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

Summary

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The Vault Unlocked — “How to Scale From a Business Startup to $1B Without a 5-Year Plan”

Host: Kayvon Kay

Guest: Roy Owsing (“Be Different or Be Dead”)

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

Kayvon Kay dives deep with Roy Owsing, the architect of “Be Different or Be Dead,” into the heart of what actually drives business growth — beyond bland five-year plans, empty claims of being “the best,” and one-size-fits-all strategies. Roy recounts how he grew an early-stage data company into a billion-dollar juggernaut (now $18 billion run-rate), not by following conventional strategy, but through relentless, actionable differentiation and execution. This conversation candidly exposes the hidden levers behind scaling, why most strategic planning fails, and the three questions that power enduring business growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Differentiation: The Core Growth Driver

• Roy’s Mantra: “Be different or be dead.” Differentiation is non-negotiable. Most companies falsely claim superiority but fail to stand out in ways customers care about.

  “[Everyone says they’re better, they're best... But if you sound like everyone else, you disappear with everyone else.]” — Kayvon Kay, 00:00

• Not Narcissism: True differentiation is about being special in a way that matters to others, not just yourself.

  “Being different is about being special in a way other people care about.” — Roy Owsing, 04:57

• No Silver Bullet: Growth isn’t from a single secret or tactic. It’s a relentless accumulation of small, people-driven, passion-fueled behaviors and decisions.

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2. Why Traditional Strategic Planning Fails

• Standard 5-year plans are “crap” — slow, detached from reality, and encourage kicking the can down the road.

• Most planning is overly complex and built for theory, not execution.

  “I don't believe five-year plans exist because the fourth year never shows up.” — Roy Owsing, 06:44

• Roy’s Approach: Execute-first, plan-second. Built what he calls “strategic game planning” that can be done in 48 hours — designed for action, adaptability, and speed.

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3. The Three Questions That Drive Real Growth

(Timestamps refer to first full breakdown at 06:30–10:10)

Question 1: How big do you want to be (in 24 months)?

• Focus on top-line revenue — not profits or net income.
• Forget “realistic.” Set audacious, even unrealistic targets, to force innovation.
• If you know how to reach your goal, your goal isn’t big enough.
  • Kayvon: “Is this your BHAG, your big hairy audacious goal?”
  • Roy: “If you can tell me how to do it, the number’s not big enough.” — 13:18

Question 2: Who do you intend to serve, and what do they crave?

• Go beyond “market segments” or ICPs — get razor specific (see the “whites of their eyes”).

• Don’t focus on “needs” (basic, often already satisfied); focus on “cravings” — the emotional, unspoken desires that drive action and are less sensitive to price.

  “Cravings...are what you lust for, what you desire, what you covet. Those are emotional triggers.” — Roy Owsing, 08:38

• Use every customer interaction to gather insights into real cravings, not through exhaustive research, but through conversations and sharp observation.

Question 3: How will you compete and win?

• Don’t aim to be “the best”; aim to be “the only.”
• Craft your “Only Statement”: We are the only ones who...

  “You either are the only one, or you’re not. That’s the binary. And this gets the kids off the street.” — Roy Owsing, 09:08

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4. Cravings vs. Needs — The Language That Changes Everything

• Focusing on “needs” traps you into commodity thinking and product features; “cravings” drive higher value, emotional attachment, and are often unique.
• Language steers strategy: Use words that elevate your thinking from the ordinary.
• Typical surprise-and-delight stories (“element of surprise”) create lifelong advocates:

  Story (18:31–22:14): How Roy saved a $10M account for a restaurant whose phones failed by quickly fixing the problem, cutting a $50K check, and delivering a “craved” retro phone as a surprise — turning a crisis into the client’s favorite story to share.

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5. Secret Gathering & Human-Centric Selling

• Stop glorifying sales “units” — incentivize gathering “customer secrets” (i.e., personal cravings, little details).

• Champions a “human-being lover” culture.

• Salespeople evaluated not only on sales but on depth/quality of their “secrets” (customer insights).

  "If you don't know who your high-value clients are by name, and you don't keep in touch with them, what the hell are you doing with your time?" — Roy Owsing, 26:18

• Put the customer in the loop (customers rate salespeople), build relationships, and move away from “wham, bam, thank-you ma’am” sales.

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6. Execution Over Perfection: Short Cycles, Constant Tuning

• 48-hour strategic game planning brings the leadership team together, flattens the hierarchy, and builds consensus.
• Everything is a draft — plan, execute, learn, and adjust every 90 days.
• Short-term (24-month) plans, continually reviewed and re-tweaked, outpace theoretical “long-term” plans.

  “If you’re looking for silver bullets, there are none. Guys, you got to put in work.” — Roy Owsing, 49:01

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7. Differentiation, Simplicity, and the Will to Execute

• Roy’s differentiation: Simplicity and relentless focus. “Nobody else can take something esoteric and dumb it down so people can understand it.”
• Only works with clients who are serious about execution — refuses those just seeking surface-level plans or “ego stroking.”
• Advocates storytelling, emotional connection, and building cultures that light fires in people.
• Fast-and-easy wins fuel run rate for bigger, compounding future success — focus here early.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[Everyone says they're better... But if you sound like everyone else, you disappear with everyone else.]” — Kayvon Kay (00:00)
• “There's no silver bullet. There's a whole bunch of little things that rely on people and their passion... keep driving, driving, driving.” — Roy Owsing (03:41)
• “My planning process: execute first, plan second. Built for execution.” — Roy Owsing (06:30)
• “Cravings...are what you lust for... emotional triggers... typically insensitive to price, relatively speaking.” — Roy Owsing (08:38)
• “We are the only ones who... And that becomes your elevator pitch.” — Roy Owsing (10:11)
• “If you don't know who your high-value clients are by name... what the hell are you doing with your time?” — Roy Owsing (26:18)
• “If you're looking for silver bullets, there are none. Guys, you got to put in work.” — Roy Owsing (49:01)
• “The plan is always a draft. It's alive, it's amorphous, it's organic.” — Roy Owsing (58:25)
• “Every time I got hit with something, I would ask, How am I going to do this differently?” — Roy Owsing (61:00)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time (MM:SS) | Topic | |--------------|-------| | 00:00–01:08 | Kayvon’s intro — why differentiation matters, Roy’s “Be Different or Be Dead” credentials | | 03:41–05:00 | “No silver bullets” — business growth as an accumulation of small, people-driven actions | | 06:30–10:10 | Breakdown of Roy’s 3 critical questions for growth | | 13:18–14:26 | Why targets should be “unrealistic” to drive innovation | | 18:31–22:14 | Account-saving story: surprise, speed, and the power of “cravings” | | 24:16–25:46 | Difference between “needs” and “cravings”; selling outcomes and experiences | | 26:18–28:27 | Specific examples of finding unique value in unexpected places (e.g., landscaping, boats) | | 34:55–36:42 | Rewiring sales culture — the “secret gatherer” approach and customer-powered evaluations | | 48:08–52:41 | 48-hour strategic game planning — team consensus, action-ready, not theoretical | | 55:27–59:39 | “Short-term plans, executed and iterated, beat theoretical long-term playbooks” | | 61:00–61:15 | Roy’s “Different Lens” personal practice and final challenge to listeners |

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Actionable Takeaways

• Ask yourself and your team: How big do we really want to be? Who do we serve, and what do they crave (not just “need”)? How will we win — as the only one doing what we do?
• Scrap the 5-year PowerPoints. Build and tweak a 24-month, action-focused plan, and obsessively measure and adjust every 90 days.
• Make secret-gathering core to your culture. Incentivize gathering real, granular customer insights.
• Surprise, delight, and share stories. Turn “problems” into moments of differentiation that create lifetime advocates.
• Never stop learning and evolving your own process. The world changes. Execution is everything. Be bold, be different, or be dead.

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For more tools, stories, and to connect with Roy Owsing, visit his blog or email him directly at roy.osingmail.com
“Every time you face a challenge, ask: How am I going to do this differently?” — Roy Owsing

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(Summary by Prompt A.I. — The Vault Unlocked, February 25, 2026)

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to the Vault Unlocked. I'm Kevon 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 Owsing, 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 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, the this conversation will challenge the way you think about growth. Let's unlock it.

[B]

Roy, welcome to the show.

[C]

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

[B]

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

[C]

Yeah. So I'm a Canadian, I'm from Vancouver and born and raised in B.C. 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 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. Okay. 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, Kayvon, that's crap. It's not believable. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

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 startup, CEOs, people looking to bump their career, presidents of companies. Doesn't matter whether 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 $1 billion 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.

[B]

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

[C]

Yeah. So no. So we took an early stage data company and grew it to a billion in annual revenue. And that business today is run up to 18 billion.

[B]

You took a startup and brought it to a unicorns company.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

This idea of being different, well, the,

[C]

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, you did that you, you succeeded? And 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, through it. And the first thing you learn is to. There's no silver bullet. There's a whole bunch of little things, okay, that, 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. And we did different things. Whole bunch of different things.

[B]

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 stuck out for you that did make a little bit of more of a movement than all the little things stacking up.

[C]

Yeah. And that's, and that's a fair question. And again, it's within this context of being different. Okay. Because that was, that's always been my mantra since I was a kid, through my whole young life. It was just figure out a way to Be different than everybody else in a way that people care about, in a way that matter. 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 a 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. I'm 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. Okay. It took too long, they were too complicated, and they were way too expensive. So I had to create my own. And. 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 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. Kayvon, it's. It's remarkable.

[B]

48 hours.

[C]

Wow. 48 hours. And you have a strategy coming out the other end. It's based on the. Not 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. And you'll see 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, 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, 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 in 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 do they crave? Who do you serve? What do they crave? Not what they need. Needs 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, Kayvon, are what you lust for what you desire, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What you covet. Those are all emotional triggers. And guess what? They're typically insensitive to price, relatively speaking.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And there's nobody else playing in that space. So my view was 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 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, 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. You either are, you are either 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? Are you really? But 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. Okay. And so 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?

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[C]

The who to serve really got us focused on high value customers. Right. And the craving angle actually allowed us to re vector our customer service organizations and our sales organization where we actually coveted information around what people craved. Now, we didn't ask them, Kayvon, 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 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 convers. And eventually, and I can tell you the story of how we actually saved a 10 million dollar year account by using that information. It becomes part of the marketing process. The only statement is your pitch, right? It becomes your elevator pitch. I, 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 conversation? And 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 sort of line of sight, 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 we're, they were following Strategic Planning 101 textbooks. That's the problem. And if everybody's reading the same textbook.

[B]

Textbook, Right. You're going to get the same results.

[C]

Boom. Thank you. Thank you.

[B]

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 break these questions down a little bit when we ask that question. Well, how big do we want to be? I would say most people are actually scared to go big.

[C]

I know that's right.

[B]

Or they want to be big with no plan. So for me, yeah, 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 cave on. How big do you want to be? My question is more.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that's not good enough. Okay. That 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 be 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 of revenues.

[B]

Okay, okay.

[C]

Because that's nonsensical. That assumes that tomorrow is going to be the same as yesterday. And we all know that that's, that doesn't work. So this is literally as a leader, okay. And it is scary.

[B]

Is this like, is your bhag you're talking about how big you want to be or is this the realistic. Like, you know, when I set my goals, I have three levels, right. I have my target, my, have my outrageous, and I have my minimum.

[C]

Right.

[B]

The idea is to not hit anything but the target. And outrageous is great.

[C]

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 bet. What I want to know is, okay, when you wake up in the middle of the night, okay, what would your dream be of your 24 month revenue target? Just pure. And 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 5 million a year, okay, and you go, oh, 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 mil now let's go figure out which customer groups have the latent potential to get there. What do they crave, blah, blah, blah. How are we going to compete and win?

[B]

It all starts with that, so we get the knowledge. I said step one is get that number. And that number isn't 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 five million dollar company and you want to actually get to 20, heck, you want to get the 50, the you, you work with them and go, okay, great, 50 is a great number. Makes you scared. Great. We're in the right, right? We're in the right department. Second question, which is the 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.

[C]

Okay, Right, Yep. So the other part of that, just if I might, excuse me for interrupting, but as we go through this, I mean the tendency is going to be to try and be too broad when you, when you try to describe who 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 as few customer groups as possible. So my question to you might be, Kayvon, 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? So we start that way as opposed to treating it mass market and then hacking it up and you still are left with big segments that are really mass markets anyway.

[B]

Well, it's niching down. Right. I think we under, like it's people are afraid of niche down. We could talk about that, but I feel people are afraid to go niche. And there's different names for it.

[C]

Right.

[B]

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 doesn't mean it's what they're actually craving. So do you work with them to understand that? Because you can think it and go out there and be brutally wrong.

[C]

Yeah, and that's part of the, that's part of the risk. And so, you know, I mean, don't try and overcomplicate this thing. I mean people talk an awful lot about the old kind of like customer research vehicles, like focus groups. I mean, there's 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 used to call them customer secrets. What do they, what's their secret? What do they really desire? And then 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. And 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.

[B]

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.

[C]

So, and I really like that, I really like that. They, they want, they buy an experience, they want to feel good. Okay. And organizations, unfortunately. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's, 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 than surprising them with something they don't expect you to do, especially if you tend to be a larger company. 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 screwed a customer over.

[B]

What are some of the surprise elements that you use? Examples that you could talk about? I know that you're under NDA because you're not mentioning 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.

[C]

Well, these are, 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, and it's, there's nothing, there's nothing sort of confidential about this kind of stuff because nobody else would, would ever do it anyway. The biggest story I remember is we, we actually put the, 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 them 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 at me. I mean, I mean, this is horrible, right? And that's fine. So I said, okay, Michael, I said, I 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. It'll be done. Hang up the phone. So here's what I did. These. And he need. He. 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 called his ea. Or I called my sales director. I said, look at, what is 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 ringy dingy, those, that kind of 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're about 150 bucks at a phone market in those, 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. Go into his office. I got my sales director. We go into the. Going to his office. And of course, of course, here he comes, right? And he just wants to vent. And the first thing I said, michael, look it, man, I'm so sorry. We just screwed you over royally. And you know what he said to me? He goes, oh, well, that's okay, Roy. I mean, 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 and I said, I know it's not enough. Guy knows it's probably three, 400 grand. But I said I couldn't get any more in such short notice. Here's a token man. He goes, what? And he. And I says, and here's something else. And I handed him. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking. 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. 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 it. I just wanted to give you something that you may not have expected. And. And I hope you get some joy out of this. And he just put it down and he couldn't stop talking about. Make a long 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 were. It was, wow, you wouldn't have believed what happened.

[B]

People.

[C]

These guys put us out and they recovered in this way. So that's my favorite story. He told that story. He was on the circuit, right? Big business guy down here in the lower Maine 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.

[B]

Yeah. To save it. Right. And you're right, most businesses wouldn't do it. They would not do it.

[C]

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, Kayvon, it's gone. You have no ability to. To recover that and build loyalty.

[B]

You know, 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.

[C]

Yeah. Who knows? But I wanted. It was. It was. This guy was a. He had finances, a background, too. So I wanted.

[B]

Yeah. So I want to. I want to.

[C]

I want.

[B]

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 101, right? Really? Marketing 101 is how big do you want to be? Number two, who is your. 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 at night? Not needs.

[C]

Not needs. Not. Don't use the word needs. It's design. What do they cover? Definitely not what they need.

[B]

What are their cravings, aspirations, Little things.

[C]

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

[B]

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, you know, in this call here is, okay, we go after their knees. We go after their cravings. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Cravings and knees are two different things. Yes, they are. Like, clearly they are. But don't take that lightly, because when we go after and make 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 what I'm hearing?

[C]

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

[B]

Okay, so, yeah, it's.

[C]

It goes up the continuum of intensity to actually resolve it.

[B]

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

[C]

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, Just. You can feel it. They want to hug you. Okay. You can just feel it coming. And if you can get to that 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, 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 this stuff.

[B]

Story selling.

[C]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

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 question two, I think, is. Is quite the. The foundational Questions of, of what we're going to do as a business. So do you have strategies or what happens when you meet a business owner who may be stuck on that? Like they, they're, they, they go, well, I can do this, we serve this, we serve this, we serve that. We have these three people. I can offer xxx and then it's like they all have problems. They all have like, what's, how do we get down to the one?

[C]

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 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. 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 got the wrong people in your fricking business, dude. That's it. And I say to them, look it, 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 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 legitimize 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, right? 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 dragged a property development solution provider out of a guy that sold boats to boat dealers in Toronto. Okay? I dragged business development advisor out of him because his clients craved comfort that they wouldn't go out of business. And I said, what the hell that sounds like that's not really all about selling boats, although we could probably use it, use the boat as an anchor, so to speak. And they, I let 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 there. And they're the only one that does

[B]

it as a result. Then they get to buy the boat.

[C]

The boat will come. Okay, but it's not, it's not the leading indicator here. It's, 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 want 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.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[C]

That floated and he figured that out. And, and once I saw him doing

[B]

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

[C]

I know.

[B]

And then the third question, because we, we, we dived in and the third question is how do I keep. Is all I got was what's the third question?

[C]

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? And given, 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 frame your business. Like, like we had to do with the boat guys. They were no longer 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, the landscaper moving into the property development solution business, albeit defined a specific way. So it's exceedingly important. And people will all always say, well, I, 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 of.

[B]

Okay, so this brings us kind of back to the beginning here when you said the most you know, the powerful truth is how do you differentiate. Differentiate yourself or you die. Right, exactly. Was. What was it again? Yeah. Be different or be dead.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So how do you get people to be different? And. 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, how can a business stand out in today's economy, which everybody is fighting for attention. Insane. 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 X 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.

[C]

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, they come up with how big do they want to be and, and who do they intend to serve and what do those people crave and have some granularity around that, that gives them now insights, okay, into what the solution that you want to be a unique provider of is, okay? So it doesn't. This is the problem. And you know, and this is the problem I have with, with consulting generally is they take a boilerplate solution and they try and drive it down everybody's throats, okay? And they will have a canned answer to what you just said. 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 that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

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

[B]

I love, I love, 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 believe every business is different. Every unique, 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 like you said, it's not honest. And that's why I've always had a hard time with my, like 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.

[C]

I don't believe that you do need a salesforce. I believe that what we're talking about is engaging with people buying. I'm not selling at all. I mean, 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 ton of this. Just check my, 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, right, to an organization, its leadership and its culture to make it happen. And so one of the things that I did because, yeah, we were a flogging salesforce and we never ever did make the right angle turn that I wanted to see before I left. But one of the, 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 gatherer.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay. Secret gathering is all about identifying your clients 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, Roy, 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 learned. 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 so 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, you know, how many secrets have you got out of your top five clients? Right? And, and. And let me 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 have been talking about. Caring people, right, who give a human being lovers, all that kind of stuff as opposed to wham, bam, thank you, ma', am, like, so secrets.

[B]

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

[C]

I just. I cloaked it differently.

[B]

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 you. My. You know, my. My. My last, like, oh, professional. What do you call it? Corporate job was. I was like, the number. 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. Didn't know how to 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. And 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 pissing vinegar, telling the guy, I'm gonna be your number one salesperson. You just put me in the spot. I'm gonna kill it. La 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 slid it across the. The desk and 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 don't, they're not buying that.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

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.

[C]

Yeah, well, and, and, and be, be a human being. Yeah. This is a function of leadership of the organization. I mean there's, 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 front of them, they'll do, 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. You know, 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 a technology to satisfy my overall human being goals? Right. Yeah.

[B]

Create the cravings. They use the technology to create the connection. Using the technology to be able to have the real conversations instead of use technology to make more sales.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[B]

And it works, I believe it works for a short time, but it's not like as you know, it's not a long term plan. I think you're always going to be chasing with that type of, of, of, of mindset. So when, when working, 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 working with the founder or the business as a whole?

[C]

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. 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 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'm not a facilitator. I'm kind of 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, right? If you make it simple, people understand it and they're willing to go forward. So no, I'm, I mean, yeah, they, they sort of trip over the how big do you want to be? When I push them on top line revenue and, and I get them to perspire a little bit. But I, I tell them, I said to look at, if you're not sweating, we're going to keep going, we're not stopping yet. And so, and it is a fun experience. That's the other thing I want to say. Cave on. It's a, it's a, it's a 48 hour fun experience with remarkable outcomes, I think.

[B]

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 in where I'm from, but like a human centric connection 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?

[C]

Well, I, 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, right, like an esoteric idea and dumb it down so that people actually can understand it. And the only reason I can do it is I've been, I've been doing this for 40 freaking years. Okay? This is not. I didn't come down from yesterday's rain call. I was. So 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 had service strategies, so I know how to build a service strategy. I mean basically other 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. 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.

[B]

It's not even just a billion. The billion is now 18 billion.

[C]

Right.

[B]

As a result of the foundation. Hey, you didn't get to the first bail. You wouldn't have got to the 18 billion.

[C]

Right? Yeah, run rate. We know what Run rate is. Right.

[B]

And, 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?

[C]

Doesn't matter. Can be not for profit. I, I just completed a, some work for a not for profit called Dan's Legacy that are in the mental illness kind of space in Tawson. And we did a strategic game plan for them because they, they weren't happy that they were getting the results that they wanted. And I knew the executive director and she just reached out and like, I'm not knocking on doors to do this. Right. Like, I don't need to work.

[B]

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.

[C]

Yeah. And if, and, 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, I will say though, I, 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 said, you know, I'm not seeing that your, your skin is in the game here and maybe you can find someone else.

[B]

Yeah, I hear that. Because a lot of businesses want the idea. They like the idea that they're doing something different.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Or the idea that they're working on the problem, but they don't actually want to work on the problem. Why, why do you actually think that is?

[C]

Oh, man, I don't know. That is so true, though. I think it just, yeah, it makes them, it actually, it sort of like strokes their ego and it makes them feel like a big boy or a big, 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 that just right away does it for me. I mean, no, seriously. I mean, you Open your mouth and you prove that you're stupid. Right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, totally get it. I love it. I love it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's quite interesting because you did take something that is complex and you could tell you're just making it pretty easy with, like, three very specific kind of questions. But I just saw 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 lives. 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 again? I always keep forgetting that last one. How do we.

[C]

How are you going to compete and win?

[B]

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.

[C]

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 over time. Okay. I mean, working it and working it and thinking about it and trying it and tweaking it and what works with this kind of client, etc, what worked. When we, when we actually were growing the business, that was a huge learning experience because we, we were unionized. I mean, most of the workers. Okay. In 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 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 put in. In work.

[B]

I love that. I want to. 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 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. And 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. Why, you know, what would you say to business owners that are just. They 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.

[C]

Well, I mean, what I would say, honestly, as 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. 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 was loved by frontline people in 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 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's sake. 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 defined a 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.

[B]

You're asking everyday people to continuously pay you month after month after month. There's no reason why you want to like talk about ltv.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

You do that, right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And you're.

[C]

They.

[B]

They will stay.

[C]

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 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, okay? 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.

[B]

48 hours, you're hanging on that, so 48 businesses that are, 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 know, you know, that like something needs to change.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

48 hours, we can come up with a plan, asking 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.

[C]

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, it's 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. Okay. 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. So I can, you know, I can. The process works, right? 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 that 10 million is something that people are. Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What I will do is I'll go to Kayvon. Okay. It's, it's, it's 10 million. Do you understand and do you agree? And 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 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. And so when I get a Una from everybody, everybody gets, gets that language, right? Hey, I got Una. But I make them say understand and

[B]

agree because it's, and I love it because it goes the, the saying is he who battles a plan, doesn't. He who plans the battle. Sorry, doesn't battle the plan.

[C]

Right, Absolutely.

[B]

And 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.

[C]

Well, it's an incredible team building exercise by the way. And, but yes, in, in, 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. 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? 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 is 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, 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. I want it up, I don't want it down because then I'm chasing, I don't want to chase. Right. And so yeah, we get through it.

[B]

It's 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?

[C]

Well, 24 months is short term, but, 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 ten year plan because it's freaking not. The ten year plan is an aspiration. It's based on analytical quantitative tools, okay, that are function of 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. And in my world, never, 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 you, I helped you achieved your 10 million. Boom.

[B]

I can't argue with that.

[C]

Well, it's hard to. You mean it's so common sense. So this is not your dad.

[B]

Because how many times have we seen businesses play the 5, 10 and they get there versus here's the 2. So what happens when a business. Okay, so what about this?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

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.

[C]

You redo the plan.

[B]

You just keep redoing it until you make it.

[C]

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 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 where, how do we feel about the. How big? Okay, yeah. All right, if, 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 nightmare when it comes to this. Okay.

[B]

It's changing to make it bigger, not

[C]

to make it smaller or something. We've learned something, right, that we didn't know when we started out. And isn't that, doesn't that make sense? We. You don't know everything when you start out. That's why it's a just about right plan. That's about it. That's why it's a head west plan, right? You execute, learn and adjust. Execute, learning. So if there's a way and a good reason to change, of course it gets changed. Nothing is, is, is. It's always a draft. Let me put it to you that way. Now 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, is not a world where the plan ever gets done. It's alive, it's amorphous, it's organic. Right. It's like the, the strategic planning document. It's got blood on it from paper cuts. If you happen to have it in paper form, right, because you use it. I mean, how many planning documents have you seen, Sutton? And sitting and on top of somebody's credenza in an office or, you know, no, 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 opened. Oh, Jesus. Anyway, so that happened just once with that guy and we moved on. But, but yeah. So you have to accept the fact that, that things can be changed and once people understand that it almost, they, they feel okay.

[B]

Yeah, there's like a little bit of pressure. It doesn't like 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 like you're gonna have a five year plan or you can have a two year plan, execute the two year, make another two year and the next two year and after five years where are you going to be?

[C]

Right.

[B]

Probably where the five year plan was going to be anyway.

[C]

So it'll be way more than what you already.

[B]

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

[C]

No, I would just say I, 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 this stuff from since 09. I, 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 roy.osingmail.com start to ask yourself the question personally when confronted with a challenge. How am I going to do this differently? It's a simple little question. I used to do this all the time. I call it my 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's, 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. Okay. So if you could do that for Uncle Roy, I would appreciate it.

[B]

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.

[C]

Very welcome. Thanks for having me.