How You Can Achieve Market Dominance Through a Growth Mindset w/ Ken Schmidt

0:00You're all in or you're all out. I got to see it. To know that it's real. Make it real. Make me a believer. We're here with Ken Schmidt, president of the Ken Schmidt Companies. He is a genius at all things marketing. The former director of communication at Harley Davidson. His book called Make Some Noise is really about how to create market dominance. Somebody's doing something better than we are. We have to start putting together a plan to do it better than they are. We cannot allow them to dominate us. I want them to lose and me to win. Dominators win. What is success to you? Brad, that's a great question.

0:33I'm glad you asked. Success to me is going to bed at night feeling like I did something, that I accomplished something today that I'm proud of. I'm not going to bed at night regretting things that I didn't do. How do you make certain you do get stuff done in a day, that you do add value and you do those great things? I'm a list maker, so I make my checklist. Okay, here's what I have to get done today. Here's who I have to talk to. And until those things are done, the playtime gets put off. So let me ask you this then. And what's your theories? Because here on Big Success, it's all about success with whatever people's definition of that is.

1:09What else does it take to be a success or be successful? To me, one of the driving points of my career is always asking questions, asking people who are really good at what they do. How do you do that? How did you discover that? What were some of the challenges that you had in 99.9 % of people? Well, answer the questions when you ask them. So I figured, you know what? But why shouldn't I learn from people that have already blazed the trails? If they're doing it well, show me. And then I'll show others. How do you get around the right people? Early in my career, what I decided I was going to do, I was working in Chicago at a marketing firm there.

1:46And I figured, you know what? I'm meeting a lot of nice people here at the agency that I work with that are smart and talented. But I need to get more plugged into the marketing community as a whole. So I joined essentially every big association in Chicago. And then I got involved in leadership positions in those meetings because that, in essence, plugged me into the movers and shakers. What are some of the great questions that if someone's young and they're looking this, what should they be asking great, successful people? How did you land here in the corner office? How did you get this mantle?

2:18How did you get these awards? How did you get all this? Tell me your path to get to where you are and all the mistakes that you made. And again, people always answer the questions. Yeah. How did you use learnings or failures or mistakes to help you become successful? We have to try doing things that not only we've never done before, but that no one that we know of has done before, which is pretty much saying, look, we have to accept up front. There's a chance that some of this stuff might not work. Look at something that didn't work and kind of wallow in the pity of us. There's always something you can learn from that.

2:52Hey, well, we're not going to do that again. Ken, let's talk about a quote that I wrote down when you spoke for us here in Las Vegas at our BizX event. People support what they help create. How do you have success in getting people to help you create the business and the success and all of those things? It's just a matter of involving people in the decisions about things that are important to them. How do you succeed at creating a tattoo worthy brand. People look at, you know, a Harley Davidson tattoo on somebody's body, and they instantly equate that with a motorcycle or a product. So that person is expressing his or her loyalty to their motorcycle.

3:35And that's not true. And that was a kind of thinking that eventually bankrupted our business, the belief that it was all about product. When we express loyalty to a company, we're not expressing it to what they do. We're doing it, expressing that loyalty to who they are. How else do you create real success in loyalty? Say and do something to that person that they're going to remember. And that's not hard to do. How do we succeed at dominance, I guess, in a market? Instead of focusing on all the things that you're not wanting, you just focus on crushing as many competitors as you can because you know what?

4:08All your competitors probably have that same mindset. Hey, we're just happy to be in the game. In order for me to win and be successful, So that means I need to be better than or to be perceived as better than these people I'm competing against. So in my mind, I want them to lose and me to win. And dominators win. How do you become a successful CMO? You always should be working with the absolute best available people. It lifts you up because you all learn from each other. And then you constantly challenge each other to push each other to always ask why. You know, that dominance that you talk about, how do you do that?

4:48First of all, it's very much a mindset. And I call it a very contagious mindset. The quest for dominance and the visible effort behind doing that is a very contagious thing. If I, as a leader or someone who's working with a team is pushing and pushing our things, saying there's no reason why we can't take this a level higher. There's no reason why we shouldn't do better each quarter than we did the quarter before. And here's how we're going to do that and just not let off the gas. How do you keep yourself in that mindset? It's all about mindset and confidence and always asking questions. The business isn't succeeding.

5:31It's because the person running it or the people running it aren't asking enough questions. They're not turning over every rock to say, well, what exactly are we not doing right here? And they're also not, and this is absolutely key, they're not asking the people that they serve what they can and should be doing differently or better. What would you like to see us do? We're trying to go from good to great. We're trying to be absolutely dominant. How can we do that? How can we better serve you? What would you like to see us do? If you were running our business, what would you do? first of all people will answer those questions because every everyone asks a question that you ask them in in person but you're gonna you're gonna pick up things you're gonna learn that hey maybe your competitors are better at some of the things you're doing than you thought they were yeah yeah how do we overcome that and then work together and say well that's it if somebody's doing something better than we are we have to start putting it together plan to do it better than they are we cannot allow them to dominate us let's think about that dominant mindset how do you train someone to actually believe in the fact or even leap to that ken i was surrounded by a lot of really passionate people and what i learned pretty quickly is that the passion doesn't automatically equate to ability that's something it's a bad thing not necessarily so but but a lot of people were perfectly content to just get by you've got to be more visible you've got to be more plugged in you have to be in front of them they have to know who you are you have to be doing something that delights them so that they remember you and there were always some people say you know what i that's not the world that i want to be in i don't want any part of that and then i you know always have to tell them kind of straight up then you're going to have a really difficult time with me you're going to have a difficult time here because we're here to dominate now we're in overdrive and we can't accept anybody that's willing to just sit there neutral.

7:33We got to go and we got to go hard. You're all in or you're all out. I got to see it to know that it's real. Make it real. Make me a believer. And that's the Big Success Podcast for today. Hopefully, you took a lot of notes, learned a whole bunch. And if you need to go re-listen to it, we dropped a lot of information right there today. Big success is what it's all about. And by the way, if you haven't subscribed, hit that subscribe button so you're here with us every single week on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. That's BS. Big success is what we're shooting for. Check the show notes for all the links.

8:06Make sure you follow through. Keep learning. Keep coming back. Oh, and by the way, share this with any of your friends who you know are up for success. I'll see you next week on the Big Success Podcast. You've been listening to the Big Success Podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up, or listen to past episodes, visit www.bradsugars.com.