Be Different or Be Dead: Unlocking Business Success with Roy Osing

Freddy D: 00:01:59

Hey, Freddy D. Here.

In this episode, we're joined by Roy Osing, a powerhouse entrepreneur and executive leader who took a startup Internet company all the way to a billion dollars in annual sales. Roy isn't just another business voice.

He's the only author, advisor and mentor delivering practical, proven and truly audacious strategies to build high performance businesses and careers.

With over 40 years of unmatched leadership experience as a President, CMO and entrepreneur, Roy brings no nonsense edge to everything he does, including his bold book series, Be different or Be Dead and his own podcast, Audacious Moves to a Billion. Get ready for an energized insight packed conversation with the leader who walks the talk all the way to a billion.

Welcome, Roy, to the Business Superfans podcast.

Roy Osing: 00:02:54

Hey, thanks very much for having me here. I'm grateful.

Freddy D: 00:02:57

Well, we're super excited to have you. So, Roy, tell us a little bit about the backstory and then how you came about with this book. Be different or Be Dead.

Roy Osing: 00:03:07

ies. I wrote my first book in: 2009

The Audacious unheard of ways we took a start up to a billion is all about differentiation. I don't believe it's being done very well these days. The ultimate consequence of an undifferentiated strategy is not very pleasant.

Hence, Be different or be dead. But more than that, it's kind of who I've been my life.

I'm basically a guy that doesn't like tradition, always looking for ways of doing things differently. I don't like best practices. I don't like copying.

And so basically my whole career has been spent questioning the way we do things and coming up with different approaches. The be different or be dead mantra encapsulates that whole premise. I think I got it from my mother. She was one of 12. She had to fight for every meal.

She grew up as a feisty woman who just wanted to get stuff done in a way that nobody else did. I never realized it until one of my hosts asked me that and I went, huh, I guess it was my mom. She got that in my DNA and it served me very well.

Be different or be dead is a mantra that's trying to call for people to look for ways to be different in a way that other people care about. And that's a point I want to make. It's not about narcissism. It's not about what you think of you.

It's about doing things in a very special way or doing special things that serve others. So it's anything but narcissism.

And I have to clarify that because a lot of people think it's like the color of their hair or their pronouns or their sex. Sexual preferences. I don't care about any of that. I want to know what you're doing special in a way that serves other people. Be different or be dead.

Freddy D: 00:04:52

That aligns perfectly with my creating business super fans. Because you've got to take care of other people and help them accomplish their goals, dreams and aspirations. You don't have to worry about yourself.

It'll come back tenfold and you'll be successful as well. We're just calling it a little different, but similar concept.

Roy Osing: 00:05:12

Yeah, It's a matter of subordinating yourself to the people you're actually trying to target in your business. This is not a mass market thing either.

It's a process of defining who you want to serve, figuring out what they crave, and then satisfying those cravings in a way nobody else does. If you can do that consistently, then the super fan thing will happen. It's a consequence of actions. It isn't the intent.

Because if you start out considering it a tactic, you're doomed. You need to do the work. You need a strategic context, and you need to be really focused on people and just go from there.

Be consistent in the way you deliver value. Be consistent in the way you hire people that a lot of businesses don't pay attention to.

The small, audacious stuff that got us to a billion in annual sales. It wasn't the theoretical, complex stuff, which nobody can understand. Because how you convince somebody to execute on a strategic direction.

If it's complicated, it's an impossible task. But you got to dumb it down. You got to make it relevant, you got to make it compelling. You got to make it emotionally stimulating.

There's no emotional triggers in what you do with employees. You get zero engagement and you can't execute and you don't make any progress. And so it's a lot of hard work.

It's not a tactic that you look up in marketing 101. Not there, no.

Freddy D: 00:06:32

Totally agree. When I was in charge of global sales, I set up a global reseller channel. We used to call them value added resellers around the world.

They're separate agencies. So we're one of 12 different products that they're marketing.

How do I get mind share of those people and get them to sell my product in a different country, in a different Culture.

It was all about building those relationships and having the objectives and working with everybody in that organization, being on the same page and recognizing the people in the organization that were contributing to the success of our product.

Roy Osing: 00:07:15

Yeah. And there's a huge leadership piece in here that I worked really hard on.

People would say, you want to grow your business, but we're so dysfunctional. Everybody's doing their own thing. So I came up with this notion and tagged it Line of Sight.

I believe that the reason people are dysfunctional is they are left their own to create whatever actions they think are appropriate to live the strategy. And that's a failure of leadership for explaining it.

Freddy D: 00:07:40

Absolutely.

Roy Osing: 00:07:40

So. So we had a translation. I personally did this. My organization was like 5,000 people. So not small.

We created alignment plans for every department and every person in the organization that says, these are the things that you need to do and these are the things that you need to give up to have direct line of sight to the strategy. When we were able to inculcate that as part of the culture, incredible things happen. Right. All of the noise disappeared.

Everybody was focused on relevant things as opposed to things that may have been relevant yesterday but are no longer relevant today. And that aided execution, which is the other big element that drives super fans. They want you to keep your promises. It's a hugely emotional thing.

They just want you to be trustworthy. Put employees in front of them that actually like humans. I had to come up with this thing called hirings for goosebumps.

Relationships are all about emotion. They expect my Internet stream to work, but what makes them buy from me is a whole other layer of stuff.

If you have employees that don't really like Homo sapiens, then that's pretty hard to do.

The recruitment piece in terms of super fans is huge because if you don't have everything going on behind the scenes that's leaning into people and their humanity and their needs, then you can forget about fans. You just end up to be a clinical stereotypical product pusher. Great, great future.

Freddy D: 00:09:13

Right? Because people can sense whether it's a transactional perspective or genuine care in helping them accomplish their needs.

The thing you mentioned that I want to reemphasize for our listeners is alignment. Think of a racing rowing team. You have eight people in the rowboat, each with one oar.

They are going into a race and must be synchronized in one direction to win that race.

Roy Osing: 00:09:43

Yeah, the analogy sounds pretty simple, and it is okay. But the problem is, in an organization, most leaders don't take the time to do this.

Translating your direction in terms of what it means to individual employees normally gets delegated, right? Because we've been taught as leaders to delegate everything, which is absolute fricking hogwash. I'm a fingerprint leader.

I put my fingerprints on the things that I needed to be engaged in. There are some things that I didn't.

But when it came to selling the strategy, talking about the brand, talking about retention, talking about hiring human being lovers, there was only one person that can do that, and that was me.

Freddy D: 00:10:24

That's your job, really?

Roy Osing: 00:10:25

That's what else. Right.

Freddy D: 00:10:28

You got to sell the vision well.

Roy Osing: 00:10:30

And also sell what it takes to execute the vision without execution. I don't pay much attention to that either. In order to get people to execute and drive performance, you had to do those things and make it simple.

What I discovered is that's all it took, you know, that was the lock. Once it was unlocked, execution went crazy. Top line started going. Employee engagement went through the roof.

And to your point earlier, all of our relationships with suppliers, marketing communications companies, et cetera, they improved as well because the nature of the engagement with those people took on a caring attitude. And I talk a lot about creating a caring culture. The ultimate way of creating super fans is you need a caring culture.

The inside needs to give a shit. The inside gives shit, you get nothing. Right?

Freddy D: 00:11:20

Right.

Roy Osing: 00:11:21

Too many people think about this as a tactic. Wow, the Superfan. This is a real cool name. That's exceeding expectations and all kinds of. You got to do the work right.

You got to contextualize what you're doing. And it's time consuming, but at the end of the day, it's so important, it pays off in spades.

Freddy D: 00:11:39

Explode. You know, one of my quotes in my book is people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition, and you got to give it.

That's how you build that momentum, that's how you create that energy. Because all of a sudden you turn around and say, hey, you know, Johnny over here did this particular project.

I want to take a moment to recognize Johnny. Everybody is excited for Johnny, but they're also going in their heads. I want that to be me.

And so everybody elevates their game a whole nother level, right? And it becomes contagious. You look at a sports team, a sports team is having fun on the field.

They're destined to win because they're relaxed, they're having fun, they're camaraderie, they're high fiving, they're chest bumping, et cetera. And a team that's frustrated Struggling. You can see the look on their face.

You can tell who's going to win and who's going to lose right at the beginning of the game.

Roy Osing: 00:12:34

A lot of times, passion is a strategic concept. Emotion is part of a strategy. And most people don't think about it that way.

They think about what's our marketing plan, what's our product development strategy, what's our systems engineering approach, as opposed to saying, how are we going to inject the stuff that comes out of the right side of the brain into everything that we do? The reason they don't think about that is it is hard work changing and creating a culture that spawns superfans.

If you think about this box, this box is the converter between a target customer and a superfan. In that box, there's a ton of stuff that's dirty and most leaders don't want to get dirty. And it's hard work.

It's all about what are the cultural things that we need to do, the strategic things. Reality. That's the easy part. The difficult is, it really is well and yet why. Okay, I agree with you.

Why do we spend 80% of our time on the strategy and 20% on execution? Like, we got it all wrong? My work shows I spend 20% on the plan.

I get it just about right, and I, through execution, change it and revise it on the go. I call it let's head west. So I'm sitting in New York. My strategy is going to be I'm heading west.

I have no idea, quite frankly, if I'm going to end up in San Francisco, Phoenix or Vancouver. All I know is I'm going west. I'm going to execute. I'm going to keep my feet moving.

I'm going to learn on the run and tweak and eventually the strategy will show itself to me. It's not that I'm stupid, but as I start out, there's just too many variables. This is a problem I have with education.

They think you can formularize everything. Give me a linear regression analysis and I'll tell you what your forecast is going to be. Ever heard that before? My degree is in math. Right.

I've never solved a business problem with a differential equation in my life, and I never will. I'm pretty sure you've been involved with young professionals that are struggling.

One of the reasons they're struggling, they got this academics jacket on them as opposed to a practical lens. Think outside the box well and just accept the fact. But you know what? We don't let them Academia doesn't let them, the MBA program doesn't let them.

Don't try and tell me that if I do a case study I'm going to suddenly be creative because another 10,000 people have done the same case study. How that being different. So the whole model is a problem, especially for young people starting out.

One of the axioms is you need to get the strategy perfect. Help me understand how that makes any sense in an imperfect world.

Freddy D: 00:15:14

Right?

Roy Osing: 00:15:14

It makes zero sense. Hence get it just about right. Execute, learn, plan on the run and eventually you end up where you should be. But you didn't know that when you began.

It's as simple as that. It's a messy way to look at it. And I get people going, what, you didn't spend $50,000 with KPMG and blah blah, getting your strategy?

And I'd say it doesn't matter. Okay, I'm going to take five people who run that lead the business.

We're going into a room and I can do this with you in 48 hours you'll have your strategy. And it's just amazing how this works.

They don't believe it because they've been taught to think that success is complicated, expensive and it takes a lot.

Freddy D: 00:15:53

Right. It goes back to when I was working with international distributors.

I would spend time with the actual sales guys and to make sure that they understood our product and how it could help them sell for the awards for top reseller.

I didn't just give the plaques and awards to the agency because the agency wasn't necessarily the people doing the work, it was the actual sales team and the tech team. So I recognized them as well. One of the sales guys and the tech guy got recognized.

d I took a simple product. In: 1997

I grew it to 3 million net to the company in $5,000 chunks, to a brand new product in a three year window. All because of the approach that I did, which was non traditional.

It was just basically going out there and getting other people to believe in it and start promoting it and know what the direction was that they needed to go.

Roy Osing: 00:16:59

Well, part of the problem is the people who are promulgating these theoretical, principled, academic approaches have never run a business. So they don't know what you just said. They don't know.

By embedding yourself with the front line, understanding what they do, helping them, I call it leadership. By serving around, it's like, how can I help you to make you feel good?

What I know is, what are the barriers, what are the challenges to execution that you're facing that I can help you with? Because if we can cleanse that environment a little bit, then I know where my performance and my top line are going to. Straight through the roof.

And so, yeah, I spent probably 20% of every week embedded figuring out what systemic issues we had, responding to individuals, et cetera. And it was really well received.

People talked about that, and the passion and the commitment and the advocacy to the journey we were on just continued to get larger and larger. I had this program called Killing Dumb Rules.

A dumb rule is a rule that we have for some reason in the organization that does nothing but piss customers off. You can imagine in your own personal life, you go into a store and they give you a policy, you kind of go, what?

And all it does is infuriate you, right? So we had these things, and they were d. Dazzling events. They were not events consistent with building superfans. I labeled them dumb rules.

And so I launched this program called Killing Dumb Rules. My CEO at the time wasn't happy with my language.

He says, well, come on, Roy, you can't call them dumb rules because obviously that's going to offend somebody that actually originated the rules. And I said, okay, I'll tell you what, we're going to call them stupid policies. The front line love the notion because they knew it was stupid.

And so we launched the program and we had contests. My management team had only one responsibility when they were presented with a dumb rule. You either kill it or. Or you fix it or you do something.

Because there were legal issues, obviously, that we're going to.

And so what I would do is I would show up in the workplace with a white long sleeve T shirt on it, and I'd have dumb rules written on the front, written on the back, with a big circle and an X through it. And it was just unbelievable. Roy got another one. Roy got another.

We had a process for prioritizing, but as a trigger for moving the culture in a different way, in a way that was customer focused. It was amazing. It was so simple. All you had to do was suck it up and lose your ego.

Freddy D: 00:19:31

You just said it right there because you got yourself out of your own way. You let the team come up with ways.

So you empowered the team to be able to say, hey, that's a dumb rule, and here's why, and here's what we should do. Now they've got ownership, and it changes the whole dynamics.

Roy Osing: 00:19:52

Yep, absolutely.

Freddy D: 00:19:53

You remind me of Sir Richard Branson. You don't see him cleaning the windshield on the airplane.

He's out there playing flight attendant once in a while or on his virgin voyages, he's out there playing bingo with the people. He's not piloting the ship. He's empowered his team to do it. But they've got an alignment, a vision and direction.

Roy Osing: 00:20:14

It's really curious to me that there are so many good examples of leaders that don't take themselves seriously in a certain dimension of the job. Yet leadership, in terms of its effectiveness has changed very little in the last decades.

That's momentum management from the past, adhering to traditional leadership principles promulgated by people with all these initials attached to their name. They have this implied credibility, and I think it's disingenuous.

I think it's intellectually dishonest to have the future leaders of tomorrow infected by this kind of thinking. You and I, we should be the ones doing the infecting. We try to infect as many people as we can.

But the reality is I'm pretty disappointed in the amount of change I've been able to see is such a big problem. I'm just not seeing any change. I don't get invited to go talk to MBA graduating classes at university anymore.

And there's a reason for that, because I tell them that basically you're here to learn how to solve problems. Once you get your degree, good for you. There's other stuff you need to take on. The profs don't like that they feel threatened.

And I'm thinking, why would you feel threatened?

Why wouldn't you be opening yourself to other points of view that may help your students, Especially coming from somebody that's taken a startup to a billion dollars in sales. What other proof point do you want?

Freddy D: 00:21:43

Well, Roy, you make some great points there. Because I had a mentor.

e in the car. We're talking a: 1975

He invited me to drive his second car that was getting repaired at the gas station. I didn't realize it. He asked the owner to have me drive the second car.

And I went and he had this really cool bachelor pad, water bed, and all this kind of crazy stuff. And he Gave me a pamphlet that I actually still have. He was stunned that I still have it.

years old I bought myself a: 1976

So I'm a 19 year old kid driving a 74 Corvette that was pumping gas before that. All because he opened up my mind to other things and other possibilities and taught me to dream big.

I've had successes, I've had massive failures, but I get up, put a band aid on and continue. You're absolutely correct. Sometimes you just gotta think with imagination and possibilities are there.

Roy Osing: 00:23:17

Well, I absolutely agree. Michael Jordan said it best when he's lost more basketball games than anybody in the game. But he took more shots and he failed more.

It sure makes the point. And yet we're taught to seek perfection according to somebody's standards.

People are taught that you need to get it perfect according to a set of rules that somebody else has created. The problem with that is the world is so complicated these days and unpredictable. It's impossible to predict anything.

It's like I want to be perfectly imperfect. And by that I mean I want to be able to move and shake and be able to be agile.

Freddy D: 00:23:52

You gotta be agile today.

Roy Osing: 00:23:54

You gotta just keep doing that right? And have the confidence that as long as you don't make the same mistake twice, but the more mistakes you make, you're on the right track.

Because if you're not making mistakes, you're not doing nothing. Let's get real. And yet that is viewed as laissez faire. When you start talking, especially academics.

And I know I'm being tough on academics and I don't mean to denigrating what they do. I'm just saying there's an alternative that you and I have lived and created value from. Why doesn't that scenario get the attention that deserves?

I don't get it. It's not from proof points. You have proof points, I have proof points.

There's a lot of guys out there like us that have been very successful in business that have secrets to share, but nobody cares.

Freddy D: 00:24:43

Yeah, you hit a point. I can't say anything because you just took the hammer and smashed it. Because that's true.

You know, I talk about changing the whole perception and in my book I talk about doing the unexpected extra something that's above and beyond. And nobody expects it because it's transformative. The recipient is blown Away by the transaction.

One of my other quotes is, the little things are really the big things.

Roy Osing: 00:25:16

No question. No question about it. It's because the little things are part of the engagement process.

And those are the things that are sticky to people that you want as either customers, friends, or lovers or whatever. Those are the things that stick. It's actually the translation of intent from those little things. Tom. Peter said it.

He wrote a book called the Little Big Things, and he nailed it. And that was a long time ago. So you and I know this stuff. They don't teach about killing dumb rules. They don't teach about hiring for goosebumps.

They don't teach about creating a strategic game plan in 48 hours. They don't teach about how to create a library of cravings for your top fans. They don't talk about cleaning the inside.

And yet all of those notions were so important to my team in moving our business around. It's depressing.

Stuff that has been proven to work is not even valued as an idea in a value set that people are considering, especially as a new CEO starting up. I can't believe it. I work a lot with startup CEOs, and the biggest problem they have is they haven't put the textbook down yet.

Freddy D: 00:26:22

You gotta get into the trenches. I was managing a company a year and a half ago, and I had a person on the team with depression.

There were days she didn't come into the office because she just couldn't handle it. And this was an example of the little things or the big things.

I started empowering her more and giving her four responsibilities and said, hey, I understand these things are going to happen, but I got your back. And she started to feel better about herself because everybody else kicks her to the side. He's doing the opposite. He's empowering her.

So she started going out of her way. She started dressing up nicer. She started feeling better about herself, her customer or prospective customer engagement improved.

Her communications with her customer transformed. And she helped grow the department, which was under $100,000. And this was doing document translations in different languages to over 225,000.

So grew by more than 100% with the person, had some challenges. Those challenges became minimized, marginalized, because they felt worthy and empowered to come up with ideas.

They came up with ideas and systems in place and everything else completely transformed. And just like we're talking about, that was a little thing that really became a big thing.

Roy Osing: 00:27:52

Well, you know, it's a great story as you're describing it. What I get in my mind is you basically allowed her to take a deep breath. And when you're allowed to oxygenate the physiology, magic happens.

She was breathing up here. You allowed her to take a deep breath, full body cavity, full body breath, and look what she was able to do with that. Good for you.

I wish more people could actually look at it that way. Allow your people to. To take a deep breath. We talk a lot about empowerment, and I know we all know what it is. The notion the tag has been around.

I think part of our challenge as leaders is to find new ways of talking about old stuff. Because everybody learns in different ways.

Freddy D: 00:28:37

Right.

Roy Osing: 00:28:37

I mean, if you can imagine in today's world, there's so much going on in terms of holistic treatment and yoga and everything else. My wife is always telling me to breathe through my back, Freddie. And I have no idea what that means.

But when I take a deep breath and when I see somebody else take a deep breath, I kind of want to. And I gotta admit, I feel better afterwards. And that's what you gave her. That's what you gave her, the ability to breathe again. You are a magician.

You are a doctor. Well done.

Freddy D: 00:29:08

Well, thank you. I'm not a doctor. It was something that. And we're still friends today.

And she's helping me with some of the stuff because she's a super fan of who I am.

Roy Osing: 00:29:18

Yep.

Freddy D: 00:29:18

And that's where it all starts, is you start creating super fans internally. That energy transcends to people they're talking with.

And you recognize a supplier for going above and beyond versus the other guy that is all systems and says, you were late, product was delivered, we're supposed to get it there, blah, blah, blah, don't do that stuff. And all of a sudden you get two companies asking you, the supplier to deliver something right away. Who's going to get favored?

Roy Osing: 00:29:49

Yeah. Well, I think part of the problem is the language. Organizations that view themselves as suppliers are actually pushers.

You don't create superfans by being a pusher. You create super fans by being a friend. Right. Respected friend you can trust and you're willing to go with.

But it's all about the emotional component of the connection and the emotional triggers that go on in conversion from a target customer to a super fan. They're life sustaining. Is the other beauty of. Because once they happen, it's hard to break them. Okay.

When you're a super fan of something, it's hard to ever break that because.

Freddy D: 00:30:30

You feel, yeah, look at the Chicago Cubs in baseball. There's A perfect example of super fans.

They finally won one World Series after 5,000 years, but the bottom line was they were super fans of the team, even though they were in a doghouse.

Roy Osing: 00:30:46

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's a great example. Who would have thought, right? Leadership, emotional triggers and all that kind of stuff.

They don't teach that stuff. You'll learn it through being in the trenches, watching the pupils of their eyes dilate.

It's a hard leadership path to go on, and yet it's so worthwhile at the end. But I don't see too many people doing what you and I are just talking about.

Freddy D: 00:31:11

Oh, absolutely.

People can shortcut it and buy books that you and I have written that tell 20 years or whatever worth of experience that you can read in a week and shortcut that whole process by just stepping out of your own box. Absolutely right as we come towards the end here, Roy, how can people find you?

Roy Osing: 00:31:33

So I have a website and it's of course Be different or be dead dot com. Come and visit me. I've put as many resources on that website as I can. I blog every week, so please subscribe to my blog.

ot content on this site since: 2009

My books, the seven books I've written are available there. There's a page on there so you can check them out. I've imported my own podcast.

It's called Audacious Moves to a Billion and repurposing podcasts with the host's permission of course. Like this that I've done. It's another avenue for the host to get exposure.

It's on my homepage of my website and I clip it into smaller bite size according to certain subjects. It's just another way to consume the content. My favorite part of my website is my quiz. It's called the Be different or be Dead quiz.

And the whole idea is it's a fun thing. You can determine by filling out a questionnaire where you fit on the be different or be dead continuum.

Are you different or leaning towards the ultimate consequence of not being different, which is a truncation of mortality. It's a fun thing.

You can fill it out and it shows you where you might want to address some aspects of being different that you hadn't thought of before. My email is roy.osingmail.com I'm happy to have a conversation with anybody about any part of my work. It's actually interesting.

I have people who will come back to me and say, okay, this blog is all about the only statement, which is something I had to create to differentiate. And I've created it, Roy, I've drafted it. What do you think? And that leads to a awesome conversation. And it leads to a friend that I help.

And it's all pro bono as far as I'm concerned, because I'm not doing this for any other reason than to try and change the conversation out there. So come and visit me, subscribe to my blog, have a conversation with me, and come on the journey with me.

Freddy D: 00:33:32

Fun. We'll make sure that all that stuff is in the show Notes Roy, it's been a pleasure having you on the Business Superfans podcast show.

We could probably talk for hours on this stuff and we look forward to having you on the show again down the road.

Roy Osing: 00:33:44

Oh, I'd love to. And thanks for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

Freddy D: 00:33:47

Appreciate it. Thank you. Hey Superfan superstar Freddie D. Here.

Before we wrap, here's your three A playbook power move to attract ideal clients, turn them into advocates, and accelerate your business success. So here's the top insight out of today's episode. If your strategy isn't emotionally engaging and wildly simple, it will never get executed.

And with that execution, your vision dies in the dark. So here's your business growth action step. Create a one sentence strategic direction. Your entire team can understand that.

Aligned every department's daily actions to that statement. No exceptions.

If today's conversation sparked an idea for you, or you know of a fellow business leader who could benefit, share it with them and grab the full breakdown in the show notes. Let's accelerate together and start creating business superfans who champion your brand.