482 Jim Bramlett

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] What if the secret to leadership isn't a louder voice, but a quieter formula one that strips away the noise so what remains is pure strategy and clarity. Enter Jim Bramlett self-styled, the No Hassle King he spent over 40 years building, scaling, and simplifying businesses across logistics, transportation and beyond.

A serial entrepreneur. He founded firms such as Five String Solutions, where he pioneered customer-centric real-time data strategies long before simplicity was a buzzword. Jim's bestselling books Stop the Hassle and the Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies are not distant theory. They're battle tested playbooks, grounded in real world failures and hard won triumphs.

His Hassle score framework transforms customer experience, artifacts of complexity turned catalysts for loyalty and growth. Now, a respected Vistage chair in Kansas City, [00:01:00] he coaches CEOs and executive teams to build companies that dominate by removing friction not by adding hustle.

His speeches blend humor with tough truth rooted in decades of stories from boardrooms, warehouses, and client phone calls. This is more than an interview. It's a masterclass on leading with less growing with integrity and turning business ambition into lasting impact.

And before we start this episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Jane, a graduate who says, and I quote, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program prevented me from making what would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career. I almost signed on the dotted line with an unsolicited offer that I now realized would have shortchanged my hard work and my future had I accepted that offer. Deep Wealth Mastery has tilted the playing field to my advantage.

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Deep Wealth Nation welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast for all you founders, business owners and entrepreneurs out there. Let me ask you a question. Yeah, sure. You're running your company, but are you a great leader? Are you a leader? Are you just, [00:05:00] okay? Where's your answer? I know if you asked the early Jeffrey, when I first got going, I don't even think I'd be on the radar.

I was not a great leader. That's a whole other episode, probably a series of episodes but that said, we have a very special guest in the House of Deep Wealth today. You heard the official introduction. Jim, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. It's an absolute pleasure, delight to have you with us, and there's always a story behind the story.

What's your story, Jim? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Jim Bramlett: Somewhere in my DNA I got very enamored with entrepreneurs my mom had her own real estate business and my dad ultimately had a business but I, I think I saw other business owners and leaders being a little bit young and naive, I didn't know their story behind the story and how tough, you know it is. But it looked very glamorous to me. And so I just got enamored with it and, I started my first business when I was a senior in college. And it was a miserable failure. I was very naive and had some dumb thoughts lifelong learning [00:06:00] lesson there. But lo and bold, five years later, I started my second business.

I'm outta college now. I got into. and transportation. And I thought hey, I know this industry, so I'm gonna start a trucking company. much like my first business, I started those just because of me. had no consideration for was there demand a trucking service? Is there a demand for the restaurant?

I started I didn't even consider that. And so both were massive failures. I started learning, it's not about me, it's about them. The consumers, the buyers, and what is it they're looking for? And over the years I started doing a lot of research other businesses and probably my biggest aha moment when I did a deep dive and studied Amazon I was. Totally intrigued. How did Amazon. Become the juggernaut They became in blue past Walmart and every [00:07:00] other and I started a company just a year or two after Amazon started, and I remember distinctly, Jeff Bezos was being barbecued. Ridiculed. Wall Street was saying, you're burning cash.

What are you doing? You gotta change your model. And he held steadfast and it was all about the customer and we're here to serve the customer. We're gonna engineer around them and work backward. We're going to obsess. Which is a very powerful word about the customer, and I found that refreshing, enlightening and it ultimately, led me to writing my first book called The Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies. And in that book I outlined what I think is a formula that they won't admit to it. But they followed this formula on meeting what the buyer demands are. I believe Netflix was very similar and [00:08:00] Uber. And then there are other businesses where they absolutely think a little bit differently, meaning they don't think about themselves, they think about the customers.

What is it they need and want? How do we provide that? And then in turn we get. Tremendous organic growth, and if we take care of the customer, the shareholders will be taken care of, the employees will be taken care of. Everything else will fall into place. And so I wrote my first book about. Those companies and others and this particular of formula that those kind of companies employ.

And then I started to copy it on some companies that, that I started. And been just a lot of fun to go down this path. And my goal is, hey, I want to share formula with every entrepreneur. And it's practical. It's. Very sensical. It's not mysterious. It's not the Coke formula, it's not the KFC formula. It's something that [00:09:00] every business, every entrepreneur, aspiring entrepreneur can and should be paying attention to. But I preach it's all about the customers. It's not about you. It's how do you figure out what they're looking for? What's the psychology behind the decisions they make, what they're going to buy, and from whom? And I'm happy to dig into that formula anytime you want, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely in Deep Wealth Nation, please go to the show notes. Everything is there, including Jim's latest book, the one we're talking about and a little bit of a no. Spoiler alert here, we'll simply say there's another one that's gonna be coming. So check the show notes. We'll keep you posted on that.

But Jim's latest book, stop the Hassle, simplify, satisfy. Succeed, you'll learn all about what we're gonna be talking about today. And so Jim, you're no stranger to starting companies from trucking to seven companies in total. Man, you've been there, you've done that, and you've had some success along the way.

But before we [00:10:00] go into that one, entrepreneur speaking to another, why an entrepreneur? Were you born like that? Was it your upbringing? Was there a pivotal moment that had you say, Hey, I'm gonna go out there and become an entrepreneur? What was going on with that?

Jim Bramlett: Yeah, a great question. Again, my parents had their own businesses, but that's not what drove me. And I think, maybe I get bored easily. And I love that excitement around the startup scene because not everything is laid out perfectly. you don't get an SOP say an operating procedure guide and say, here's exactly what you need to do. You figure it out. and again, not everything goes according to plan. Well, I love that. I just think it's so exciting, especially when you have an idea and that idea works. every idea does work, but when you do something and you can see it happen, you can see results and activity and success, there's no more exciting feeling than that. [00:11:00] But there's failure too. And I had an early mentor that I still remember to this day. He said Before you can understand and realize success. You must fail otherwise you don't know what success really is. And I did, I had a couple businesses that failed miserably, but then we had successes along the way.

But that's a just an exciting feeling. I tell everybody, don't put me in a production line where you're doing the same thing over and over. I just have to have that excitement and I guess that's just part of my DNA.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I couldn't agree more. I often say to myself and the GPO community that as terrific as successes, as wonderful as it feels for better or for worse. Failure that often is the best teacher, as long as we're open and not looking to it as failure, and hey, this is a learning opportunity for me. And so with that in mind, when you look across the seven companies, we're gonna talk now about your book in just a moment, but when you look across the seven companies, when you look across the [00:12:00] entrepreneurs that you're helping through your Vistage form and the different conversations that you're having and the coaching and just being out there in the entrepreneurial world, is there something tried and true that at least for you.

Whether it be a mindset or a strategy or something that you've tried that has just really proven itself time and time again that you can share with us 

Jim Bramlett: I think that one thing is resilience or grit. I tell people this, I don't care what kind of plan. And you put together, it can be the most, intricate detailed plan. You got all these forecasts and this is gonna happen and that's gonna happen. never going to work out the way you think.

It's always gonna, in my opinion, be harder, take longer than you think. So resilience, as long as you say, ah, I learned something, I need to pivot a little bit, or I'm gonna adjust something, but I gotta keep going. see that this will ultimately work and I think every successful leader and [00:13:00] entrepreneur has grit and resilience to say, we gotta keep going.

We're gonna make this work.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, resilience trumps resources all day, every day. And truth be told Jim. I know looking back on my own entrepreneurial journey, we were bootstrapping it. And from the outside looking in, some people say well, bootstrapping Jeffrey, you're losing all that time. And you could have a check written and you can get out there faster and scale quicker.

And Jim, I have to share with you, at least in my own experience, everyone is different. Had we had that check written for us, I don't think we would've had that nine-figure Exit. I don't think we would've had that market disruption. We likely would've failed. And when I say that, people look at me, Jeffrey, what are you talking about?

That just sounds crazy. The truth is, it was that resilience because we couldn't write the check even if we wanted to. That resilience had us become a better company. It had us outcompete outperform the competitors just think differently. So I couldn't agree with you more. But that said, and it's a great segue to what you're all [00:14:00] about, it takes true leadership to be able to do that because it's not necessarily the easiest path.

So with that in mind, let's start talking about leadership. And broadly speaking, we'll start with the foundation. Some of the basic questions, and we'll dial in for the details. I know people use the word management and leadership, and to me, they use 'em interchangeably. To me, they couldn't be two of the most different words in the English language.

So what's going on with leadership in your books, Jim? What is true leadership? What's a true leader?

Jim Bramlett: I think a, a true leader is somebody who's outstanding at influencing others managers. They like to. Control things, set targets, set objectives, tell people exactly what to do. True leaders influence. They know how to coach. They get input from their workers. They know everybody has a purpose.

So I agree with you. That's two distinct terms in my mind. Manager versus leader, I'm [00:15:00] a huge. believer that the best leaders are coaches. Yet, very few leaders have ever been trained on how to be a coach. In fact, back when I grew up and graduated college I don't remember going through any kind of leadership or training and I believe that to be. Kind of a fault of our educational system. We teach very well on a skill set or an expertise. Oh, you're an engineer, you're an accountant, hey, when you become a leader, now you've gotta deal with people. How do you inspire them? How do you motivate them? do you influence them so that they're all giving you their very best?

And that's, there's a trick to that. And it takes development. And a lot of leaders today, or managers. Learn from how they were managed, which may not at all, be the real right way, to do that. So in my Vistage practice, I work with my leaders all the time on how to [00:16:00] become a better. Coach, how to ask the right questions, how to listen more deeply. how to influence, how to set purpose both from a company and an individual perspective. That is so. so important listen, a lot of founders found a company because of that certain expertise. They have a certain knowledge or a skillset and they decide I'm gonna found this company.

And now all a sudden they start getting people. I can assure you that a lot of the challenges leaders face are people related issues.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. People are everything. You do it right and wow some great things ahead if you don't do it right. That's a whole other story. And so with that in mind, I'm wondering, because one of the things that you're known for saying business success comes from subtraction. Not addition. And so when you're looking at not only yourself in your journey, whether it be your Vistage form or other entrepreneurs that you're [00:17:00] coaching or helping with, what's the hardest thing for us as leaders, as founders and entrepreneurs that we need to choose to remove?

And I know. Every company's different. Every entrepreneur is gonna be different, but generally speaking, and maybe it's Pareto's Law at work here. Yeah. Jeffrey, 80% of the same issues. What some people call problems, I call opportunities are coming from 20% of these things here. What are these things here that you're seeing in terms of patterns?

Jim Bramlett: We had a great speaker at one of my Vistage events talking about employee engagement, and the numbers shocked me. He said, a good average, a very good average for engaged employees, meaning they're emotionally bought in, they're supportive, they're giving extra. At the best. It's 30% engagement, 50% So those would be your clock punchers, and just showing up. But 20% are actively not engaged, meaning they're [00:18:00] toxic and they're recruiting others. Hey, this is all a bunch of BS and we're not gonna put up with this. And you have to remove. The toxicity gotta have, as a leader, you've gotta have a team that's aligned on the same page, rowing in the same direction and trusting each other. And so when I work with leaders it's. Quite often where they don't have the right people in the right seats. They didn't hire well, they got in a panic, oh gosh, we lost that person. Or I got this need and I'm just gotta, I just have to fill it. And they're filling it based on maybe. Skills and expertise and they forget how important it is to be a cultural fit. Will they fit into your culture? Will they be trustworthy? Can they be trusted? Can you trust them? Can they work and collaborate together? We can teach a lot of the skills. But if we don't have the culture right, team's not [00:19:00] gonna function as high performing as they could. So the removal part is you've got to remove the toxicity, the people who aren't there to help you get what you're trying to achieve.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, culture is so often overlooked. In fact, that's so important in step two of our nine-step roadmap, we call that X-Factors, and these are things that a company is. Unique in no one else really either does it or does it as well as them. Culture is one of them. So as you're speaking about culture, let me ask you this, because one of the things that you talk about dominant companies and dominant companies are consistently doing something different when it comes to culture and particularly around the customer experience.

What would be some of the different things that someone who in Deep Nation, they're now listening to us in our fireside chat here? Yeah, Jim. Okay. Culture. Maybe it's not so great, maybe it's even toxic. Maybe I never even thought of it before. This is really the first time I'm thinking about that. What should I know to be that dominant company who's getting it right?

When it comes to my culture to [00:20:00] elevate the customer experience? I.

Jim Bramlett: Well, I'm a big believer in customer centric culture. I'm a big believer in a, defined and discipline, written out culture. I follow David Friedman and culture wise and I believe in what he. Preaches. I believe there's a customer centric culture. You can have a product centric culture and you can have a efficiency centric culture and companies like UPS or Walmart or a very efficient, you can say Tesla and Apple are product centric, but then the customer centric, I give you people like Amazon very customer centric. And then you've got those who just don't have a culture. they don't pay attention and it's just kinda chaotic. But I believe. Very much in a customer-centric culture where you put the customer at the center of the universe you obsess about 'em and everything is geared towards what is it they need, what do we need to improve upon? How do we improve their [00:21:00] experience? How do we take time out of their days? How do we make their lives easier, et cetera. That when you got everybody singing out of that songbook, it can make for a very powerful enterprise.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so what's interesting with that, Jim, is we're setting up a feedback loop, and it can go either way, positive or negative. If I could put some judgments or labels on that, because look, every company has a potential to have that customer centric culture and doing all the right things. But to your earlier point.

If I don't have the right people, particularly on the leadership side, it's just not gonna happen. I can have the best SOP, the best standard operating procedures and all these fancy metrics and KPIs. If my leaders aren't there, then good chance it just isn't happening. And I know for myself, one entrepreneur to another, some of my biggest challenges, hiring the right people, not only getting them on the right bus, not only getting the right person.

In the right seat on the right bus. Is it the right person to begin with before I go through [00:22:00] all the time, the effort, the resources to get them on board, and again, there's no do this, do that. It's gonna be the same for everyone. It's always gonna be different candidates, different companies.

Generally speaking though, what should we be looking for in terms of red flags of. Stop speaking to this candidate run the other way as fast as you can because they're just not a fit. And then we will reverse engineer that of what we should be looking for. So I'm hiring someone for the team now what should I be looking for to help get me that culture that's customer centric, to help elevate so I can become that dominant company.

Jim Bramlett: One of the things I emphasize to my leaders is when you are interviewing. Try to postpone talking about your culture, you wanna do. You want that candidate to ask about your culture. But if you're out there spewing about your culture, then they're, I can ask because you want. Somebody, in my opinion, to be very interested.

Tell me about the culture here. What do you believe? How do you act? How do you treat customers? How do we [00:23:00] treat each other? And when they ask about it, that means it's important to them. But if you're spewing out front this is our culture, this is what we believe. you haven't found out how important that is to them. That whole interview process. How they behaved in the past. I have a theory that says not all people are coachable. Those who want to be the best are more coachable than those who want the most. I've experienced this when you're talking especially to a salesperson and when they just want a certain salary or they just wanna make a certain number and they don't have. respect for everybody and everything happening around them that supports them to me, that's a red flag. And if they come on board sheerly for the money, they will leave. the same reason. And, but you mentioned leadership and I use sales as kind of an example. I believe one of the most important duties of a salesperson is intelligence [00:24:00] gathering. I want to know if I'm the leader, I wanna know why we won a deal.

Yeah. Hey, I'm glad we won a million dollar deal, but why? Okay, so I wanna make sure we're duplicating that. More importantly, we lost a million dollar deal. Why? What happened? What did they go with? What would've taken? I think too many leaders just are looking for the numbers. I don't want to know that.

Did you win the deal or not? Move on that. What's the, how many are in the pipeline? I think the intel you can gather from the front line, be it sales or customer service. If leadership will listen, it'll give 'em a good indication of what. They need to improve upon to get more sales.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So it's interesting. 

Jim Bramlett: if you got the right product.

Okay. Meeting what the customer needs are, it's a whole lot easier to sell. Your salespeople will be a lot more successful if you're actually got a product that meets their particular needs.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And it's playing that patience game where to your point, we're listening likely more than [00:25:00] we're talking. And so what I'm hearing you say is have the candidate ask about the culture and if they're not asking about the culture, huge red flag. They're not interested in it, probably not who you want.

And so they pass the first gate. They've asked about the culture. Okay, I'm checking that box. They are interested in the culture that's important to 'em, at least at this stage. That's good news. Moving on from there, what else am I looking for or am I not looking for, as the case may be during that conversation.

Jim Bramlett: I go to I believe everybody makes decisions based on their values and beliefs. Okay, so what I wanna probe on is what values does that Canon have? What do they believe? And a lot of these values and beliefs come from a very early age in their life, what they experienced in life. And I want to dig deep into emotional state and what they value, what they believe, which will lead to how they behave. Okay. And that's what I'm really after a leader. So any questions that you [00:26:00] can ask about what they really believe in, what do they value the most I think will help you discern if if there'll be a good cultural fit for you, even before they ask about culture.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. So it always goes back to the person, what are their values, what are their beliefs? They may be interested in our culture. That said, though they may not have the same values that we have, they may not have the same beliefs that we have, particularly if we're in startup mode and we have very specific values of what makes us us, and we're not gonna be for everyone.

And we want people to self-select themselves out. Thank you very much. Save me some time and some effort. So I'm with you on that. So it's interesting hearing where that's going and what that's doing and what's interesting as I think about this, Jim. That one question that they're asking, tell me about your culture.

We can have all the personality tests and get very sophisticated and all these other kinds of things. That's one key indicator that we're looking for. Is it happening? Is it not happening when it comes to culture, because it really starts from the top down. We get it right with the [00:27:00] leadership. Then all the way through the rest of the team, all the way through to the front line will ultimately reflect what's going on in terms of their view on the culture, what we're doing here as a company.

Jim Bramlett: Absolutely.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so let's talk about something you introduce in the book, the Hassle Score, and again, Wealth Nation. Please go to the show notes, click on the link, pick up a copy of the book, read it. You'll come out of it a whole lot better than what you came into it. So Jim, someone who's new to the Hassle score, what would you want them to know about that?

Why is that important? Where is this coming from?

Jim Bramlett: Sure. Okay. I wanna get into the four pillars, or in other words, buyer psychology. What makes buyers buy what they buy and from whom? I believe we buyers, and by the way, everybody listening, we buy things. We're not professional buyers, but we buy things almost every day. So what triggers us to buy what we buy from whom? And I believe it's four major categories. Number one is convenience. We're looking to save time. We're looking to save effort. [00:28:00] We're looking to make our lives simpler and easier. we're gonna buy coffee, probably un route to our versus go out of route. 'cause it's more convenient when you pull off the interstate for gas.

You're probably gonna. Stop at one of the closest stations, if not the closest station. So most everything we do, we're looking to save time, effort, make our lives simpler and easier. when you're developing a product, you gotta make sure it's convenient. And I'll talk about the competitors in a moment. Number two is price. We make decisions based on price, but not necessarily always the lowest price. But we do want price. Competitiveness. And what's really even more important is we want pricing transparency. We don't like fine print and the surcharges and the hidden fees. We want to know before we make a purchase exactly what it's gonna cost upfront. That's why we don't like the airlines. We attorneys we know make 400 an hour. We don't know how many hours. Visiting a doctor is always stressful 'cause we [00:29:00] don't know what that bill's gonna be or a hospital. Those are all bad experiences. We don't hire somebody to paint. Our house says, yeah, paint your house for a hundred bucks an hour.

Well, How many hours? Well, I don't know. I'll let you know what I'm done. No, we don't do that. We like to know that definitively. Number three is a user experience. And this happens both in the buying process and the product itself, but we wanna be treated like we're their only customer. Yeah, you might have millions of customers or thousands, hundreds, but I wanna be treated, especially, I want to feel better. After I buy from you, then I felt coming in. I want quick responses to my questions. if it's retail, I want cleanliness. I want well lit. I wanna feel safe. I want the store to be well stocked. I want it to be well staffed. So I want proactive communication. If it's a service I want 'em to live to their commitments. Oh, you're gonna deliver my washer dryer tomorrow between 10 and 12. Guess what? If that doesn't happen, it's a [00:30:00] bad experience. Okay so that's a broad topic. And then number four is trustworthiness. I want to trust you the supplier, the vendor. when I buy some, I have a certain perception in my head of what I'm. To get, and it's even worse if you have a brand promise therefore if I haven't purchased from you before, how do I know I'm gonna get that? Oh, okay. You've got a guarantee. You've got warranties, you've got testimonials, references you've been in business for 40 years, or you're a specialty. You have a specialty. All of those. Lead to credibility that I am going to get what I anticipate or what you promise. Now, when you do all four of those, you give me convenience. You give me a competitive, transparent price. You give me a great user experience and I trust 'cause I've got recourse. I don't have an excuse not to use you when you don't [00:31:00] provide at least one of those. That provides me a hassle. If you're not priced competitively, now I gotta do a bunch of research. Or if you're not treating me that's a hassle. Or if I don't get a guarantee or warranty I've gotta moan and complain because it's not working right? That's a hassle. So what I say is I titled the book, stop the Hassle.

If you're selling something, give them convenience, give them a, point that's competitive. Give them an awesome experience both in the buying process and the product, and make 'em trust you because you're willing to go beyond with guarantees, warranties, returns, et cetera. So that's what my book is all about. It's exactly what has done. It's exactly what Netflix did to put Blockbuster out of business, and it's exactly what Uber did to destroy the cab business. you think about all of those aspects, they hit 'em [00:32:00] all. Now, having said that, it's very hard. And so most companies have some sort of conscious trade off, if I'm gonna save you time, I'm gonna charge you extra.

Or if I'm gonna give you a great experience, I'm gonna charge you extra. Or if I'm gonna charge you a very low price we're gonna have dirt floor, you know, we're gonna have some sort of trade off. And when you have a trade off, that's not terribly a bad thing, but now you have to target. That segment, a customer who appreciates what you do, provide more than the other. Jiffy Lubes, a trade off company. I'm gonna get my oil changed without an appointment in 15 to 20 minutes, but my trade off, it's more expensive. Aldi's, I can get in there and get really low prices on grocery items, but I'm not gonna talk to a baker or the produce manager or the deli.

They don't have that. Oh, and bring your own quarter for the cart and bring your [00:33:00] own bags. That's the trade off. But a lot of people say, yeah, I'm driven by price My personal value system, I personally am driven by time. If you can save me time. 'cause I think it's our most precious commodity. I'm going to probably pay more than that.

I don't want to, but I will. And so any entrepreneur I tell you, look at those four categories and it's all about how you compete with the alternatives a buyer has or otherwise known as a competitor. How do you stack up against your competitors on convenience? saving? Your buyers more time in the buying process or the product and or product. Are you saving them time and effort? Are you simpler and easier? And if you think about, just think about the technology category, technology by its very nature, is probably saving somebody time, saving effort, hopefully making their lives simpler and easy. It's the foundation by which that whole [00:34:00] vertical exists. so if you're an entrepreneur. Name the top three competitors or alternatives you have and figure out are you more convenient? the same on price. Are you priced competitively? Are you 100% transparent upfront so that your buyer knows exactly what their outlay is going to be before they make the purchase?

Then what's your user experience compared to your competitors? Matter of fact, you ever bought from your competitor? What's that like? How do they treat you? it a bot that's answering questions or do you get to talk to your human? then, what's the trust factor? What kind of warranties or what kind of guarantees, if any, do you have?

Are they real? What about your competitors? really all about beating your competitors on the criteria. We look for the most convenience, experience, price, and trust. And when you do that, you're gonna win.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And you know what's interesting with that is as you go through [00:35:00] the four pillars, I would suspect Deep Wealth Nation, have you even thought about that for yourself? Are you even positioning yourself in the marketplace among one of those things? So as an example, early on, Jim, one of my mentors said, Jeffrey is never price.

It's always value. You could be the lowest price, but the lowest value. People just aren't gonna go with you. You could be quote-unquote the highest price, but you're also offering the highest value. And maybe not everyone's gonna go with you, but you're making your case of why they should. So I love with the four pillars, what you're talking about.

And really for you, someone like yourself, Jim, you value time. And let's just make this up a quick thought experiment in one of your companies. Okay, I value time, the target market, they value time. I'm gonna communicate that. In my outreach, in my sales pitches, in my marketing, that you'll use better wording.

We're not the cheapest, but we provide the best value. We're gonna save you a lot of time and have that come through. Thoughts about that?

Jim Bramlett: Absolutely. my book, I have a whole chapter on messaging and value propositions and [00:36:00] so what is it we value, guess what? Buyers value. They value convenience. They value cost. They value their experience, and they value trust. So in a value proposition. Hit 'em right between the eyes on what you're going to do for them relative to saving them time or effort, or, Hey, we're gonna save you money, or you're gonna have the best experience you ever had, or you can trust us, guaranteed, et cetera. And in my book, I have countless examples of companies have used that. But what I find, Jeffrey is all too often companies, on the landing page of their website. should be their value proposition, they have a feature proposition. I grew up in the transportation logistics industry and it was Everybody's website was, we have a hundred trucks and we service Kansas City. I don't care. I have my problem, I value on [00:37:00] time delivery. I value being charged properly. I valued good customer service. I value my shipments not being damaged. That's what I value. I don't care. You got a hundred trucks and you say, so you have to talk in their language.

What is it they value? that's another thing when entrepreneurs, when I talk to entrepreneurs, say, we're fulfilling an unmet need. What is that need? I can tell you. It's convenience, price, experience, and trust, or the, my least favorite is while we're disrupting an industry, oh my gosh, the tush push, the Philadelphia Eagles is disrupting somebody.

I don't know what that means When you say you're disrupting an industry I do know what value means, but translate that into terms that relate to every buyer.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And a tough question, and you're gonna say rightly jeffrey, it depends on the company and the industry. When it comes to price, otherwise known as [00:38:00] value. If I put myself under the microscope, particularly in the early days, and thankfully I learned and I corrected myself, I didn't value myself enough and sadly what I was charging reflected that and I was knowingly or unknowingly leaving money on the table.

So when it comes to pricing services or products, when we're going to market, Jim, any advice for us of how we should take a look at this and figure out where we want to be?

Jim Bramlett: Yeah, you need to figure out what your competitors are doing if you can't buy from them, talk to their customers to try and figure out that price point. Now, Jeffrey, I get this a lot. Jim I don't have the buy power Walmart, so I cannot be competitive on price. Great. Then over extend on your on your user experience and your trust.

Do what they cannot. Do as well and put that in your messaging and leverage that. You can't do all four, do as many as you [00:39:00] can, but but yeah, to me Jeff, I don't know if you're a football fan or not, but I use this football analogy all the time. So I'm here in the Kansas City area and I'm a big Chiefs fan, and I said, listen.

Andy Reed does not show up at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday morning and go, huh. Wonder who we're playing today. And I wonder if they're good on defense. Do they stop the run pass? I wonder what they do on offense. I guess we'll just find out. No, they study. They're competitors. They study film, they know their weakness and they leverage that. And so every business has to do the same thing. Study your competition, out their weakness and leverage that.

And here's where and you aspiring entrepreneurs. If you wanna do a startup, find a business or an industry isn't. Being very convenient, isn't priced appropriately, isn't giving the right user experience or can't be [00:40:00] trusted. your opening to being successful. 'cause you're leveraging a weakness somebody already has. That's the kind of business. You don't start a restaurant like I did 'cause I like to cook that it's not about you, it's about them.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Jim, as you're talking about that the wheels are turning, I'm actually thinking of the unconventional thinking of dominant companies, your first book, because there's something in there that you said, that's actually bringing me back to stop the hassle. So let me ask it, because to me there's so connected.

So in unconventional thinking of dominant companies, you're talking about different kinds of things. But one thing that you do talk about is mindset shift. That's what separates a winning company. From the rest and different companies is gonna be different mindsets. That said, if you had to pick a mindset that would be more applicable to listeners of Wealth Nation, to your Vistage forum, to entrepreneurs in general, is there one that comes to mind?

It's low hanging [00:41:00] fruit. They can take this out of our time together today, even begin to apply it with their own mindset, their company, their leadership team, their frontline employees, all the way through. Any thoughts that come to mind with that?

Jim Bramlett: the mindset, is you're a lifelong learner and you're constantly curious. Make that curiosity be about the alternatives your. Potential customers have. You gotta constantly be curious because things change and we're right in the middle of the AI revolution.

What's AI going to do for most companies? For those who are using AI agents, it's probably gonna be able to cut some back office costs. Okay. Which hopefully translates then to lower prices. If you aren't taking advantage of that and you can't lower your prices 'cause you haven't lowered your cost. Now you're susceptible, to a competitor disrupting you. But yeah, so constantly be curious and be really curious about your competitors. Be curious about what your customers are seeking. [00:42:00] an open line of communication with customers, with prospects, especially if you have a loyalty program, they. You should be able to reach out to them easily. Let them tell you what they're looking for. And the other thing, I really preach this in my second book is innovation. distinguish innovation from invention. Invention doesn't happen very often. Innovation has to happen all the time. Or what is innovation? Innovation does not have to be some mighty huge aha. It's, it could be little increments. Whenever you make something more convenient, be it an internal process or process revolving around a customer, you take time outta the equation. That's innovation. you make something, some process simpler and easier. That's innovation. When you can cut costs out using AI or otherwise, that's innovation. When you can give a better experience, that's innovation, and when you can be more trustworthy. So think about [00:43:00] innovation as not this mystery and oh my gosh, how do we innovate? Have your people be evaluating every touch point, every process. And figure out where can we make it more convenient? Where can we take costs out? Where can we make the user experience better? That will be innovation and you constantly have to be doing that. 'cause if you don't, a competitor's gonna see that as a weakness and maybe come in and figure it out for you.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And my spin on that is innovation. Hey, when we stop innovating, we're putting ourself outta business. Eventually, it's gonna happen sooner than later. Innovation also goes back to culture. Do we have a culture that's open to innovation? And then I'm gonna tie that to, it's a subtle play on words.

It's experimentation. Hey, let's do a quick experiment. I don't know if it's gonna work, maybe it won't, but why don't we try it, see where it goes, and that's where some of the best innovation is gonna be coming from. Lemme circle back though before we go into wrap up mode. Artificial intelligence, you already referenced it, it's [00:44:00] making headlines every single day, what we talk about now, we'll likely be out of date a week from now or a month from now.

But that said, where we sit today as we record this, when it comes to artificial intelligence. And leadership specifically for growth profits success, the four pillars. Where's AI now? Where do you see it taking us? How can I leverage that?

Jim Bramlett: Oh man. I definitely believe a AI. Using agents in the back office in a number of applications, be it ar, ap I've got one of my members who has inventory agents, forecasting agents procurement agents. All of those taking costs out of that back office enables you to operate more efficiently. I'm not a big fan of increasing the number of chat bots. Because I, I think that can be frustrating. So you can almost reach overkill. 'cause I don't, I think you gotta evaluate the user experience and balance [00:45:00] there. But looking at my crystal ball, oh wish I could say, you know, I, I read the articles like you, hey, unemployment can be 10 to 20% because AI agents are gonna take so many jobs, college. are having trouble getting placed. I think it's going to be amazing what happens in the realm of healthcare and research and college education could change. You may not need to go to college. You may have courses just online from home that are as good or better than what you can get in person. And so what I. my leaders that I work with, constantly curious. Talk to your peers, study, talk to potential vendors. Keep an open mind because this is a, this is such a game changer. But I don't know. I think five years from now is gonna be totally different than it is today.

But I can't tell you exactly how.

Jeffrey Feldberg: You're so right Jim. I'm gonna date myself with this next observation or [00:46:00] comment, but it ties back into artificial intelligence. Ties back into being curious, doing the experimentations, having the culture. So once upon a time, there was this company called Microsoft that was being led by Bill Gates, who almost went outta business because they missed this little thing called the internet.

And Wow, do they play a lot of catch up? But what was interesting when artificial intelligence started to come on stream, Microsoft learned a lesson because they're one of the early investors and they're right there with ai. And we can debate whether what they've done is great or not on the AI side, but they're certainly one of the early adopters now.

And they took that lesson in and. Lesson well learned because it's helped keep them ahead of the pack in doing what they're doing. So Jim, all that said, before we go into wrap up mode, my goodness, my list of questions, we've barely begun to scratch the surface as the saying goes. So many questions not even asked.

So that said, is there a question I haven't yet asked that you wanna put out there or even a topic, a theme or a message that we haven't covered that you'd like to share with Deep Health Nation before we go into [00:47:00] wrap up mode?

Jim Bramlett: Yeah I say this, I preach product. you know, I'm a big Marcus Limonis fan. If anybody knows Marcus Limonis from the show, the prophet, where he would go in and research companies. And he was always looking at people. and product. And if you had those three, then he might make that in investment. I believe product leads if you don't have the right product, and by product I mean being convenient, priced correctly and competitively, and giving a great user experience, which everybody controls the most and. having a great trust. I don't know if process and people will matter. I think product is so important and everybody can take these four pillars and apply it, but product alone won't do it.

You have to have the leadership and the team and the culture. To compliment that if leaders aren't listening to their front line, if they don't have a line of communication to customer service and [00:48:00] sales and people on the factory floor who have great ideas. If you're not asking them the right questions, what should we be doing?

How can we can improve? How can we cut costs? How can we provide better customers? If you're not asking, you're missing a tremendous opportunity. And so you mentioned it earlier, a customer centric culture takes everybody because there's so many touch points, it's a tough job being a leader, but you've gotta incorporate your team, you gotta trust them, you gotta ask them, and you gotta act on what they tell you.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Some great insights there, taking notes as you're going along with that. Absolutely. Love that. And actually it's a perfect segue, Jim, into our wrap up mode. It's a tradition here in the Deep Wealth podcast. It's my privilege and honor where I ask. Every guest the same question, and it's a fun question. I'm gonna set this up for you.

When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. Jim, it's tomorrow morning. This is the fun part. You look outside your window. Not [00:49:00] only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open and it's waiting for you to hopping in, which you do.

You're now gonna go to any point in your life. Jim, as a young child, a teenager. Whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom or, Hey Jim, do this, but don't do that. What would it sound like?

Jim Bramlett: I think I'd want the DeLorean to zip me back to 1972 when I graduated high school would probably. Maybe choose a different education path. I started out a university that was an engineering university. I didn't have the aptitude, so I took economics. 'cause I, I didn't even know what economics was, but I learned well, you're either gonna work for the government or teach.

And that was, and so then I went into marketing. Guess what, when the internet came out, it completely changed marketing. I graduated in 76. was learning how to place [00:50:00] newspaper ads for grocery stores and it's like, you gotta be kidding me. I wish I had, if I'd set the clock back, I would probably take a little more disciplined educational approach into something a little more, scientific than marketing,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Interesting. So, So you'd be telling yourself, Hey, in addition to the marketing, take some discipline kinds of courses just to help with the thinking, the insights, how you approach things. Is that I.

Jim Bramlett: Computer science or, I wish I would've known more from a technical standpoint as I'm coming up through my career.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Some terrific insights and Deep Wealth Nation, some great advice there. Where are you, DePaul Nation on your technical skills? Are you brushing up? Are you keeping up to date with it? It's changing so quickly, Jim. That's very timely, very topical. And that said, Jim, as we wrap things up here, someone in Deep Nation, they have a question for you.

Maybe they want some coaching from you, or they're local, they wanna go into your Vistage forum or they just wanna speak with you. Where would be the best place online to reach you?

Jim Bramlett: My [00:51:00] website is my name, jim bramlett.com. I am a very active LinkedIn user, and I love engaging people, especially entrepreneurs. anything I can do to help, I'm going to do that. So jim bramlett.com or LinkedIn, Jim Bramlett. And reach out. I love 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth Nation the great news. It does not get any easier. Go to the show notes. It's all there. It's point and click. Jim, congratulations. It's official. This is a wrap and as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Jim Bramlett: Thanks, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready [00:52:00] for it? 

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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God bless.