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Alex
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
Bailey
Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
Alex
Could you be more specific when it's cravenient.
Bailey
Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter available right down the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.
Alex
I'm seeing a pattern here.
Bailey
Well yeah, we're talking about what I.
Alex
Crave which is anything from AM pm.
Bailey
What more could you want?
Chris
Stop by AM PM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience. AM PM too much good stuff.
Alex
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David
Terms apply in this lessons episode discover the strategy of preeminence and how it transforms businesses from transactional sellers into trusted advisors. Learn why prioritizing a client's best interest, deeply understanding their needs and reframing your role as a life changing partner creates lasting loyalty. And understand how challenging perception sets a brand apart in competitive markets. What is the insight for somebody building a business to understand the current state of the consumer and how to capture them and sell to them properly?
Evelyn
Well, and. And you've studied some of my work. I have so much that it would be improbable to think you've studied all of it. But one of the earliest things that I was fanatical about was something I called the strategy of preeminence. I'm telling you this not to go rogue on you, but to go right to the answer.
David
Actually this was. This was actually we haven't even gotten into that was the first thing that I was going to go into. But then you started to get interesting. So then I pushed it back a little bit.
Evelyn
I think it correlates here. So I studied. I studied. I'm like a closet student of the human condition. And so I studied for years as I was doing this, you know the people who own pre emptive and preeminent and I went from people that had, that had significant. What's the word I would use? They were prominent. And then I looked for pre emptive and then I Looked at preeminent and it was a very. Believe it or not, if you look at gradients and I'm into. I studied and I'm not a mathematician, but people don't realize this, everybody. And by the way, I'm a poster boy for adult attention deficit and I'm like a gnat that has had a lobotomy. So you'll have to tolerate me going rogue on you and me and myself, but I studied. Everyone talks about the 10x moonshot. I'm going to get to preeminence in just a minute. The 10x moonshot, you know, exponential growth. And I studied it for a little bit and people don't realize that in math, if you study math, which I didn't, I just did some research on it, there are five or six gradients that are literally above and beyond exponentiation. It's called hyper operationalization and it's tetration, hexation, heptation, pentation, octation, and. And you couldn't even correlate. It'd be like to infinity or beyond. And the point is you can really take performance so much higher for the same time. Effort, opportunity, capital, access to the market, human capital, etc. Now back to your answer for the consumer. I created, after studying a lot of people that were operating in this literally preeminent world, what it was about them that was profoundly different. And I'll send you a deck that I did on it because just for yourself, you'll love it and you're welcome to share with anybody. And it basically had many facets, but to give you the short takes about three hours to explain it and it's deep. But number one, they were seen as the most trusted advisor in the category, the only viable solution you could turn to. And the reason was they did not give information, they did not try to sell. They always tried to advise and tell their market what they felt was in the market's best interest, irrespective of whether that was in the company's best interest. And secondly, whether that, whether the. Whether the consumer purchased what they advised and the combination, the quality, the consistency that they advised, they always told what they believed was in the best interest. I used to tell a story. If you came to J. Abraham's bottled water shop and water bar and you asked me for one half of a cup of water and I took your money without first verifying that you knew that your body needed seven and a half more of these every got for your body to function, your cellular health to be at prime, your creativity to be optimal, your digestion, your excretion, everything to work for your stability, for your stress level. And I didn't go out of my way to make sure you knew that. Irrespective of whether you upped your purchase from me, I would be disserving you. I'm talking about being preeminent. If you came every two days and bought eight glasses, but I didn't make sure that somewhere, not necessarily, but somewhere, you were getting the other eight and didn't go out of my way to make sure you knew what I believe was in your best interest, I was stealing from you. So the first thing in being preeminent is being seen as the most trusted advisor, the only possible source or place you could turn to. And that is only possible by doing that. The next is understanding and putting into words what your target audience wants and doesn't want in ways and at dimensions that no one else has ever articulated. And you cannot do that if you don't really go to great depths to understand it. And I can tell you later on a way that anybody can do it. I call it the mind of the market. And that's another methodology we've produced next is that you basically want to make sure that no matter what business industry you are in, you don't fall into the mistake of falling in love with your company. Fastest Growing Company Inc. Magazine Fortune 500 Russell 1000 or you love your industry or you love your product. You want to fall in love with the people you serve. And you have three kinds of clients, and you want to call them clients. Because if I call you a customer, if you look it up, Scott, in Webster's Dictionary, it's somebody who. It's somebody who's buying a commodity or a service. If I call you a customer, but I want to be preeminent, what I'm really saying implicitly if not explicitly, is I am a marginalized commodity and I'm lucky as heck you're dealing with me and not my competitor. Or an alternative form. If I call you a client, if you look it up, it's somebody who's under the care, the wellbeing, and the protection of another, it has a fiduciary connotation. And when I see myself being your most trusted advisor and I see my responsibility, and I get that, everybody in the company sees that. And we're on a mission and a crusade in behalf of that market, of the prospective client. And we see our role as being integral. No matter if we answer the phone, get the package to the, you know, to shipping faster. That it all helps achieve our purpose. That is very profound. The other thing is literally you've got to stop thinking transactionally. If I think that I sell water and I don't think about what happens when that water is acquired by you and it's starting to serve your body, then I've marginalized myself. Yourself a good example. And you can, you can throw a monkey wrench and stop me because I can go, I can go rogue.
David
No, no, I, I, I'll, I'm gonna, I'm going to. No, go, go ahead and tell me the other example and give you a great example.
Evelyn
I've had, I mean, and you know this because we've talked offline. I've had a thousand industries around the world. I've helped. So I have a lot of, of ex. Experience. In this one time I had the largest. A first time home builder in all of Mexico. They had 87 facilities, they had 3,000 salespeople. They were doing billions. They were traded on the New York and the Mexican stock exchange and they wanted a breakthrough. And so I actually flew out there and I spent time with not just the sales management, with many, many, many of the salespeople. And I asked them what they did and they said, we sell first family homes now. The first family home market there, I don't know if it's still the same because I haven't been back for three or. The government had a policy that if you work for a legitimate company to pay taxes, they would make your down payment and they would then structure your mortgage payments to conform with your income so you could afford a beautiful home in a brand new development with security walls, with all kinds of wonderful facilities, pools, et cetera. It was in wonderful new areas where there were dedicated teachers. Now put that in the band. So these people said, we sell first time homes. I said, well, what happens when somebody buys a first time home? Nobody asked them. I said, let's look at it. First of all, a couple that normally had only two options. They would live in a terrible area in an apartment where it was very non conducive for a good environment for the wife. It was non conducive in a good environment for the kids. And the husband wouldn't have a lot of pride or they'd live with the parents who would micromanage the family. And it would be just terrible on the relationship between husband, wife, parenting, et cetera because the grandparents would try to parent both the husband or wife, whoever their child was, and the kid when they get into a New development. First of all, there's pride of ownership. It's a beautiful home. The husband feels like his work has produced something. He works harder, is more exciting, gets promotions, makes more. The wife hangs out with quality people, so do the kids. Their success probability is enhanced dramatically. The teachers are young and still want to teach. They're not jaded and calcified about the whole process. More importantly, they are building an asset that will give them security for the rest of their life. If they can't afford it, they can rent it and get somebody else to pay for it for them. If they get it paid off and their parents die and they inherit the house, now they've got an asset that will give them a higher quality of retirement or living or it'll pay for their children to have the education of a lifetime anywhere they want. And I went through all these things, there's a lot more. And I said no, you don't just sell first time homes. You transform entire family lives. And every morning we started our day saying, how many lives are we going to transform today? And it was game changing. Using the positive aspect, I'm just giving you a few examples of that.
David
I was going to say, I was going to say a lot of this strategy hinges on you challenging the customer's perception. You challenge their worldview to a degree so that, that places you in a position of trust. Because if a company is just transactional, then they're just accepting what the customer wants and that's, and they're, they're going to sell it to them. But this preeminent strategy seems to challenge so that you are not only just understanding what your customer wants, you're also trying to get them to see the world through a different lens. And then that would be your, that would be your company. Is that fair?
Evelyn
It's a duality. It's trying to see your business through a different lens, but it's also trying to have people see you in contrast to everyone else. If you think about it, it's divide and conquer. There's everyone else and then there's you. And, and you know, we, we've got mean. I'm talking about something that's very sophisticated when you exercise, execute it. But that's only one of about 97 methodologies we've given. But, but what we try to do, whenever there's a lot of competitive landscape and we're trying to get someone to be very preemptive when people challenge them about somebody else, we, we don't say, oh, Scott is a, is a wretched swine. And you know, he's a, he's disgusting. He's, he's, his stuff is crap. Instead we always say, look, there are a lot of very quality people in our, in our industry and we know all the, the good guys and women and they work very hard and their products are very good and their people are very dedicated and they, they give a good value. And then we add that we, that we're the penny drops or the brick drops for what they do. But we don't even play in that world. We operate in our relationship with you and how we engineer our products or our services and what we're committed to deliver and how we go above and beyond the expectations and how we basically design everything as if it was for ourselves in a much higher strata so we don't see ourselves even being compared. And you do things that are very different than most people would.
David
If you're competing, thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.
Alex
Oh, what you eating?
Bailey
The new banana split cookie from AM pm. All freshly baked with real butter with banana, chocolate and sugar strawberry flavors.
Alex
That sounds amazing. Can I have a bite?
Bailey
I'm sorry but no. But you can't split the banana split.
Alex
Not even a little.
Bailey
Not even a crumb.
Alex
What if.
Bailey
No, please.
Chris
Mine when it's too legit to split. That's cravinience. Get a 3 pack for 99 cents with our app ampm. Too much good stuff plus tax where applicable. Prices and participation may vary. Terms and conditions apply for the ones who get it done. The most important part is the one you need now and the best partner is the one who can deliver. That's why millions of maintenance and repair pros trust Grainger because we have professional grade supplies for every industry, even hard to find products. And we have same day pickup and next day delivery on most orders. But most importantly, we have an unwavering commitment to help keep you up and running. Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
Podcast Summary: Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Episode: Lessons - How to 10X Your Business Without Spending More | Jay Abraham - Advisor to Tony Robbins & Fortune 500s
Release Date: August 11, 2025
Host: Scott D. Clary (via Success Story Media)
Guest: Evelyn (pseudonym for Jay Abraham)
In this enlightening episode of the Success Story Podcast, host Scott D. Clary engages in a deep conversation with Evelyn, a renowned business strategist and advisor to Tony Robbins and numerous Fortune 500 companies. The focus of their discussion centers on the Strategy of Preeminence, a transformative approach designed to exponentially grow businesses without increasing expenditures. This strategy shifts companies from mere transactional interactions to becoming trusted advisors in their respective industries.
Evelyn introduces the Strategy of Preeminence as a foundational principle for achieving unparalleled business growth. She emphasizes the importance of prioritizing the client's best interests, comprehensively understanding their needs, and redefining the company's role from a seller to a life-changing partner.
Evelyn [01:35]: "One of the earliest things that I was fanatical about was something I called the strategy of preeminence... it transforms businesses from transactional sellers into trusted advisors."
Diving deeper, Evelyn draws parallels between business growth strategies and advanced mathematical concepts. She explains that while the commonly cited 10x moonshot represents exponential growth, there exist higher-order growth models—tetration, hexation, heptation, pentation, octation—collectively termed hyper operationalization. These models illustrate that businesses can achieve significantly higher performance levels without proportional increases in time, effort, or capital.
Evelyn [01:59]: "There are five or six gradients that are literally above and beyond exponentiation... you can really take performance so much higher for the same time, effort, opportunity, capital, access to the market, human capital, etc."
A cornerstone of the Strategy of Preeminence is establishing oneself as the most trusted advisor in the industry. Evelyn asserts that this status is attainable only by genuinely advising clients in their best interests, even when it doesn't directly benefit the company.
Evelyn [03:00]: "They were seen as the most trusted advisor in the category, the only viable solution you could turn to... They always tried to advise and tell their market what they felt was in the market's best interest, irrespective of whether that was in the company's best interest."
She underscores that true preeminence involves advising clients without pushing for higher sales, thereby fostering unwavering trust and long-term loyalty.
To effectively implement the Strategy of Preeminence, businesses must delve deep into understanding their target audience's desires and aversions. Evelyn introduces the concept of the "mind of the market," a methodology that enables companies to articulate what their audience wants in ways previously unexpressed by competitors.
Evelyn [05:00]: "Understanding and putting into words what your target audience wants and doesn't want in ways and at dimensions that no one else has ever articulated."
She emphasizes that this profound understanding differentiates companies, allowing them to address needs that clients may not even realize they have.
Evelyn shares a compelling case study involving the largest first-time home builder in Mexico. With 87 facilities and 3,000 salespeople, the company sought a breakthrough in their approach to sales. Evelyn's intervention led to a paradigm shift from merely selling homes to transforming entire family lives.
Evelyn [08:43]: "You don't just sell first time homes. You transform entire family lives. And every morning we started our day saying, how many lives are we going to transform today? And it was game changing."
By redefining the sales narrative, the company began to emphasize the long-term benefits and emotional fulfillment that came with homeownership, leading to increased sales and customer satisfaction without additional marketing spend.
A pivotal aspect of the Strategy of Preeminence involves altering how customers perceive both the business and their own needs. David and Evelyn discuss the duality of viewing one's business through a different lens while simultaneously influencing customers to adopt a new perspective.
Evelyn [12:32]: "We're trying to see your business through a different lens, but it's also trying to have people see you in contrast to everyone else."
This approach not only positions the company uniquely in a crowded market but also empowers customers to reevaluate their needs and the solutions presented to them.
Throughout the episode, Evelyn delineates the transformative power of the Strategy of Preeminence. By focusing on being the most trusted advisor, deeply understanding customer needs, and challenging existing perceptions, businesses can achieve exponential growth without incurring additional expenses. This strategy fosters lasting loyalty, differentiates companies in competitive markets, and ultimately leads to sustained success.
Evelyn [01:35]: "Strategy of preeminence transforms businesses from transactional sellers into trusted advisors."
Evelyn [01:59]: "You can really take performance so much higher for the same time, effort, opportunity, capital, access to the market, human capital, etc."
Evelyn [03:00]: "They always tried to advise and tell their market what they felt was in the market's best interest, irrespective of whether that was in the company's best interest."
Evelyn [05:00]: "Understanding and putting into words what your target audience wants and doesn't want in ways and at dimensions that no one else has ever articulated."
Evelyn [08:43]: "You don't just sell first time homes. You transform entire family lives."
Evelyn [12:32]: "We're trying to see your business through a different lens, but it's also trying to have people see you in contrast to everyone else."
This episode offers invaluable insights for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to elevate their business strategies. By embracing the Strategy of Preeminence, listeners can learn to foster deeper client relationships, drive growth, and stand out in their respective industries.