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

27:11And I find what people do is exactly the opposite. They go chasing the shiny object. They chase what I call yummy because it feels so good to eat that AI solution. They go chase it without figuring out what the context is. So what I try and do with you is take you through the process. And I say, trust the process. We're going to get it done. OK. 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 a landscaping lawn cutting, I drag a property development solution provider out of a guy that sold boats to boat dealers in Toronto.

27:50OK, 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 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. And they're the only one that does it. And as a result, then they get to buy the boat. The boat will come.

28:28OK, 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, all people want is a boat that floats and the electronics work. Trust me, I own four of them. OK, it's not about anything else. And maybe there's some brand stuff if you really like, you know, Ocean Alexander's and high-end boats. But it's really not about that. And quite frankly, I wasn't the decision maker anyways. The guy that sold me the boat, he figured it out. It was my wife. Yeah, exactly. We were buying a home that floated, and he figured that out.

29:05And once I saw him doing it, I thought, oh, shit. This is good salesmanship. That's like salesmanship 101 right there. 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? OK, so the third question is relative to the customer groups and their cravings that you've just discovered and defined. How do you intend to compete in win in those segments, given given that there's going to be competitors running around? Right. So this is where the only statement. OK. 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.

29:45So 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. OK, 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 business development solution business, which blew them away. And the same with the landscaper moving into the property development solution business, albeit defined a specific way. so it's exceedingly important and people will 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 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 yourself or you die?

30:50Right. Exactly. What was it again? Yeah. Be different or be dead. So how do you get people to be different? And, or you said in the marketing, everyone's saying, oh, we're the best, but that's not making you different. So what is different mean to you? How, how can a business stand out in today's economy, which everybody is fighting for attention and saying, and you're saying the same thing. My industry, for instance, everybody is saying the same thing. You don't pay. It's, it's, we're going to do 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.

31:26So 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. OK, because look at the answer is different for each and every business. OK, because when they do the work and 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. OK, into what the solution that you want to be a unique provider of is. Okay, so it doesn't, this is the problem.

32:02And this is the problem I have with consulting generally, is they take a boilerplate solution and they try and drive it down everybody's throats. 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 the right solution. And I'll drag it out of you because I know how to do that. Yeah. But no, I'm not going to give you a simple form. I love what you just said.

32:39I 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 business has their unique things that make them different. Customer is 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 our 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.

33:17I believed in building a unique sales floor for your unique business. How do you scale that though? That's the problem. I don't believe that you do need a sales force. I believe that what we're talking about is engaging with people buying. I'm not selling at all. 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 clever branding comes. And you provide it or deliver that value. The customer ends up buying.

33:57So you don't need a sales, unfortunately. And I've written a ton of just check my my blogs. I mean, I beat the crap out of sales all the time because there's such a good target. Right. And I actually advocate that you don't need one now to replace it. OK, with a demand pulling capability is what we're talking about here. And so it's all about making the little not so subtle changes to an organization, its leadership and its culture to make it happen. And so one of the things that I did, because, yeah, we were flogging Salesforce and we never, ever did make the right angle turn that I wanted to see before I left.

34:35But 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 sales force. So a secret gatherer. Yeah. Secret gathering is all about identifying your client's cravings. I just call them secrets. Right. And so I said to everybody, OK, it's going in your performance plans. It's going to have an impact on your bonus. And guess what? And they say, well, how are you going to measure it? How are you going to measure?

35:12I 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 used to do another thing. But I just asked them to do one little thing differently. The other thing I did was I included the customer in rating the salespeople. OK, so we did a lot of customer perception research. Right. And so you can see what I'm doing.

35:48I'm moving away from how much did you sell in the last quarter towards. OK, 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 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 shit, human being lovers, all that kind of stuff, as opposed to wham, bam, thank you, ma 'am.

36:29Secrets, I just want to make sure I understand this. The secrets you're talking about, aka the example of the guy that wanted the telephone. Is that what you mean? Exactly. I figured I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just, I cloaked it differently. It's a hard one for me to hear this because as a professional salesperson, so I love it because we're going to battle this maybe because you, uh, my, you know, my, my, my last, I call professional, uh, 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.

37:05And 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 an, I tell people this, I was in, it's a good story. I was in an interview, long story short, and I was young, cocky, you know, full of piss and vinegar, telling the guy, I'm going to be your number one sales person. You just put me in the spot and I'm going to kill it. The entire interview, he didn't say a word.

37:45He 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, uh, the desk. I picked the piece of paper up and I looked at it and all it said was people do business with people they like. And I looked at that. I looked at him. I shut up and he said, I'll see you on Monday. And, uh, 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. Yeah. They're buying you and they're buying the idea of who they can become after they buy through you.

38:23So it's interesting. So you made your salespeople who probably had no idea how to actually have real conversations with people and even have the hard conversations for them, which is learn a little bit more about your customer. Yeah. Well, and, 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.

38:58You throw a bonus plan in front of them, they will make it. And the problem is, if the plan isn't right in terms of long-term goals, you're screwed. You are really screwed. And so what we try to do is start. It's not finished. 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 instead of saying, how can I use the technology to satisfy my overall human being goals?

39:37Yeah. Use the technology to create the cravings. 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. 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?

40:19Actually, a good question. I don't, 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're wanting to break away. They're wanting to break away from the shit that they're in the middle of. I had one guy say, Roy, you 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, I'm sorry, we just got a billion out of using this.

40:59What 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.

41:36I'm just giving it some, giving us some framework and language that because language is so powerful and it's never used right in planning everybody wants to make it so complicated right if you make it simple people understand it and they're willing to go forward so no i'm uh 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 look at if you're not sweating we're going to keep going. We're not stopping. And it is a fun experience. That's the other thing I want to say, Kayvon.

42:10It's a 48-hour fun experience with remarkable outcomes, I think. So be different, be dead to me, from what I'm hearing from you, is it sounds like it's more about creating the authentic, real relationship and connections with your, I'm going to call them your prospects or your clients, depending on the business model, uh, and, and being able to create a little bit more, uh, you know, human centric, I call it human centric selling in where I'm from, but like a human centric connection with, with, uh, 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?

43:02Well, 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 doing this for 40 freaking years. I didn't come down from yesterday's rain cloud. 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.

43:40So you can trust me. This stuff works. Oh, you don't believe me? Okay. What part of the billion don't you get? And we have that conversation. So it's nice to be able to point to a performance and an end result that is meaningful to business people and top line revenue and revenue growth really is. But there's many pieces to this. I mean, we've had we had service strategy, so I know how to build service strategy. I mean, basically, 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.

44:22And all they want to do is collect money. And I wanted to build a relationship with people that owed me money. And I got all sorts of money from them. So it just seems to be that I'm the only one kind of in that space. And but I do use the platform of the billion as a way sometimes to get people to pay attention, because it's the only way they'll do it um but most of the time it's like having a conversation and giving them a book it's not even just a billion the billion is now 18 billion right as a result of the foundation hey you didn't get to the first bill you end up got to the 18 billion right yeah run right we know what run rate is right and uh and let me ask you this then uh what type of businesses do you currently work with like what kind of size are they what industry are they in It doesn't matter.

45:11It can be not-for-profit. I just completed some work for a not-for-profit called Dan's Legacy that are in the mental illness kind of space in Toilson. And we did a strategic game plan for them because they weren't happy that they were getting the results that they wanted. And I knew the executive director and she just reached out. like I'm not knocking on doors to do this right like I don't need to work here I feel like yeah like I was gonna say you're the type of guy uh you don't go looking for businesses businesses find you when they're ready yeah and if and that's a good thing for my because I don't need a filter then so if if somebody's talking to me about uh 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 have I have I have said no to businesses that have not convinced me that they're willing to do anything with the results that I helped them achieve.

46:15And so like, they're not really serious about implementation. They want to plan, but they don't want to put the work in to actually do the execution. And so I've said, you know, I'm not seeing that your skin is in the game here and maybe you can find someone else. yeah yeah i hear that uh because a lot of businesses that want the idea they like the idea that they're doing something different yes 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 oh man i don't know that is so true though i think it just yeah it makes them feel good it actually it 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.

47:04And so they're trying to do it, but they really don't want to do it. And what they don't realize, it's so easy to spot these people. I mean, they're so disingenuous. It's just unbelievable. And of course, then they use the buzzwords and not just right away. Does it for me? I mean, no, seriously. I mean, you open your mouth and you prove that you're stupid right yeah yeah totally get it i love it i love it yeah 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 uh i just sort of the audience there's a lot of depth in those questions they're not i think we can agree on that they're not just as simple as how big do you want to be who do you want to serve you know what are their cravings uh and uh what's that last one i can always keep forgetting that last one how do we are you going to compete and win yeah and how do you compete and win how do you compete and win because those are underneath those questions there's depth and there's things that people need to really understand well the other thing it points out if you don't mind is it's like like i'm always learning about my stuff okay like this is an evolution it's over time okay i mean working it and working it and thinking about it and trying it and tweaking it and what works with this kind of client, et cetera.

48:26What worked when we actually were growing the business, that was a huge learning experience because we were unionized. I mean, most of the workers 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've got to put in the work. I love that. I think we can end on that idea because I think a lot of business owners that I definitely work with and speak to, They're like they're stuck waiting or looking for that silver bullet because they see their competitor doing it or they've seen someone else in another industry try it.

49:19And 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. Well, I mean, what I would say honestly is, well, I mean, try it. You might get lucky. But do me a favor. When it fails, do your work. OK, 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.

50:00OK, because the stuff that we're going to talk about in the process that we've created here is tried and proven. And it is it was loved by frontline people and every element of the business. So it has the human factor. It lit fires in people. And that's why we got to a billion. Not because it was a cool strategy. 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, OK, was to hold and grow, hold and grow. All right. And deflect using the kind of approaches that you and I just talked about, because they were there. It was people.

50:39The 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. 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. Exactly. If you do that right.

51:16Yeah. And you're, they, they will stay. Yeah. And we knew, we knew who they were. We had, 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? Why should I really believe that? I said, I'll tell you what.

51:52let'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 48 hours you're hanging on that so 48 out businesses that are stuck 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. Yeah. 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, or, you know, relationship or the, again, who do we want to serve question.

52:38And in 48 hours we can start executing. Yeah. So the process is what I do is get the, the leadership team in a room. Okay. I can do it on zoom, but it's, it's, It's very powerful face-to-face, the leader and the team. And the process I have is basically every member on the team has equal decision-making responsibility. It's not just the boss. Okay, the boss is just another member of the team. And sometimes they feel uncomfortable with that. But look, I know how to play this. I know who the CEO is. So I can, you know, I can, the process works, right? It just works. And it's unanimous. Every decision gets voted on.

53:17and I go through this thing to understand and agree. So let's say we arrived at how big do you want to be and it looks like I can sense that 10 million is something that people are okay with. We all agree, yeah. What I will do is I'll go to Kayvon, okay, it's 10 million. Do you understand and do you agree? And 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 back at 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 that language, right?

53:53Hey, I got UNA. But I make them say, understand, and agree because it's part of the program. And I love it because it goes the saying is he who battles the battle doesn't battle. He who plans the battle, sorry, doesn't battle the plan, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And you make them feel like they're all part of it. They won't battle it. They'll actually help implement it. Well, it's an incredible team building exercise, by the way. But yes, in 48 hours, you have the strategic game plan statement, but you also have a set of objectives to get at the implementation piece. So I make sure we have enough time to drive down into the only statement, for example, and say, all right, we need to understand a little more about what those words mean, because this is a communications issue here.

54:35We'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? OK, 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 it's fast and easy always the right way though is that always the right one fast and easy?

55:31Does that fix the short-term problem and not the long-term? Well, 24 months is short-term. But I would advocate that long-term growth is about meeting short-term goals. Don't ever try and tell me that it's in the 10-year plan because it's freaking not. The 10-year plan is an aspiration. It's based on analytical quantitative tools that are function into 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.

56:11And in my world, never did anything. Somebody says to me, while you're being short-sighted, I say, thank you. OK, and then we're going to be short-sighted again. And then we're going to be short-sighted again. And guess what? In 10 years, you will have five phases of being short-sighted. And thank you. I helped you achieve your 10 million. Boom. I can't argue with that. Well, it's hard to. It's so common sense. So this is not. I can't argue with that because how many times have we seen businesses play the 5, 10, and they never get there versus here's the two. So what happens when a business, okay, so what about this?

56:50Yeah. What happens when businesses do the short-term two-year plan and they don't get there? It doesn't work. It breaks. It goes sideways. You redo the plan. You just keep redoing it until you make it work. Part of the process is a three-month review as well. So you want to be execution-focused. You've 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 until the end of the two years. But we do have an annual sort of formal review of the strategic game plan where we say things like, how do we feel about the how big?

57:25Okay? Yeah. All right? If we change it, and it's okay to change it, we change it as a team. And we have the argument, and I'm going to be Darth Vader here. I'm going to be your worst fucking nightmare when it comes to this. Okay? Because if we're changing it, it's changing it to make it bigger, not to make it smaller. Or something. We've learned something, right, that we didn't know 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, learn, and adjust.

57:59So 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. And that, that's a concept some people really have difficulty with because quite frankly, we've been taught to get it done. It's over. It's complete. Now let's move on to something else. That's not the world we're in. The planning world, if you want to execute the plan, is not a world where the plan ever gets done. It's alive. It's amorphous. It's organic. It's like the strategic planning document has got blood on it from paper cuts, if you happen to have it in paper form, right?

58:43Because you use it. I mean, how many planning documents have you seen Sutton sitting on top of somebody's credenzins in an office? Or, you know, no, gotta be used. And I used to ask salespeople for a 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 yeah, so you have to accept the fact that that things can be changed and once people understand that it almost they they feel oh okay 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 then again two year and after five years where are you going to be Right.

59:37Probably where the five year plan was going to be anyway. So it'll be way more than what you want. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Any last thoughts for our listeners as we come to an end here? No, I would just say I need you to think about this whole notion of differentiation more. OK, 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 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.

1:00:20I'm totally happy. It's roy.oseng at gmail.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, OK, take a deep breath. How am I going to do this differently? And that drove my thinking. And quite frankly, I think the quality of the solution, because it would be typically a solution that others wouldn't arrive at. And that in and of itself added value to it that nobody else had.

1:00:56And it's just the beginning. OK, so if you could do that for Uncle Roy, I would appreciate it. I love it. So for Uncle Roy, the next time we have a challenge or you're looking at the business, put on your Be Different lens. Roy, thank you so much for having me, for being here. Appreciate it. Very welcome. Thanks for having me.