Executing Bold Moves to Unlock Billion Dollar Growth

Well hey, good morning everybody and welcome to another episode of The Unlocked Show. I'm your host Tracy Wilson and it's always my pleasure to be here with you guys. You know, I'm on the Gold Coast of Australia and boy, I've got an amazing, amazing guest for you guys today. Before we kick into all of that, I want to ask you a really important question. I want to know if you are ready to challenge the status quo. Are you ready to learn some audacious unheard of ways to take a startup to the next level? Because on today's show, I've got a very special guest who's not only achieved a billion dollars in sales, but he also has this unparalleled wealth of knowledge and experience on how to be audaciously different in business. So my question to you as the entrepreneur is are you actually ready to be different? Are you ready to be different or are you ready to be dead in your pursuit of success? Again. I want to say welcome to the unlocked show. I'm your host Tracy Wilson. This show is about where we take business growth and personal development and we kind of boom, we collide the two of those together. I'm a business consultant and a mentor to many people all over the world. And after a decade in this industry, you'd say that I've learnt a thing or two about being successful in an industry that we're in as an entrepreneur. And now I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs just like you, to unlock your full potential and achieve success across your business and your life. Every episode that you tune into, I'm going to bring you insights, expert advice from special and very successful entrepreneurs from all over the world. Like I said, our special guest today, Roy, is all the way from Vancouver. Now, he's a former president, CMO and entrepreneur with over 40 years of unmatched executive leadership experience and a track record of taking startups from early stages to a staggering billion dollars in annual sales. So I want to say to you guys, welcome me or join me. I should say you're also welcome. Join me in welcoming our amazing guest Roy Osing to the show because today we are going to unpackage his a very experienced brain and show you how you can take these audacious unheard of ways to actually unlock your potential so you too can be extremely successful in your business and your life. Welcome to the show Roy. It is fantastic to have you here.


Speaker B 00:03:30
Thanks Tracy. I'm humbled and honored to be part of your show today.
Speaker A 00:03:35
Well, me too. I'm glad that you're here. When I read your bio and read about you, I mean you're a super intriguing guy, right? Somebody who takes startups like you've got to come up with the concept and the idea and then actually take that and turn it into something that has the capacity and the ability to be able to make a billion dollars in sales. Before we kind of get into all the nitty gritties of how someone would do that, I'm really interested in what's your background like, how did this come to be? How did you sort of come to be this really successful entrepreneur that you are now?
Speaker B 00:04:15
Yeah, so I came from the telecom space in the days where it was highly regulated and rule bound and not very, I would say customer focused, because it didn't have to be or it didn't think it had to be. And it occurred to me very early that with competition coming and it came all over the world, that, quite frankly, we weren't ready. We weren't ready to be successful. And so we had to break away from traditional ways of doing business. And I'm going to use the word breakaway a lot, Tracy, because I think the word pivot is being overused and it doesn't capture the energy and the volume and the dimension of change that I'm talking about here. It's literally breaking away from the stuff that worked yesterday. Yesterday's relevance, but today's, irrelevance. That's breaking away. So we started on this journey and then, of course, along came the Internet and the data world, and we started dabbling in that and recognized that the potential was huge, didn't know what it was. And so I was asked to be the president of this company and literally take this early stage business. I get goosebumps, quite frankly, when I'm thinking about this because it was such an incredible run, it really was, and actually build something out of it. We had no idea that it was going to be a billion dollars. What we knew was that it had huge upside potential and if we did the right things that we could get our fair share of it. And if it turned out to be a huge amount, then that was great, but we were going to give it a shot. But the one thing that we knew, that I knew, is that we were not going to get there by keep continuing to do the same old, same old things. We're going to have to revolutionize the way we looked at leadership. We're going to have to do audacious, bold things that, quite frankly, annoyed a lot of people because it wasn't part of their rhetoric. So I was breaking the rules of rhetoric. I was introducing discontinuity every day, and my colleagues thought I was nuts most of the time, but the reality was they translated into performance that was just rocking it up. And we lit fires in people and we got a billion.
Speaker A 00:06:37
What a really fascinating story. I'm going to break this down as we continue to kind of have this conversation, but this whole concept that you talk about, you're going to mention this many times throughout today's show. I know this concept of breaking away. Now, if we go back, and I think even that telecommunications kind of industry is still in that revolution, having to reinvent itself over and over and over again, particularly here in my local area here of Australia. But my question is around this breakaway, you talk about kind of understanding what was irrelevant today, we were doing yesterday that has now become irrelevant, that is now relevant today. Like, how did you actually understand that? And how did you know what things to do? Because that's quite interesting, right? Because stuff's moving at a pace, and people don't always understand when is the time to I might usually break away from the norms.
Speaker B 00:07:41
Well, it's a feeling, right? And so look at this. The stuff that I did was certainly not driven by formulas. And quite frankly, I learned very soon after I got a university that I had to put the textbook down. I had to put the textbook down. And I'm going to say that a lot of times today, too, because textbooks are useful to get you to a certain point, but you need to put them down, otherwise they're going to straitjack at you, okay? And so I got onto that real early and look at it. I'm a simple person, okay? What I believed in is execution reigns supreme. Not the plan, but execution. How to get execution going in an organization, you get it going by appealing to the hearts of people in your organization to do things. And they all want to do things differently. They all wanted to do things differently. All we had to do was listen to them. So I spent copious amounts of time with people in my organization say, hey, how can I help? And I've dubbed that leadership by serving around. It's not management by walking around. It's leadership by serving around, how can I help? Well, that's just unlocked you wouldn't believe the breakaway thoughts because everybody has them, okay? Everybody has them. This applies to whether you're two people in an organization where in my case, it was like, well over 8000 people in this organization, in this ship, that we had to change the culture, change the business, get a growth trajectory in mind, and get going. And so I guess there wasn't one particular thing that went, AHA, this is what I need to do. Because I've never believed that life is not about silver bullets. Entrepreneurship is not about silver bullets. It's about getting nano inches worth of progress, okay? And I mean, that baby steps fast by trying things, failing at things, just but keep relentlessly moving forward. And in fact, that's when I learned that pain is indeed a strategic concept, okay? Because if you're going to go on the growth journey, you better be prepared through a breakaway concept. You better be prepared to incur one hell of a lot of pain and have the tenacity and the belligerence to bully yourself through it and just keep going and just keep going. And so I was a tryer. I tried things that were simple, right? I tried things that people went, AHA, gee, this is kind of cool. Let me give you an example. I mean, organizations today have really a lot of what I call dumb rules. They got rules and policies that make absolutely no sense to customers, right? Maybe everybody listening is unique, and they don't have any, but I'm suspecting there are few around, and of course, every organization had them. And so all that was doing is getting in the way of execution because we were doing things to disable the customer transaction process as opposed to enable it. And so I came up with this concept called cleansing, the inside of which dumb rules, killing dumb rules was one of them. And so the simple thing was, we asked people to identify the dumbest rule that they have come and encountered that prevented customers from liking an experience that they were having with us. Well, I got to tell you, we weren't short of ideas. I mean, we got a whole pile of ideas. And so we had fun with this. I'd show up in the workplace with a big white T shirt with Dumb rules written in red and X through, right? And so they'd say, oh, here comes Roy with his Dumb rules T shirt. The fact of the matter, it unleashed people's passion and emotion and willingness to do the hard work that we needed them to do, right, to move the business forward. So I had dozens of those things, and they were designed necessarily because I was smart. They were designed because people told me that there were some things, some pinch points in the organization that nobody else had addressed, and why don't we do that? And I went, okay, why didn't we do that? So we got killed dumb rules. We got cut the crap. We got higher for goosebumps. We got leadership by serving around. I mean, we got a ton of things that we did that were completely unconventional, that broke away from the way people had thought. That killed the momentum of the past. And that's what you have to do to be a successful entrepreneur. You have to kill it and create your own.
Speaker A 00:12:19
I'm loving what you're talking about. And, I mean, if I go back to something that you said right at the beginning of this conversation was you. You covered two things. One was you started with, like, leadership you were talking about, and clearly what you did was, like, demonstrate the leadership that you were wanting to create a culture around throughout your entire organization. And I think often we think about, oh, what can I do? Oh, I'm going to create a new plan, or I want a new strategy or a new tactic. What you actually did was turn this thing on almost inwards and say, well, it actually starts with me, and it starts with me from a leadership level. The other thing that's quite interesting here because again, you talked about you can pull out a textbook. I mean, you need only look behind me on my cabinet over there. I've got a bunch of books like most entrepreneurs do, right? And we're all taught, go and grab some books, learn and learn. Grab out the textbooks and people are trying to do it as per is prescribed. What you're saying is you need to put that down. Yeah, you've got that knowledge now, but now put that down and actually tune in to some feelings and almost your intuition to help guide you on what feels right. And then layering that with a certain questions and the culture that you've now created to help guide that in a very it almost feels like a very natural and peaceful way of being able to grow and expand your business. I want to learn a little bit more about some of these things that you're talking about here. Cut the crap and what's the dumbest rule? So let's start with that because that is such a powerful thing to say, this big organization, this big juggernaut of a thing that I am trying to make some changes or break away in the industry. And 8000 staff, how does one go about instilling these new sets of culture and how long did it actually take you to do that? You've rattled off four different things that you did. Why did you start with those and what did you see actually happened? Maybe you can give us some examples.
Speaker B 00:14:44
Yeah, I got you. The first thing I want to say is it relates back to the leadership piece that you talked about. It's like everybody, particularly entrepreneurs, but not limited to entrepreneurs, we all need context. We need strategic context within which tactics and action make sense. I'm not a fan of chasing things. I call it yummy, right? Don't chase yummy. And one of the things I say to startup CEOs is the first thing you're not going to do is start chasing possibilities because there's an infinite number of them. And what you need to do is focus on the critical few, not the yummy many. And so context is important. For me, context was always execution. Hell, I built a new strategic planning process around that concept and I call it my strategic game plan. Game plan for a very specific reason because it's all about execution, right? So I built a strategy process that was built to execute where we spent 20% of our time heading west and 80% of our time working on how we're going to execute. Adjustable, right? Imperfect strategy. Okay, that's one of the examples. I mean, about putting a textbook down. The textbook tries to imply precision in an imperfect world. Help me help anybody understand the logic in that. So that's one of the examples. Put the textbook down. Let Roy show you how to build a strategy to sort of get your heading west in 48 hours. Will you do that with me? And then we're going to spend the rest of our time figuring out how we're going to breathe life into this puppy by executing it flawlessly. Dumb rules. Cut the crap. And all of these things are associated with enhancing execution. I didn't do them because I thought they were cool. I did them because I discovered I didn't know at the beginning. Okay, get this right, guys. It's not about knowing upfront what's going to work. It's about having the guts right in the tenacity and the pain tolerance to trying it. And hopefully you get the odd one right. And so what I said is, let's try some things that really relate to people. To the second point of your question, how did I know where to start? OK, I asked the people who are responsible for executing my strategic game plan or our strategic game plan, what are the key things that are preventing us from executing? Well, I mean, holy God, I got a ton of things. And then what we ended up doing is crystallizing them down. But one and a couple of the things that came through one is we have a rule system in this company, okay, that doesn't enable customers to do business with us. In fact, it tries to control it and it upsets them. It pisses them off. While you're going into a competitive world, you're trying to build a business on a data backbone and an internet backbone. You can't afford to be annoying people. I sort of thought that that was contrary to customer loyalty. Duh. And so we started getting rid of dumb rules. Cutting the crap is a statement about the grunge and the mud and the bureaucracy that people go through every day in their jobs, okay? While they're executing, they're feeding the bureaucracy. I know this is rocket science, folks, but building a billion isn't rocket science. Put the textbook down.
Speaker A 00:18:10
Say that again, Roy. Say that again because we want everybody to get that message. Say what you just said again. Building a billion dollar business, I think he said, is not rocket science. It's possible.
Speaker B 00:18:25
It's a million little things, okay? I've been doing a lot of writing lately on things like people don't lose customers because their technology roadmap is wrong. People don't lose customers because their dividend policy sucks. People lose customers because the little things that they do to them piss them off and they leave hashtag. Small things matter. Not the big things. It's the small things that matter, especially to us entrepreneurs, because that's the world we're in. Our nose is so close to the ground some days, right, that that's what we have to pay attention to and that's what's going to get us through it. So that's what I did to cut the crap thing was all about deep bureaucratizing, the organization. How's that for a word? Well, find me. I wrote my own textbook around bureaucratization and brackets in quotes. Crap. Interesting.
Speaker A 00:19:25
One of the things that you write a lot about is this kind of Audacious leadership, becoming an audacious leader. Do you want to and I know we've kind of covered a little bit of leadership. Do you want to expand on that? When you talk about being an Audacious leader, what exactly do you mean?
Speaker B 00:19:42
Well, it's captured by the term breakaway. It's recognizing that you need to break the inertia and the momentum of the past. You need to do more than shift. You need to do more than pivot. You need to rewrite your destiny in a way that matters to people. Okay? So this isn't an ego trip. It's figuring out who you want to serve, which is part of my strategy process. And then once you figured that out, then targeting things to them that make them go, wow, okay. And so that's what it's all about. That's what it's all about. The Audaciousness, then, is really the distance between normality and abnormality. I got to tell you. Got it, Tracy. You got to write that down because I've never said that before. This is one thing these podcasts do to me, is they drag stuff out of me. Is the distance between normality and abnormality. Okay? Standard and unstandard. That's the definition of breakaway. And so it all started with my approach to planning. I threw away the old strategic planning process, build a process that we could head west, get the plan just about right, get it done in two days. Why? Because we could hit the bricks running on the third day. The second piece, which is really super important, is like, I was hypercritical of the whole world of differentiation. And for all you entrepreneurs out there, listen up to this, please, because you're being taught the wrong thing. You're listening to the wrong stuff. And that is differentiation is not a function of being better or best or number one or premium or the greatest. And all of those superlatives and comparatives that are more about you than it is about how your business relates to customers. And so I call that claptrap the world today. It's amazing to me, Tracy, that in a world where competition has never been more aggressive, customers have never had more choice, technology has never changed so quickly. Businesses are generally way behind in terms of their ability to answer the question, why should you do business with me and not my competition? And that, in essence, is the competitive differentiation question. And I got to tell you, it's not being done well. I mean, I'm so tired of listening and reading things like, we are the champions of customer service. Our mission is to make the world happier and healthier. We're in business to save the planet. Now, I'm not saying that these things don't have some worth, but they're a statement of what comes from inside the company. They're not an expression that relates to why I should do business with you. Okay? They're helium filled, 50,000ft level statements of narcissism is what they are. Okay, here's my solution. Okay, Roy, give me the problem now. Give me the solution. Well, the solution I had to create myself. It's called the only statement. So I created this simple little thing that says we are the only ones who okay, so you're not better. You're not best. You're the only one that does something uniquely in a way that people care about. Okay, so let me repeat that. The only statement talks about you being unique in the way you satisfy what others care about. So it's not like being different for the sake of being different, being only for the sake of only. This whole thing is strategic, and it's targeted towards the people you're there to serve. I'm doing a lot of work now with clients building their only statement. The only statement becomes their competitive claim. And so you're getting rid of the claptrap and the aspirational contaminants that pervade the airwaves out there. You're cutting through the clutter. The only statement is simple. It's observable. It's measurable, and it's binary. It either exists or it doesn't exist. Every business needs to have an only statement if we're to make any progress in the world of differentiation. And for you entrepreneurs out there thinking about starting a business, if you can't figure out what makes you special, that your customers or you think your customers care about, stop spending money, because all you're going to do is waste it all. I hope you're looking down at your documentation, and I hope you're seeing a statement that says we're the best at and I hope you're taking your pen and striking it off. You have to do that because it's being promulgated. All of those sorts of superlatives are promulgated by people who don't understand what differentiation is. I had to understand because the only reason I came up with the only statement, Tracy, is people kept asking me, Roy, why should I do business with you? An old telco as opposed to a new start up. So I had to create an answer to the question. And I got to tell you, it wasn't we're the best or we're better or number one. It was all about commitments and deliverables that leveraged on our competencies that nobody else can do. Hell, I had scale and scope. I had people everywhere, right? I could leverage that. And so we did. And I kept going back to these customers, say, hey, am I honest here, or am I just kind of like smoke and rope? Is this true? Am I doing this? They go, yeah, Roy, but yeah, maybe over here. Only statement was so that was a huge audacious move for me. Look at it. I wrote my first book in nine today. The only statement is one of the pillars of my work after 14 years. Help me understand why that should be.
Speaker A 00:25:52
That is a fantastic piece of advice for those of you that are listening today. If there's one thing you take out of today's show, I'm going to say it's that you need to write that down and after the show you want to go away and really think about that. That only statement. What is it? What do you stand for? What is it that you do that nobody else does? Only you. That is extremely powerful because once you start thinking about that, of course my cogs are turning and I'm thinking about all the things that I do and my various businesses and have I got that? Is it simple? Is it measurable? Is it binary? Is it something that we actually do that changes us? Like Roy says, it breaks us away from the norms I've everybody else and makes us so different so that we don't become dead. These things that Roy is quite ironic that everything that he talks about is that be different or be dead. Because if we're in the sea of everybody else, the likelihood of you not making it is very, very high. To break away from that and be different and be daring and be audacious and create your own you want to call it your own blue ocean. You have now got something that is going to be sustainable, that is profitable and that will last you a long time. I want to say that in terms of this concept, I want to go back to this too because there's so many pieces I want to pull apart with this and we're not going to have time to do it all today because my mind is obviously ticking.
Speaker B 00:27:32
Show number two, Tracy. Show number two.
Speaker A 00:27:34
Oh yeah, don't worry, we'll be back. We will do more for sure. But one of the things I think, particularly if you're a new entrepreneur, we have this, I suppose almost an impatientness of wanting to be successful. I've started my business like two weeks ago and then I want to get clients through the door and why are they not coming? And I've been creating this content online and they're still not here and we have this want to do these giant leaps to catch up to other people. But what you're talking about is instead of trying to jump this enormous crevice, we're just going to step over nicely over little cracks. But we're going to do it really quickly and faster, faster, faster, faster until we've finally, actually got us to the other side in a more meaningful way. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? Because that's what I'm seeing and I'm hearing from a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly in this world now, right. The internet is there. We can do things really quickly. But I want to go from zero to hero in like two weeks.
Speaker B 00:28:47
Yeah. So I actually don't differentiate between what I'll call offline and online businesses and I'll tell you why. The difference is at probably the tools and the tactics level. But in terms of what you need to do as a business to position yourself for growth and success, there's no difference. And part of the problem with entrepreneurs is they get mesmerized by the tools. Hell, I have people coming up to me every day saying, Roy, what do you think about my social media strategy? I said, I have no idea because I don't know what you're trying to achieve. What are you trying to achieve as a business? And so their myopia is focused around the tool and the tactic, and we need to rise above that. Now, the good news is, look at you need to be rooted in a destiny, okay? You have to know sort of where you're going. I don't want you jumping to tactics because you have no idea what they're achieving for you because you didn't define that straight up. Okay? So the thing that I built can get you there and position in 48 hours. Now, surely to god, everybody out there can give 48 hours to a process and work it through to get your strategy just about right. It will inform everything that you need to do. It will inform you the cracks that you need to jump over. It will inform what your communication strategy should look at and what the role of social media should be. It will inform whether AI has got any application in your business at all before you chase it, because it's yummy, incoming. Okay, so you need to root yourself. You need to do the work on differentiation. If I can give you one piece of advice, that's what you have to do. Don't do anything else until you've honestly figured out who you want to serve and how you're going to be the only one that does what you do in terms of what you provide them. If you can't do that, then why don't you just cut me a check and send it to me in vancouver? Because that's all you're doing, right? You're wasting your money. And you won't see that in a normal quote textbook except mine. That's the ADAS.
Speaker A 00:31:04
That particular book that you held up there, that's like one in a series of about seven, right? Do you want to talk a little bit about that series of books? And you know who should? Who should, really? Because I'm going to give everybody a link where they can go to, because after listening to Roy for just 25 minutes, I am sure the cogs are turning for you two. You're wondering, Gosh, whether you've got a big business you're a telco like Roy Head and you've got this amazing team and you're wanting to break away and differentiate yourself in the market or you're a one man band or one woman band that's just kind of just started up a couple of weeks ago and trying to figure out, where am I going? What. Do I want to do? What moves should I make next? I mean, there are things that he's spoken about today that I know you're going to want to know more about. So in a short while, I'm going to give you the link as to where you can go to get yourself copies of Roy's books and where you can go to hear more from him. And like I said, I think that was an agreement earlier that said, I'll be back on the show, on the inlaw show at another time. So we'll get him back for round two, and we'll delve a little bit more into various different areas of how to take something from startup to a million dollar to a multi million billion dollar business. But Roy, do you want to tell everybody about your books and who are they for and who should go and get them?
Speaker B 00:32:37
Yeah. So look at I'm not an author, right? I'm just a simple guy that believes in execution because execution drives performance, and I figure out how to get people excited about execution. But I was advised a long time ago when I left my real job, I was advised that I should actually be putting the stuff that I did down. And so the books series started in nine I mean, it's that old. With a book called Be Different or Be Dead. Your Business Survival Guide look at the guts of it is exactly the same as the book that was published on May the 31st of this year. Okay? The essence of creating a growth engine in a business is the same now as it was then. And that's a statement that we haven't really made a whole lot of progress on what I consider to be some pretty fundamental things that work for me. The practical side of life, not the theoretical side of life. The human side of life, not the robotic side of life. Those factors. Yeah. And I know I'm painting myself as kind of an old school guy, and I'm proud of it because that stuff worked. And I don't care how much AI you got in your business, you still have humans. And customers, by the way, are humans. Just to remind us we need to take care of human beings? If we choose to use AI and robotics as a way to do it, make sure you have a strategy and a strategic context within which to do it. Anyways, I wrote the first book. People were really intrigued because I wrote it in sections. So there's a marketing, sales, business planning, blah, blah, blah section because I've pretty well done it all. There wasn't a career section in that book. I held that out because I wrote something different on it. And then people were saying, well, what about marketing? So I took a deep dive in marketing. So I wrote a book called Be Different or Be Dead. Marketing in the Storm. People wanted to hear about careers. So I wrote a book. Be Different or Be Dead. Be different. You people wanted to know more about leadership, so I've done a couple of spins on that. One was the weekly act calendar of Leaders, where I'm suggesting things that leaders should be doing every day just to kind of get them routineized around this whole notion of audaciousness, right? And so I wrote a couple of books on leadership and then Be Different or Be Dead, Freedom Seekhers Way, where I kind of updated it because, like I said, I learn more about my stuff the more I talk about it and the more I work with clients and see the problems that they're having, et cetera. So this is kind of a revised version, if you will, of the first one, okay? Because I've included audacious ways of having a successful career. So I've included careers, marketing, sales service and business planning. I call it Business Success in the book. And it's all practical. Tracy it's all how to I mean, it's rooted in fundamentals, which make sense, which is, if you want to perform, you got to do something and make sure that the margins are up. So you read all sorts of stuff in there about why I hate low prices, why I'm a fan of premium pricing, because that tells the market that you're doing something what special and unique and maybe different and maybe only and it talks about cravings because I'm a guy that says, I don't market to people's needs. What we need to do is find out what they crave, what they lust for, what they covet, what they desire, and market to. That why no competition, premium prices. Boom. Done. So there's a lot of that in there. By the way, that's something else for you entrepreneurs out there, right? You better start figuring out what your customers crave. I want to see a cravings manual out there. Cravings. And you don't ask them. Tracy woody a crave. Although you could do that, I guess. But it's amazing what comes up in a conversation, right? Like people that I love. Cabernet savignon from Napa Valley. Now, that's relevant because packaging in the world we're in is an essential ingredient of successful marketing. It's not product focus, right? It's holistic focus. It's packaging capabilities with experiences. And so you got to look at the world that way and desimplify it from that perspective, right? And then look for ways to kind of play into that world based on what you learn about your customers.
Speaker A 00:36:59
I love it. Look, guys, you're just absorbing all of this information that was sharing with you. And based on the fact that there are seven books in this series, there's a lot of really awesome information seated within those. So where do you go to get them? You head on over here. You go to be different, Orbded.com. Be different. Orbded.com. That's where you're going to find more of Roy, that's where you're going to find the books that you can get your hands on. And I would encourage you to take a read of all of those. Roy, before we round out today's show, I want to know if there were three pieces of advice that you would give to other entrepreneurs and business owners, what would they be like? The three best pieces of advice that you could give that don't cover what we've already covered. Sorry.
Speaker B 00:38:02
Okay, well, one of the things I would say is you need to learn more about being what I would call a strategic micromanager. I call it fingerprint leadership, okay? And the world has been unfortunately fooled to believe that Freedom Seekhers Way delegate everything and maybe that's what they do, but they're not great audacious leaders are fingerprint leaders. They put their own personal fingerprints on the things that a leader should, okay? For example, we talk an awful lot about creating memorable customer experiences. What I did is I actually architected what that moment would look like with a customer. And so people said, well, I'm getting too much involved in the detail. And I went, yes, I know that's my job because that's an essential element of strategy. So I said, I'm putting my fingerprint on it, we're going to architect it and I'm going to sell it to the entire organization. Right? So that would be one piece. The other piece is about recruitment that I would say look at growth. Businesses, as I referred to earlier, depend on on capturing the hearts of customers, okay? Like they expect the computer to work, okay? And if it doesn't work, they're cheesed off. And so in a way, the product becomes a dissatisfier. Right? In my world, loyalty comes from what you wrap around that product called an experience, right? And so we need to pay more attention to that. And entrepreneurs, you're actually in a really good position because you can start your business by thinking that you're actually in the experience creation business of which your product and service plugs into. So perspective around that notion is hugely important. Guys like Richard Branson, he built several businesses around the fact that he knew something about customer service. He didn't know anything about banking when he bought the business, he bought the bank, plugged it into his customer service model and boom. We all need to think about the world that way. We need to be in the experience because everybody's playing the product space. Tracy, it's becoming commodity. My eyes glaze over when I look at all the products and services out there. So when you think about differentiation, you need to start thinking about the back end service piece and experience piece and that's about recruitment. Okay? So I'm getting a long winded way of saying you need to hire for Goosebumps. Now this was something that I did early on when I recognize that you can't take somebody that doesn't like human beings and put them into a customer service job and expect them to deliver memorable experiences, right? They would rather be doing inventory or something else, which is fine, but they shouldn't be in front of your most precious assets. So I personally, under fingerprint leadership, got involved in recruitment in my organization because I wanted my direct report team to see the questions that they should be asking. And I wanted the people coming in to know that there were some heavy expectations. So I would sit in on interview panels and so let's say that somebody was being interviewed for a, I don't know, manager of customer service, something like that. It could be a serve rep too. So I would ask them straight out, I'd say, do you love customers? Now, that question generally caught a lot of people off guard and they would sit back in their chair and thinking, go, where is he going with this? And of course they invariably would say yes, expecting that that would be the right answer. But for some it was tentative for a modern, for others it was a little more forthright. And so that led the second question. Okay, so you say you love customers. Tell me a story that would prove it. So this is the thing that differentiated the people that really believed it from those playing a head game with me, right? Head gamers, they would just give me kind of lip service, superficial stuff. But the person that actually had loving human beings as part of their DNA and running through their veins all the time, they gave me a story that was so rich in passion and in emotion, it gave me goosebumps. So I hired them and I taught them the business.
Speaker A 00:42:26
And just that in itself and being able to recruit the right kind of people for exactly what it is that you're looking for. And this comes back to that question that you asked a little bit earlier, which is you must know where you're going, what is your destination, what are you trying to achieve? And because you are trying to achieve something that required people to be customer centric, customer focused, actually enjoying being with customers so that you could create a differentiated level of customer service and customer experience, you knew that those were the questions that you even had to ask right at the beginning of that recruitment process. For sure. By asking that question and then asking them to tell a story, I'm going to say it comes back to that feeling that you talked about. Is this is what they are telling me? Is it giving me goosebumps? Does it make me feel good about the way in which they would treat my customers when they become a team member of mine? So everything you're saying now, I can see that there is a connection and a correlation between everything that you have that you started to instill in changing the culture and differentiating your telco company from any other telco in the industry. And it would make absolute sense that the outcome of that would be inevitably, that you would just continue to grow and grow and grow and grow. Because it started with that breakaway concept, that leadership being with Audacious leadership, and then understanding exactly what you were trying to do, what you were trying to achieve, and then almost reverse engineering everything to make sure that you achieve that end goal.
Speaker B 00:44:18
Love it. It's funny, though. I didn't have all of that in my head when we were doing this. It was upon reflection that I said, hey, these two pieces connect exactly what you're doing. But I didn't start out that way. I just kind of followed my nose. And you mentioned feelings. That's the other thing I want to say. That's my third thing I would like to say to the entrepreneurs out there. I mean, yeah, I know that there's a lot of science out there. I know there's a lot of hard technology out there. But you know what? At the end of the day, people do things because they're motivated to do by the way they feel, okay? Whether they trust you, whether they like you. All of those things that a lot of people say are soft, but they're not soft if they drive buying behavior, they are hard as hell. And the interesting thing to me is all the other stuff, the hardness around that, what you push, what you supply, what you deliver, it's all kind of common. The features may today be slightly different, but you know what? I've used technology. They've got 150 features on it, and I've used three of them. So big deal, right? What I buy is I buy how I feel when I'm in the middle of a transaction, and you entrepreneurs can really get up the growth curve quickly. If you decide to build your business around creating experiences and plug and play on the products and services you have, it's easy, easy peasy. And people that you hire, they got to love human beings. If they don't love human beings, don't hire them. I don't care that they have an MBA. I don't care. I don't care. And I don't care how many letters behind their names they have. I don't care. What I care about is, do they love people? Can they work with them? And do they like pain? Do they have a high pain threshold? Now, you won't find those criteria anywhere under Freedom Seekhers Way, but you will find them under Audacious leaders.
Speaker A 00:46:24
Fantastic. Roy, this has been a really interesting, thoroughly enjoyable conversation. I know I've certainly enjoyed listening to you and hearing your story and how you've like you say, we never have all the answers right from the get go. It's about just take baby steps, do things, take some action. Because it's the action that we take that actually gives you the momentum to get to where you're wanting to go. It doesn't matter if you make a wrong turn here or there, we're going to make mistakes, we will fail at things. But if you never take that step forward, you are always going to be in the same position. You will never move. Which leads me back to what I started the show with, right. And I want to go back to this because I want to ask you, as the entrepreneur, are you ready to challenge the status quo? Are you ready to learn how to be audacious, understand what it takes to be a real differentiator in your market? And if that is the case, then you need to head on over and you need to grab yourself a copy of Roy's books. I'm going to bring them back up again and you may still wish to work with him, but you're going to head on over to be different orbded.com and just check them out and continue to tune into the unlock show. I want to say to you guys, you know, that we bring you the best of the best when it comes to really caring people who I'm going to say, like other people who want them to be successful and are willing to share their knowledge, their experience, their expertise, absolutely free. Royce doesn't pay Roy a cent to come today. He came of his own free will and shared all of that information with you, which has taken him over 40 years to get that. And he shared it so willingly to help you understand some of the things that you need to do to help you become a multimillionaire, become extremely successful, whatever that means to you. The success is different for everybody, whatever that means to you. But he's given you a pathway in being able to do that. Now, if you want to continue to tune in to the Unlocked show, I go live every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m.. And on the odd occasion, I'll also be live on Friday mornings at 10:00 a.m. Brisbane time. You can tune in, you'll find me on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and a bunch of other places. And you can also download these as a podcast through all the major podcasting platforms. So go and get yourself on the podcast list so that you don't ever miss an opportunity to tune in and hear from some of these amazing people. People pay lots and lots of money to work with people like Roy, and you're getting this absolutely free. So I want to say a huge, big thank you to Roy. This has been a thoroughly enjoyable conversation. I hope you guys have enjoyed it as much as I have. And you've had your pen and paper out and you've been writing notes and you at least know where to go to get yourself a copy of those books. So thank you very much for your willingness to join me today, Roy, and I hope you do come back because based on this conversation today, I know there's a whole lot more that needs to be unpackaged, and I hope that you'll be willing to share just as you have today. Thank you.
Speaker B 00:49:38
Absolutely. If you'll have me back, I'd be pleased to be here. I just want to mention one other thing. Listen, I've also got a gmail account. It's Roy osing@gmail.com, and I'm really happy to communicate and interact with any individual who wants to do that. Like, I have people sending me their draft only statements saying, Roy, I create this only statement. What do you think? That's wonderful. It's like engagement on the way, so I'm really happy to do that. So reach out to me and we'll have fun.
Speaker A 00:50:08
Awesome. Thank you. So there you go, guys. Just another way that Roy is being so generous and allowing you to reach out to him when you're a busy person and you're a gmail inbox gets rather filled. For somebody to make an offer like that is outstanding. So thank you very much, guys. Take him up on his offer and start creating your only statement. All right, guys, I want to say thank you so much for joining us today. If you want to continue to live your life unlocked and you want to learn from some of the world's best at what they do, continue to tune into the unlocked show. And I'm going to say like I always do, go and live your life unlocked because there is just no other way. And I'm going to see you guys again on another episode of the unlocked show, this time live. Next week, wednesday, Brisbane time 10:00 a.m.. Thanks very much and bye for now.