a live, it's a morphus, it's organic, right? It's like the strategic planning document

is got blood on it from paper cuts, if you haven't had it in paper form, because you use it. I mean, how many planning documents have you seen Sutton sitting on top of somebody's credentials in an office or, you know, you know, got to be used? And I used to ask salespeople

for copy of their sales plan. And a lot of them would tout out, never been open, no, 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. And once people understand that, it almost feels okay. Yeah, there's like a little bit of pressure. It doesn't, like, because you got to be in doubt, that we know you have to be adaptable. You have to be okay with the plan changing. But I really do like the idea of like, you're going to have a five-year plan or you can have a two-year plan, execute the two-year, make another two-year, and then again, two-year, and out for five years

where you're going to be, right, probably where the five-year plan was going to be anyway. So, that will be way more than what you are doing. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Any last thoughts for listeners as we come in and hear? No, I would just say, I need you to think about this whole notion of differentiation more, okay, because it's not being thought of. And when you think about having competitive advantage, it's all about differentiation. And come and visit me, okay,

on my website, there's lots of tools there. I've been writing about distance, stuff from since '09. I blog literally two to three 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 [email protected].

do this differently? 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 got added value to it that nobody else had.

And it's just the beginning, okay? So if you could do that for Uncle Roy, I would appreciate it.

“I love it. So for Uncle Roy, the next time we have a challenge or you're looking at the business,”

put on your B different lens. Roy, thank you so much for having me for being here.

Appreciate it. Very welcome. Thanks for having me.