310 Roy Osing

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. 

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted. 

Of the quote unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it. 

I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. [00:01:00] Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal. 

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event? 

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it. 

After all, how can you master something you've never done before? 

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal. 

At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Roy Osing is a guy who took a startup internet company to a billion in sales. He's the ONLY author, entrepreneur, and executive leader who delivers practical and proven, audacious, unheard of ways to producing high performing businesses and successful careers. Roy is a former president, CMO, and entrepreneur with over 40 years of successful and unmatched executive leadership experience [00:02:00] in every aspect of the business.

He is a blogger, content marketer, and mentor to young professionals. As an accomplished business advisor, he's the author of the No Nonsense Book series, Be Different or Be Dead, with the audacious Unheard of Ways I Took a Startup to a Billion in Sales as his seventh book.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. You heard it in the official introduction. We have a rainmaker, Mr. Success. He's done it all, but in a very different way, an entrepreneur, an author, a thought leader, one of us who's in the Deep Wealth house today. So Roy, Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us.

And Roy, I'm really curious because there's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Roy Osing: I think basically I've grown up my whole life with this notion of trying to stand out and be different. And I can remember my mother, who was a driver always insisted that I look for ways to well, I'll call it disrupt. She didn't call it

But what [00:03:00] she meant was trying to figure out another way to do things that, will you stand out.

In a way that people care about, and that's the point I want to make. It's not about me, it's about doing something different in a way that other people care about, and that way you can be successful. And so I've, grown up with this notion my whole life. I've used it in my career, I've used it in business as we grew a startup to over a billion sales.

And so differentiation is so super important. And so that, stuff runs through my veins. And that's just who I am.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so with that, I'm just curious because we were born that way. Did you develop this along the way? Because let's take a look at where we are today. I suspect it's worse today than it's ever been with the advent of the internet does many wonderful things. There's always two sides to a coin. And now.

With social media, really you have social programming telling all of us, we need to be the same, look the same, do the same things. And if we're different, that's really frowned upon. So how did you come across this whole be [00:04:00] different? Let me do it my way. March to my own drummer kind of approach.

Roy Osing: don't know, to be honest, it just happened. Okay. It just happened to be part of my persona. I looked at things and I always, and I can remember this for just ages when I was a young kid, I would always ask myself the question, how can I do this differently? Okay, observe what everybody else is doing and then ask the question well, it must be easier to do it another way.

Let's explore that. And so I just had a mindset that I would always question the way things were being done. And let me echo what you just said. One of my Biggest concerns is the fact that people are being taught to comply these days. Compliance, conformity is the way to go it and unfortunately, I'm worried about the world in that sort of circumstance where everybody is simply, you know, a duplicate and a clone of everybody around them.

Can you imagine if we could change just like by a couple of percentage points, the world and that glut of people [00:05:00] in the middle of the normal distribution curve, if we could move them, Jeffrey, slightly to the right where they started to do things uniquely and specially in a way that people care about.

Can you imagine the energy and the benefits and the social progress we would make? And so I'm not saying that I'm altruistic that way. just imagine. The ultimate benefits of everybody seeking to be different in a way that people care about. They are just absolutely incredible in terms of potential.

But no, I never, said strategically I need to be different. That's just What I was, and who I was, and I tended to apply that, and listen, you and I both know, that gets us into a lot of trouble. Being different, on the edge, trying to create new boxes, not stepping outside of the box, creating a new box is always a challenge.

You're always pushing rope uphill. You're always trying to convince the people that you really secretly don't want to convince, because they don't know what we're all about anyways. Always trying to do that. Energy, [00:06:00] perseverance, the tolerance for pain. I learned that pain was a strategic concept a long time ago, and it's just running through me about, I got to get through this, I got to get through this, but it's going to be in my terms, not going to be on anybody else's terms.

And so I actually think I have it as part of my DNA structure to be different.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely love that. And for our listeners in the show notes, there are links and one of the links will be to Roy's book. And I love how you've titled talking about being different, be different or be dead and your seventh book, your latest book, the audacious unheard of ways I took a startup to a billion in sales.

And again, for our listeners, that's all in the show notes. Big picture wise though, so Roy, Pareto's Law, the 80 20 principle, that 80 percent of perhaps our challenges, mistakes, our learning points, our opportunities, whatever you want to call it, are likely coming from 20 percent of the things that we're doing again and again, the root cause of that.

And I know every business, every person is unique. They are [00:07:00] different. That said though, generally speaking, when you look at what's going on now and back in the day, are there trends that you've seen as business owners, as entrepreneurs, are we making the same mistakes again and again? And if we are, what will those be from what you're seeing?

Roy Osing: think we're much more tactically driven now than we've ever been. One of the issues I have and I keep saying to people and clients that I work with is look at it's all very well to chase technology. It's all very well to chase social media, but I need to clearly understand what your strategic context is, okay, in order to evaluate how to employ those tools.

But rather than do that, it's easier. To follow what everybody else is doing on social media. It's easier to be in the AI space without really understanding how it contributes to your business. And so to me, there's much more tactically driven activity going on these days than there ever was. The other thing is, it's like, I call it gargling Google, Jeffrey.

There's so much gargling Google going on. When you face the business challenge, you go to [00:08:00] Google, figure out what everybody else is doing to solve the problem, and guess what you do? You copy it, okay, under the intellectually dishonest guise of innovation. You can't be innovative if you're gargling Google.

And so Google and the gargling process, is what I call it, is going on like you wouldn't believe. And as a result, We're coming together as opposed to separating ourselves and looking for uniqueness. Okay. We're blending in, we're conforming, we're becoming this amorphous gob, okay, of organic material, as opposed to trying to separate, find our way in a way that matters to the people we need to serve to be successful.

The other thing I will say that. I think we're being, I call it undifferentiated, like it's just amazing to me that in a world where competition has never been more aggressive, where technology has never changed more radically, where customers have never wielded more power, where regulations have never impacted businesses so vitally, you would think in that [00:09:00] world, organizations and individuals would get better differentiating themselves, but my observation to your question is we've got worse.

Okay? We are very bland when it comes to trying to define what makes us special and answering the question, why should people buy from us and nobody else? We don't do a good job on it, so I've created my own solution, this really works. Okay, because I, people say well, all right, Roy, you complained about the system, what's the solution?

The solution that I discovered that's really simple is what I call the only statement. You need to be not merely the best of the best, you need to be the only one who does what you do. And so I've created a whole practice and engagement around helping people discover what they're unique at, what their only statement is.

The only statement isn't like the standard clap trap, Jeffrey, that we read and see today, like people claiming that they're better, that they're best, that they're number one, that they're market leaders. They claim that will differentiate them from their competition. [00:10:00] And it's nonsensical because it doesn't mean anything.

If you tell me your best, my first question is, oh, yeah, but like, who decides that? Where's the evidence to prove that sort of thing? And yet, claptrap aspirations, like we're in business to save the home planet, good for you, but don't trot that out as a competitive claim about being different because everybody We'll say, environmentally, they are responsible.

Everybody will say that they're inclusion oriented, and that's good. And that may contribute to the values of the organization, but it does nothing, okay, to define what makes you special in a way people care about and makes you different than your competition. So that whole thing, that whole trend about differentiation, in my view, has gone down.

The solution that I'm trying to advocate is to try and be the only ones that do what you do. Be one of one. Don't be one of many. Get out of the herd. And this kind of goes back to our conversation we had [00:11:00] earlier. Get out of the herd. Look for ways to be different. Okay, in a way, and the tool I've got is the only statement, and it's really worked well.

I have to say it's so simple, but a lot of people will say to me, Roy, I'm not. only at anything when I take them through my strategic game planning process and I say well you may not think so, okay, but let's just work at this for a while and we discover some amazing things. We end up reframing their business around being the only one and it just breathes life into them and allows them to really separate, okay, from the people that they compete with and it's amazing experience as well.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Roy, as you're talking about that was really interesting. We say the same things in different words in Deep Wealth Land. We call that really step two X Factors. These are areas, X Factors that you are unique, you're world class, you're different than anyone else. And you put that out there for the world to see and really put yourself in another, perhaps a common term [00:12:00] that we've heard lately, your own blue ocean, as opposed to the red ocean, which is where everyone is, we're competing with each other.

But let me ask you this, because I know you come from big corporate, but, and you say this right in the book, whether you're in a Fortune 10, 100, Fortune 500, or you're in startup mode. It doesn't make a difference. What works for the bigger companies will also work for you. And you don't have to have that bank account or all those zeros that these established companies have when you're in startup mode.

So can you walk us through this process, your system of not only the only statement, but really how we need to change our mindset to really begin this process to differentiate ourselves and have ourselves stand out there with meaningful words, not meaningless words.

Roy Osing: Yeah, so the first thing I want to do is just circle back. On blue oceans for a minute, okay just to declare in absolute transparency, I don't believe in them.

Okay, I think 99 percent of us exist in red oceans and it's all very well, okay, it's all very well to trot out, okay, the theoretical [00:13:00] notion that we need to discover a blue ocean.

For most of us mere mortals, we will never do that. Okay, our problem is I got to get through the next 24 months. You talk about entrepreneurs, you know this.

You don't have time to ponder and spend the next six months trying to discover a blue ocean when you have sharks around you and you're sitting in a red ocean.

My pitch is I'm going to show you how to survive in the majority of cases where we have to survive and make it through a red ocean. The entrepreneurial challenge, quite frankly, is to discover and create strategic context. Now, I know a lot of them think my job is to exploit technology.

No, it's not. Your job is to figure out, and I say this to startup CEOs all the time, stop spending money until you figure out what your game plan is. And I've created a process where literally we can do that in 48 hours. Okay, because my world is a world about [00:14:00] execution. It's not a world about planning, and the problem with traditional planning is it takes too long, and it costs too much money, and nobody wants to do it anyways, because it's not fun.

Mine's exactly the opposite, okay? So I've had to create this process called strategic game planning, and it's really simple, Jeffrey. It says, all right, We're going to answer three questions and we're going to have a game plan. I call it game plan because it's built to execute. Okay, my whole process is around getting it done, trying stuff, learning from what you're trying, and then modifying it on the run.

Okay, that's why I say we're in red oceans whether we like it or not academically. Let's figure out how to survive and how to win in that environment. Question number one is how big do you want to be? That's a question about Top line revenue, it's not about net income because you and I both know we can play with that to our heart's content, and we can give you whatever number you want, but top line you can't hide from because that's an expression of what the market feels about you.

So what I do is I start out with how big do [00:15:00] you want to be in 24 months. The five year plan doesn't exist because four years never shows up. and so this is all about a 24 month view. Why 24 months? Because it forces you to be concerned about execution. The whole thing is execution myoptic. Where do you want to be?

So, If you had a million or two million, where do you want to be? You want to be at 10? Do you want to be at 20? The reason I start with the numbers, as you know, the number determines the character of the strategy. A strategy to get you a 50 percent revenue increase is completely different than a strategy that gets you a 200 percent revenue increase.

And The normal approach would be go through the strategy, then look at the financial implications and be dissatisfied with that, change the assumptions. Miraculously, you now have the revenues that you want, but you don't change the strategy, which quite frankly, in my experience, is a deadly way to look at it.

So we get the kids off the street. We answer the question, how big do you want to be? Now, if you think you can achieve it, then the number isn't [00:16:00] big enough, is the point I want to make. So it is an audacious declaration, is what it is, without, quite frankly, knowing how to get it. The reason that I stress that is I'm a proponent that says, I don't know, is the biggest driver of innovation I can ever imagine.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Huh. Uh huH.

Roy Osing: so, I push. If you're not perspiring on the how big question, then it's not big enough. And I just keep pushing until we get some. Second question is, where are you going to get the money? Who do you want to serve?

So this is all about defining customer groups that have the latent potential. to deliver the how big. Okay, and I try and keep people and entrepreneurs listen up. This is not about the market. This is about clusters of customers that you can get at fast and easy, who show the latent potential to drive to your how big.

Why fast and easy? When you're in an execution oriented 24 month plan, you can't afford a 12 month selling [00:17:00] cycle, Jeffrey, right?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Mm hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Roy Osing: know this, so we do that, then we do a deep dive on the who, those are the customers you want to serve. We do a deep dive to ask the question, because we need the data for later, what do they crave, not what do they need.

Now you'll notice we haven't used the word technology yet, we haven't used any of that stuff yet, we're down at ground zero trying to figure out who you want to serve and what do they crave. Now what's a craving? A crating is much more than a need. It's what do people desire? What do they lust for?

What do they covet? What secretly do they want in their life? Okay, because everybody competes in the need space. It tends to be price competitive commodity oriented, and there's way too many competitors. How many competitors exist in the craving space, my friend? Very few, okay? And guess what? It's all price insensitive.

Because we tend to spend more money on what we crave versus what we need anyway. [00:18:00] So we go through that third question, okay? And this is the big one. It's how are you going to compete and win? Now, the first point I want to make to everybody listening is that question is not made of the market. It's made of the who, it's made with respect to the customer groups you've just identified that will get you the how big, all right?

So it's a really focused question. So in those customer groups that you've decided to serve, how are you going to compete and win? This is where we develop the only statement, Jeffrey. This is the only work, okay? Because the answer to the question is going to be something like, we're going to compete and win in the blank space, customer groups, by being the only one who.

And that's where that work comes. And basically, the strategy ends up to be on we will grow top line revenues by 25 million by February 2026. We will serve the blah, blah, blah segments. And we will compete and win by [00:19:00] being the only ones who, that's the strategy statement. Then what we do is break that down into specific, what are the critical few objectives and who's going to be accountable, et cetera, to make that happen.

That's the process that worked for me, that I, advocate, that I use with a lot of startups and established businesses. Okay, people come to me and say, okay, I, really want to kick up my business results. I say, okay. Let's take a step back, let's recreate your context to make sure direction you think you're on is in fact the right way you want to go.

So that's the intervention that I use and it's been, very successful.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so when you're walking an entrepreneur, a CEO, a president, a leader through this process. Where are they perhaps taking things for granted that they're well, yeah, whatever, not really there, can't do it, but that's really where it is. And that's what they really should be doing. And, but again, the social programming has them looking everywhere else, but what's right in front of them.

[00:20:00] What does it look like for most people?

Roy Osing: What it looks like for most people is they don't think they need it and the challenge is to try and like, I would always pitch them and say, can you not give me 48 hours out of your life? Are you trying to tell me that as a business owner, you don't have 48 hours somewhere to work on your business as opposed to working in your business?

Are you really saying that? And so I try and guilt them and shame them

That. No, seriously. And I find that when I take them through the process, because it's such a dumbed down process and simple, like there are no subject matter experts. In the process I use. It's the leader and his or her team.

That's it. It can be one person, two people. Just recently I did a partnership. These two guys in a room for 48 hours and we just killed it. They're in a landscaping business for heaven's sakes, but I convinced them that they're not really in the landscaping business. They're in the property development business, and they're the only ones that do what they do.

And so that's an example of reframing the business. [00:21:00] They walked out of there absolutely, just awestruck over the work that they did. They never believed going in that that was possible. So my biggest challenge is to convince them that the 48 hours, that's the hook I try and use.

The 48 hours investment is the best investment they will ever make. even if they think they're successful today, 

Jeffrey Feldberg: so right, let me ask you this, because when you say landscaping, all of us can relate to landscaping and probably like these two partners when we think landscaping, yeah, it's all the same. One guy to the next, and I can use one company or another company. And yeah, it's gonna maybe look a little different, but it's getting the same things done.

So when they walked in, you shared what we can all relate to we're really not that different. Everyone is very similar to us, maybe a few tweaks here and there. When they walked out of it, when you say they're in the property development business, just for our listeners, to give them a sense of how powerful this is.

What did that look like for them? And of course, not to disclose any confidentiality or any secrets or anything, but big picture wise, because we can all relate to [00:22:00] landscaping and how you're now taking that of it's not really landscaping is actually property development. So what did that look like?

Roy Osing: Yeah so this particular organization, it's a great question and it's a way to bring it down by having this kind of a conversation. This organization had a restricted kind of like, I would say, portfolio of landscaping services, right? They would do lawn fertilizing, they would do treatment, they would do cutting, they would do cleanup, they would do some, shrub design, etc.

And they were basically looking at strata corporations and commercial properties. And so what they were looking for, quite frankly, was focus, because the owners are saying, don't know what to focus on. I don't have enough time during the day just running crazy.

Can you help?

Of course, we all know that what that is, people chase what I call yummy and it just drains them and they run out of bandwidth. And so we came up with this only statement as a result of the work that we just went through.

Quote, Lawn and Garden Co. is the only service provider [00:23:00] who delivers tailored property development solutions for Strata Corporations.

We only serve Strata Corporations. So part of the work was to reframe their business away from providing a service. inTo creating solutions, which involved a number of services, which could be categorized as saying to the Strata Corporation, we're here to help you develop your property and enhance the value of your property, as opposed to we're in the lawn cutting business.

Okay, so just reframing that way right away, they could see all sorts of individual product components that could actually be integrated into a value proposition that made them truly unique. And they have relationships with other companies like Window washing companies, gutter cleaning companies painting companies, that they could all, because of those relationships, bring them in to this thing called Tailored Solutions for [00:24:00] Stratas.

And so basically we reduce their scope. Right, and said, you're just, going to be looking at Stratas because they said, yep, we can develop Stratas, we can create the revenue line that we've already agreed to in the How Big work. We can do that by just looking at Stratas. And in fact, we went a step further.

We actually said Stratas in a particular geographic area. Again, so that the reach was easier and they could get to them quicker. And the neat thing about Strata's, Jeffrey, is you can name them so their list of customers was like by name, they have them on a list to go hit them now.

And so when they approach them the conversation is different. It's not like, can we help you cut your lawns? It's like, help me understand your business and the kind of property development challenges you have. Because I think we can help you. So it completely reframed the whole customer engagement process, the questions that they answered, and, or asked and through that, whole thing, they're in the premium [00:25:00] price game, because nobody else Is in that space.

They've completely separated them, created a new box, and they never would have thought the property development was something that could be characterized as something that they wanted to grow into. Never would have occurred to them before going into the session.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so, ROI, with what you said, let me unpack that, and you can tell me if I'm on base or off base, because really what I'm hearing, even the choice of words. So for our listeners who are saying to themselves. Strata. What's strata? What's a strata company? They're not the target market. Just by the choice of words, we're already eliminating the people that we don't want to really be having conversations with.

And for a community, what Roy's referring to with a strata management or a strata company, it's really specific to property management and how you're managing properties. And so, if I'm. Perhaps a landlord. I own a number of businesses. I'm all about how am I going to increase my ROI? What else can I do?

Someone comes to me and say yeah, we're in Strata properties or management. Okay. Now you have my attention. No one else is saying [00:26:00] that. And so we're excluding as much or probably even more than we're including just in the word choice alone. And that specificity is speaking to them, Hey, I got you. I understand your world.

You'll tell me a little bit more about you, but big picture wise, I understand your pain and I'm here to help. How am I doing so far with that? Just by those two choice words that you use for this one particular 

Roy Osing: No, you're absolutely right. I mean, the word is strategic and it's all goes back to the who. So the who in the process. Okay, with a number of alternatives, the who they decided had the latent potential to drive the revenue objectives was Stratus. And my encouragement was make it narrow as you can, okay, because you don't have a lot of time to go grind out a 12 month selling cycle.

example here that drives it home even more. There was a boat dealer in your area,

Okay, in Canada, who thought that they were in the boat selling business. They sold boats to dealers. Okay, and the issue for them was growth, they just weren't [00:27:00] getting any growth, so we went through the work, etc.

At the end of the day, this is the only statement, and I think you'll chuckle over this, this is the only statement we came up with, because they're not in the boat selling business. Marineco is the only complete service provider committed to delivering solutions to grow a boat dealer's business.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Mm

Roy Osing: Product being a boat.

But way this came up was just like miraculous, because when I drove them, to say, do the dealers crave?

What keeps them awake at

Night? Is it they're afraid that your boat, you know, electronics won't work? I said, no, there's something else.

So when we finally landed on it, they said okay, in all conversations that they've had with their dealers. The one thing that the dealers have is they have a problem of growing their business. I said well, okay, maybe we can help them. And so what they ended up doing, it was like Eureka.

So you're not in the boat selling [00:28:00] business, you're in the business development business for your clients. And in this case, as well, we geographically constrained them. Okay, to make sure that they could get to them fast and easy and stratify the number of them. So we went after the high value ones first, one with that have a great deal of potential for revenues, but we completely reframed their business.

And so the choice of delivering solutions, that's the other piece here, Jeffrey, that's key all you guys out there. Do not get into the product flogging business, because there's a billion product floggers out there, and you will just be one of the herd, okay, inseparable. You need to figure out a way through words, through strategic thinking, to get you above that.

In a way that talks to the value. People want the value. they want you to help them with the cravings that they have. And so words like solutions, tailored, things of that nature have the way of communicating [00:29:00] a little bit of kind of like insights around you being different than every other conversation that they've had.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Roy, again, you can tell me, Jeffrey, you're way off base, or yes, what you're saying, you're on base with that. Big picture wise with what you're sharing with me, and again, we have different words or vernacular at Deep Wealth. We call that tuning into the world's favorite radio station, WII. FM, the what's in it for me.

And what's really novel and unique of what you're doing. You're tuning into what other people want, what their deep rooted problems are, literally what keeps them up at night in that one and the only statement of yeah, we're doing this or we're going to help grow boat dealerships or with strata companies doing these different kinds of things right off the bat, you're saying, Hey, I got you.

This is likely one of the challenges that you're facing, and this is all that we're focused on. So we're now a specialist. As opposed to a generalist. So going back to the landscaping example, if I'm Jeffrey's Landscaping Service and I'm speaking to a landholding [00:30:00] company, they have dozens, hundreds, whatever properties, I'm just another landscaping guy.

I'm not speaking their language, but in your example, your clients who are now speaking out there and they're competing against Jeffrey's Landscaping. They got it because that only statement right away differentiates them and it just brings more credibility, more clout, and yeah, even more sophistication, I would say.

I have confidence in these guys over Jeffers Landscaping. How am I doing with that?

Roy Osing: Yeah, you're ending up at the right place. process of getting there is a pretty interesting one though. You just don't land on it because of the narratives that you observe in the world. Okay. That's not what you do. You land on it by creating it as a solution to your growth problem that's unique to you.

And so, when they land on, the whole notion of tailoring solutions, they land on it because they actually have capabilities.

Jeffrey Feldberg: uh 

Roy Osing: WAy to actually take advantage of a lot of things like unused capacity, unused skills, unused [00:31:00] competency, et cetera, and they've never thought about them in a way that will leverage them into some sort of competitive advantage.

And so that process for them sort of inculcates. The way of thinking about their business that they've never had to do before because they've never paid attention to it. And what will happen to these businesses, because this is a fairly recent thing, they will learn whether this only statement is right or not.

Okay, because I keep saying to them, Look at it, it's a draft. The world is changing on you so fast. Everything's a draft. How could I possibly tell you, okay, that this is a permanent thing in a world that is not permanent. In a world that's stochastic. You can't simply do that. Now, the notion of having a draft competitive advantage claim, like an only statement, is that it gives people the freedom to go use it.

Discover whether it's right and modify it on the run. And a lot of people have difficulty with that. And again, it goes back to we haven't been taught that way. [00:32:00] We've been taught to reach the objective, move on to something else. Listen, nothing is beyond this. This exists for as long as it works. And then we change it.

That's just the world, okay? And so the successful organizations are able to do that. They're nimble. They keep questioning what they're doing. They change their, what I call, planning on the run. They just keep tweaking it. And they learn where their destination is through execution. They didn't know it when they started.

So this whole work is a draft. That seems to make it easier for a lot of people. They go, oh, okay. It's a draft.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so as we're going through this draft or this experiment, whatever you'd like to call it, Roy, you're starting what it sounds like at the leader level, either the C suite or the founders, the entrepreneurs, once they lock this down for themselves and they've been able to do this, it's successful, they can replicate it.

How do we instill this into the team, into the culture so that it's now beyond. The leadership, really the whole company's embracing [00:33:00] this and even taking it to the next level and continuing that. How do we do that?

Roy Osing: Yeah, so part of the, implementation of my strategic game planning process is, as I mentioned earlier we sit down and we formulate very specific objectives in terms of who does what, by when, to whom, to actually breathe life into this puppy is the way I talk about it.

And one category of, of objectives is leadership. Within that category, we talk about, okay, now that we have. The game plan documented and in sight, what's the role of leaders? One of the biggest issues that I've seen is leaders, once they've got the plan done, they just throw it out to the organization and assume that everybody gets it, assume that everybody's committed to it, assume that everybody knows what to do to make it work.

The reality is zero for three on every one of those.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.

Roy Osing: gets it. And so that's a failure of leadership. And so one of the things that I, say is look at leaders, this is where your work just begins, guys. [00:34:00] You haven't finished it, right? Because your job now is to see by being the strategy hawk in your organization, a phrase that I coined, you need to be the strategy hawk leader, you need to make sure it's executed.

So one of the things, that I did is I came up with this notion called line of sight. AnD line of sight simply It's a translation role that leaders perform by making sure that everybody in the organization understands their role in executing the new strategy. What do they have to take on? What do they have to give up?

And I went through just a copious amount of work translating our strategy to literally everybody in the organization. Now somebody will say, that's ridiculous. I don't have any time to do that. And I will say, bullcrap. Show me one, one thing you're doing that's more important than executing the strategy and getting superlative performance in your business, right?

And you will typically give me a quote, textbook [00:35:00] response to that, and I will have zero respect for you thereon. Okay so, get your head on, get out there, get line of sight defined, and then monitor on a regular basis. That's why it's 24 periods of 30 days, Jeffrey. That's what the game plan is.

It forces you to think about. your results in that time frame. The second piece of it, okay, which is really important that leaders never do, is what I call cleansing the inside. Now, cleansing the inside is probably one of the most critical strategies or tactics, if you will to actually improve execution.

Of a strategy that could ever be done and yet it's never done. So what do I mean by cleansing the inside? Cleansing the inside is all about getting rid of the internal friction in the machine that is inefficiently producing value for customers, right? And one classic example is what I call dumb rules.

A dumb rule is a rule that customers hate. It [00:36:00] may have been conceived 10 years ago by some guy that blah, blah, blah. But it has absolutely no use today other than pissing people off. That's all it does. Okay. And customers hate it. They leave you. They tell other people how crummy you are. And so I came up with this notion that says that's a friction point.

Okay? So I'm trying to cleanse the inside of those friction points and improve the viscosity of the machine is like my objective. I'm the viscosity improvement vehicle and that's a leadership function.

Jeffrey Feldberg: huh.

Roy Osing: Committees. We had dumb rules competitions. We had dumb rules reward celebrations.

For people who successfully identified and annihilated dumb rules in the organization, now I have to tell you, my executive colleagues were just a little nonplussed over two things. One that I would call them dumb rules because after all, we're admitting that we were dumb. And the reality is that's not what we were doing, but we [00:37:00] had some things that customers thought were dumb.

And are we not trying to be customer focused in terms of the language we use? And secondly, they thought it was unbecoming of us to use the terminology, dumb. And I said okay, first of all, people have been telling us for years that we have rules and procedures that customers don't like. We've never listened to them.

We're going to listen to them because that will help us cleanse the inside, improve execution, and drive top line like you've never seen it before. And I had to convince him that was true. And secondly, you want employees to be engaged, don't you? You have no idea how this improved customer or employee engagement, Jeffrey, when we actually listened to them, got rid of the stuff that forced them to say no to customers, as opposed to saying yes.

And so it was one of my simple ways of cleanse, and let's move us to a say yes internal environment and culture, because we're in a telecom world moving from a monopoly to an internet space. We had to be [00:38:00] saying yes, man. We could not be saying no. And so, that one was a huge leadership function that I took on, that I've never seen anybody in the world take on before, because in many cases, they say, that's somebody else's role, that's else's responsibility.

I happen to believe in strategic micromanagement, my friend. And anything that's important enough to drive execution and results, that's my job. I don't delegate that to anybody. And so in a way, I called it fingerprint leadership. And so there was a whole bunch of those things that leaders have to do to breathe life into their strategy.

And thank you for the question. It was a brilliant question.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so, Roy, what is really intriguing of what you're doing, and not to confuse simple with simplicity, you're simplifying things, you're bringing it down to the basics. And what's also nice about this, and I'm going to suspect that you are on the same page as us here at Deep Wealth, [00:39:00] as leaders, as entrepreneurs.

All of the above, anything in between, we usually have the answers, we're just not asking the right questions, or don't know which questions to ask, and you're now asking the right questions, you're educating us on that. And so let me ask you this, not to oversimplify by any stretch. There's a lot that we've been going down and you've been sharing with us with all these wisdom and insights and all from the trenches.

Absolutely love that. If a listener could pick one thing, because out of every episode, we always like to say, Hey, if you can do this one strategy, this one action, before you finish this episode, before you pick up that next call, that meeting, that email, your time, wherever it's going to go before you do that, if you can do this one thing that could really make a difference for you.

What do you think that would be, Roy, for the listener of everything that we've spoken about? If there's one strategic initiative or move or action to take, what would you recommend?

Roy Osing: Yeah. It's like saying, what's the major challenge in the world today? And I think it's differentiate differentiate, differentiate.

Okay. Look for ways [00:40:00] to be different in a way that other people care about. It's not about you. It's about other people. Try and find a way to be unique. Now, here's a simple little thing, okay?

As soon as you, get off this podcast, what I want you to do is I want you to think about doing something different for the rest of the day. What does your schedule look like? Ask yourself the question, okay, how can I be different in some little way? for the rest of the day. How can I put myself in a level of discomfort in the next eight hours and try something like this and experience the discomfort, experience the growing in that and maybe tomorrow try two things and maybe the day after that.

Try two things, if three is a bit of a jump, right? In other words, just try and inch your way into this. Look at, there's no there's no big way, there's no silver bullet in all of this stuff. This is hard work, as you know, doing it. And I say, just be happy with getting an inch [00:41:00] worth of progress, okay?

It's about baby steps, but start out, okay with having this lens that you're looking through says, how can I be different? How can I approach this differently? How can I have this conversation and explore this differently? How can I be different with my grandchildren? I'm a grandfather.

I am the Be Different Papa, okay? I practice this stuff all the time. I am Nolan. As the edgy old dude, who does things differently but it's a life goal, okay, and didn't happen overnight. And so I would say be patient, but please be relentless, ask the question, how can I be different? If that's the only thing you take away, it's been a great day for me, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So really get into the unknown, be different and just do the unexpected perhaps, or what we don't normally do. Just break that routine and see really where that takes you. Perhaps that's where the magic is going to happen. And Roy, let me ask you this before we go into [00:42:00] wrap up mode, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about artificial intelligence, AI, everyday new headlines, new leaps and bounds.

In what we've been talking about in business, in getting out there and being different, do you see this making a difference or is it just another tool in the arsenal that we have that can really just perhaps speed things up? Where are you on AI and how we should be looking at it?

Roy Osing: So I think that there's probably some amazing opportunities in it. I think what's important for me is that people understand what it is you're trying to achieve by using it. And it gets back to context, and it gets back to what are you trying to achieve? What's your strategy? And then asking the question, what's the role of a number of things?

AI is just one of a number of tactics and tools you have in your kit box, okay, in your toolbox. If you have a hundred tools in there. Does AI have relevance? Okay, if it does, define the role, but never [00:43:00] ever forget that our mission here, at least my mission, is to be different. It's not to have my voice lost.

Okay, in an algorithm that crawls the internet and pulls data from everybody, every nook and cranny and comes up with the lowest common denominator. That's not my job. And so I'm, from that perspective, to be perfectly honest with you, I'm afraid of it because it's a juxtaposed position to a lot of what I'm talking about.

Okay. When you give up your voice. Okay, you're giving up your ability to be different, and I'm not saying that's what all it does, but that's one implication that scares me. But I really think the most pragmatic thing for people to do is, okay, learn about it, understand it, and then figure out a way from your strategy and your game plan's perspective.

Does it have relevance? The [00:44:00] whole issue of relevance for me is huge. And it's no different than saying, what's the role of a, of an internet technology? What's the role of social media? What's the role of any other capability at the tactical level that you could employ in your business?

Okay your objective as an entrepreneur and a leader is to discover its relevance. Never assume its relevance.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, that's a great insight. And really it plays right into your whole theme of be different or be dead. And people in the AI space, when I've had them on the podcast, they've always said the same thing. Look, Jeffrey, if you want to use AI to ask a question and you're going to copy and paste that answer you're going to be like everyone else at that point, because regardless of who you are, you're getting the same answers because it's working from the same body of information.

But Roy, not to put words in your mouth, again, tell me if I'm on base, off base, if we look to AI as a means to an end, perhaps it can get us to the end point quicker where, hey, how can I be [00:45:00] different? What are some areas that I'm not aware of AI can help me with? I can then delve into that some more, but I'm keeping my unique voice.

I'm keeping it really. Different, original, out there. I'm not going to be a copy and paste AI like everyone else's, then it can be a tool that can help me achieve my goals, be different, really differentiate myself with the only statement and begin the process of marching to my own tune, to my own success.

What do you think about that?

Roy Osing: Yeah. So the only sort of change would offer

An observation would be that, but look at when we've got a game plan and we're just emotionally committed to it. Then a question to ask is, okay, what's the bag of opportunities and tactics we have available to us, okay, to help us achieve it?

asSume that AI is one of them. Don't assume that it's the first one.

Okay. Because it's a narrative that's getting so much space and drive these days. I'm just fearful that it's going to be assumed to be the top [00:46:00] priority in terms of the top means to your end, and I don't buy it.

I say that it's a means. Great, but discover whether it's one of the top two means or whether it's like four out of ten. Please just spend time doing that. To me that's, rational thought,

Okay? That's a responsible leadership thinking. Never assume that any given tactic, okay, is gonna be the panacea for you, because it won't be, chances, okay?

And all you're gonna be doing is chasing the tactic like everybody else. Discover its meaningfulness, spend time on that, do the work on that, and then follow whatever your conclusions are, and more importantly, monitor how well it's being used and the results you're getting. Be prepared to kill it. Be prepared to delete it.

the Other things that drives me crazy is that people assume that innovation is doing new things. I disagree. I say that [00:47:00] one of the most effective ways to innovate is to get rid of the ineffective, to delete the irrelevant. Okay, yeah, but it's not sexy, Jeffrey. It's not sexy. When Roy talks about deletion innovation, people go, oh, what is that?

I mean, It's not fun getting rid of stuff. It's hard getting rid of stuff. Yeah, no kidding. But look at what are you here to do? Create value? Or are you here to add stuff? Okay, as a leader, your job is to create value, and if the value benefits for deleting things are greater than adding a new product or adding an AI application, then that's what you should be doing.

As an effective leader, that's what you should be doing. You want to be an audacious leader? Be a deletion artist.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Well said. And again, right back to the be different or be dead, very consistent with that. And really it all makes sense. And that's why a classic is a classic regardless of how long it's been around and across different industries. A classic is always a classic, and there's a good [00:48:00] reason for that. Roy, we're bumping up again sometime, and I know I say this on every podcast.

It's really a privilege. A privilege is an honor. It's a ritual here on the Deep Wealth Podcast, where I have the honor of asking you the same question that I've asked every guest. It's a fun question. I'm going to set this up for you. So when you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that fabulous DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time.

And so the fun part is tomorrow morning, and Roy, you look outside your window. Not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do. And you're now going to go back to any point in your life, Roy, as a young child, as a teenager, whatever point in time that would be, what are you telling your younger self in terms of life wisdom or life lessons, or, Hey, Roy, do this, but don't do that.

What would that sound like?

Roy Osing: So I'm on a ski hill

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

Roy Osing: in the

Rockies.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Mm 

Roy Osing: It's like, I don't know, 8 a. m. and I get off the chairlift and I start skiing down and I reach a plateau [00:49:00] and I look down and I have two choices. One choice It's to follow, and it's just a huge snowfall the night before. So I've got a, like, four feet of powder snow. But I'm not the only one on the mountain. So I have a choice. I can go down the run, okay, that others have gone down. And there's a lot of ski tracks, et cetera, et cetera. And it looks like, yeah, it looks like it'd be a fun run. Or I can look to my right. And I can look down there, and I see four feet of powder snow. Nobody's been down that run. Nobody's been down there. I will go down that run, and I will accept whatever fate awaits me. The exhilaration of being able to slalom down there seamlessly with, in the old days, you always had your legs together, your skis together, and not far apart like they do today.

I'm going to go down the hill that way and I'm going to do my best in this case, to do it that way, because that's the way my dad taught me, [00:50:00] and I'm going to accept whatever happens. I may discover halfway down that was a dumb decision. Okay, if that's the case, I can always go across to the other run, but I'm going to do my best to try and get down the whole hill.

In this, run with no tracks, my no track hill, if I can, and I've done that, and it is just an amazing experience. what it taught me is, it taught me that it's okay to take on something that's huge and mammoth. Okay, because you just never know what's going to happen, and to your question earlier, maybe all those little child experiences sort of led me to the persona that I've got, Jeffrey.

I don't know, but yeah, I'd love to be That's where I'd be.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific insights, take the path less traveled and accept whatever's going to happen. Just accept it because you're doing that. And it's

Roy Osing: Thank you. You said it way better than me.

Jeffrey Feldberg: You made it very easy. [00:51:00] I'm just here listening to the wisdom that you've been sharing with us today, but that's terrific advice for our audience. And Roy, before we wrap things up for a listener, they want to get in touch, want to go through the Only Process, do some coaching with you, perhaps ask some questions.

What is the best place online for someone to find you?

Roy Osing: My website is BeDifferentOrBeDead. com, and so I've got, I've been blogging on this stuff since 09, Jeffrey, so there's a lot of content there. A lot of content,

and I've got a page that talks about my books, if anybody's interested in that. And I've got an email address, roy. osing at gmail. com, and look it, I'm really happy to have a one on one conversation.

I have, this is amazing, my best days are when I open my, computer and I see some emails from people I don't know, and what they are is, hey, Roy, I heard that you on this podcast, here's my only statement, what do you think? That's a great day, so please take advantage of me.

Jeffrey Feldberg: but Roy, it doesn't get any better. And for our listeners, Roy gave his personal email address. So go at it, ask those questions, go to the [00:52:00] website. And again, the show notes has everything Roy, including your latest book, Be Different or Be Dead, the audacious, unheard of way. I took a startup to a billion in sales.

 It doesn't get any better than that. And I like what you're saying. Hey, be different or be dead. Don't be another copycat out there. Be your unique self. And so for our listeners, A lot to think about and really take that back with you, with your business, even in your personal life, with your loved ones to take your life, your business life to the next level.

So Roy, it's official. Congratulations. 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.

Roy Osing: Thanks, Jeffrey. I appreciated the opportunity. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course [00:53:00] I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never [00:54:00] use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier [00:55:00] wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.