Be Different or be dead

April 22, 2024

How Being Boring Will Make You Extremely Successful

How Being Boring Will Make You Extremely Successful.

It seems that often businesses forget that it’s the simple things that breed success, like being boring and keeping their promises.

It’s a human thing: make me a promise, keep it and I’ll remember that you’re honest and I will continue to do business with you. And, I’ll mention you to others.

This strategy seems too simple, but many organizations actually fall short of following through with what they say they’re going to do to their customers.

This is a travesty, and it’s an important reason why businesses don’t achieve the results they expect.

What “being boring” means

— Deliver what you promise all day everyday.

Always keep your promises if you want to create a loyal base of customers.

— Always meet the customer’s expectations.
— Do the basic things right. You don’t have to be flashy.
— Pay attention to detail.
— Be consistent.
— Boring is an element of Humanity which is missing in so many organizations.

Why being boring is important for businesses

Being boring is an essential element of developing customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty = Deliver your Core Service flawlessly (getting it right all the time is “boring”) + Create a breathtaking service experience + Have a Service Recovery Strategy for when you screw a customer over (and you will).

If Core Service is NOT consistently delivered without a glitch, the loyalty-building process cannot be started.

But don’t assume that being boring on its own will create customer loyalty because it won’t.

BEING BORING IS A DISSATISFIER.

If you are boring—aka meeting customer expectations—they give you a “C” on your service Report Card because they expected that.
And trying to exceed expectations by improving your Core Service won’t work as a loyalty-building tactic because for Core Service the best you can do is earn a “C”.

Save your money and make investments in the Service Experience.

But if you are NOT boring and you break promises, you get an “F” on your Report Card, customers rant to others how crummy you are and storm away from you.

You cannot create a “gasp-worthy” service experience with anyone if you’ve broken your Core Service Promise (Missed or late delivery, lost luggage, defective product etc.)

How being boring gives a business a competitive advantage

Because being boring—a.k.a—delivering your Core Service flawlessly all the time—is the foundation of the loyalty building process.

“IF YOU’RE NOT BORING, YOU’RE DONE (OR SOON WILL BE!)”

You cannot make loyalty-building moves (creating delightful service experiences for people) when they’re angry because you’ve broken your Core Service promise to them.

There are few (if any) businesses that include “keeping promises” as a Core Value of their organization, and therefore have “boring” as a key strategic driver of how they behave when it comes to customer engagement. If you have it, you’ll be unique.

By focusing on making the delivery of your Core Service immaculate, you will likely be the ONLY One in your space with a leg up on architecting a loyalty-building customer engagement process leading to gasp-worthy serving experiences.

Few organizations pay attention to “The Customer Basics”. They are too busy fussing with razzle-dazzle technology and applying the tactic of the day—AI, App’s for this, App’s for that—which offer little strategic value in terms of differentiating themselves from their competitors.

The type leadership required to be boring

— Build a Boring Culture where keeping promises is a Core Value of the organization.

— Develop “How can I help?” Serving Leaders who identify and remediate the “pinch points” in your product or service delivery processes that prevent employees from keeping promises made to customers.

— Recruit and keep Frontline Focused Leaders who are constantly listening and responding to matters they raise regarding service delivery systems and processes.

— Have “Detail Freak” Leaders with an eye for small details. Delivery system breakdowns usually occur from small causes; you need leaders who understand what boring is, and are able to spot small friction points that get in the way of flawless delivery of Core Service.

How I was a boring leader in the company you took to A BILLION?

▪️We build a Service Strategy around “Promises”. It read…

“We are easy to do business with. We care.
We provide and support innovative quality solutions.
We make promises and always keep them.
If we fall short of our strategy, RECOVERY will be our #1 priority.”

▪️ Measure customer perception relentlessly.

▪️“Cleanse the Inside” program to eradicate friction and pinch points in delivery systems.

▪️My “Leadership By Serving Around” style allowed me to expose process flow issues.

▪️I held regular “Bear Pit” Workshops to discover Core Service breakdown points.

▪️We engaged customers in re-engineering Core Service processes rather than making the exercise an inside expert view of what was needed to make processes more effective from a customer engagement point of view.

▪️Established cross functional process owners with an owner for each critical service delivery process across all functional departments. I was able to establish “single

If you want to develop a sustainable base of loyal customers, BE BoRING.

Cheers,
Roy
My 100 Podcast Shows that will make your business and your career incredibly successful.

My Podcast Show Audacious Moves to A BILLION will share the specific Moves I made to achieve jaw-dropping growth in an insanely competitive internet business.

”The Audacious Un-heard of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES” is the latest in my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series.

• Posted 4.22.24 at 05:36 am by Roy Osing
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April 15, 2024

YOU do YOU. Why It’s Important. How To actually Do It

YOU do YOU. Why It’s Important. How To actually Do It.

“You do your thing and I’ll do mine.”

The statement implies that we will each do it a different way. Our own way.

The only thing missing is the notion of uniqueness. Is “our thing” really uniquely ours and no one else’s?

Are we truly the ONLY one who does it the way we do?

Or is it really YOU DO THEM in disguise?

This is an important question because we live in a world seeking popularity, to conform to the norms of the day.
To be politically correct, being careful to not step on the toes of someone else who seems to have more command of the narrative governing how one should behave than YOU.

The truth is, we rarely DO YOU! We may think we do, but we don’t.
We conform. We comply. We act according to a set of rules set by others. Heaven forbid we have an opinion that is different from “a marginalized” group in our society.

And when we do this we declare our individuality. This is fake! We’re not being individualistic, we’re being “herdaslistic”, joining everyone else who is afraid to break away from the shackles of conformance expectations.

It’s extremely important that YOU do YOU!
We need truly unique solutions to today’s challenges, not shrink wrapped boilerplates offered by custodians of popularity.

Here’s my playbook to DO YOU!

Play #1. Stop “Gargling Google”

Google is a great tool to discover someone else’s story. “How to” stories on how other people approach a problem and the solution THEY came up with are good learning sources.
But the problem is most people copy someone else’s story rather than discovering their own.

“Gargle and Swallow” Google is a DO THEM Move typical of a copycat. You become a member of the common denominator crowd.

“Gargle and Spit” Google, on the other hand, is a DO YOU! move.
You taste what others are doing, you suck every morsel of learning you can from their action, you decide on a different course of action and finally you Spit the Google play out.

Play #2. Put the textbook down

If everyone follows the same textbook rules and prescriptions, all that happens is the herd of sameness increases.
You won’t find your Special Sauce in a textbook; rather you will find the rules, algorithms, formulas and theories that everyone else uses.

Special Sauces come from stepping away from standard, “industry accepted” methods of doing things.

Special Sauces are the outcome of observing what the textbook says and doing something differently.

Play #3. Ignore Best in Class

Best in Class is a figment of some “expert’s” imagination. It’s a standard that someone with some level of academic credentials and presumed credibility says is the “right” thing to do.
Why on earth would you follow someone else’s prescription if you’re on the hunt to find the special YOU?
Crazy but most of the population does it.

I suggest you find someone or some organization who really sucks at something. Study them to discover how you might morph something they do to work for YOU!

Play #4. Avoid AI

And then there’s Artificial Intelligence which is being promulgated as the Magic Dust to solve the problems of the day.
Your clue to why I have several issues with AI is in the word “artificial”. Apart from the efficiency aspect of AI in the capability it has to process enormous amounts of data quickly, in the world of DOING YOU! AI is artificial in the sense that it relies on the opinions, work and results of others to produce an output that is nothing more than a super blend of the masses.

For example, if you want to write a blog post on “How to Develop a Brand Promise”, AI will create the post using information it gathers from sources on the internet by applying a predefined algorithm (written by someone who actually knows something about how to build a brand? Right? Probably not!).

The benefit: your post will be created quickly and expressed according to the language norms of the day (devoid of politically incorrect expressions and following basic English language protocol).

The drawback: the result will not be YOU! It will have ”rounded edges” of the many, not the Edges of YOU!
It will not offend anyone since the algorithm it uses is intended to avoid offending anyone. It will present no unique analysis or opinions; rather it will regurgitate a populace’s view of the topic.

To DO YOU! requires originality, audaciousness and creativity, not an artificial tool whose sole purpose is to aggregate common thought. AI is not the friend of YOU!

Play #5. Put your fingerprints on everything you do

Using any tool such as AI, crowdsourcing and population extrapolation is by definition YOU DOING THEM!
The only way YOU can do YOU! is to create something yourself,  ONLY YOU!

So, look at what the population says and…

▪️Do something DiFFEREnt.
▪️Go against the flow.
▪️Do a “right angle turn” to the path others are on.
▪️Disrupt common opinion.
▪️Don’t put your hand up and agree with what the herd is doing. Keep your Jan down and go find something gasp-worthy.
▪️Put your own twist to popular stuff.
▪️Be audacious and outrageous.
▪️Ask “How can I do this differently?” when confronted with a new challenge.

We need YOU to do YOU!

There are too many people out there who DO THEM!

The crowd is unimaginative.

The crowd is dull and boring.

The crowd will never create anything.

The crowd sucks (good thing I don’t use AI otherwise “suck” would have been deleted as inappropriate… HeHe.)

Cheers,
Roy
My 100 Podcast Shows that will make your business and your career incredibly successful.

My Podcast Show Audacious Moves to A BILLION will share the specific Moves I made to achieve jaw-dropping growth in an insanely competitive internet business.

”The Audacious Un-heard of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES” is the latest in my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series.

• Posted 4.15.24 at 03:44 am by Roy Osing
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April 8, 2024

What’s Wrong With Being “Number 1” in the World?

What’s Wrong With Being “Number 1” in the World?

Claiming that you’re “Number 1” at anything is not only misleading, it’s disingenuous.

What’s the definition of Number 1

Who measures the results among all contenders for the title?

Who decides on who gets the title? What are their qualifications to be the judge? Who decides they should be the judge? All contenders or just the claimant?

It’s easy to (disingenuously) claim you’re Number 1, but it doesn’t mean anything credible in terms of defining what separates one organization from another in the market.

Number 1 fits in the list of CLAPTRAP expressions that are (way too often) used to answer the question: “Why should I do business with YOU and not your competitors?”

Words like these dominate the competitive claims sky and render literally NO value in helping people choose one company over another: “better”, “best” and “leader”.

AND, Number 1 is one of the most NARCISSISTIC expressions out there.

”Number 1” is YOUR view of YOU.

How does that serve your customers?

It doesn’t.

It merely established you in the Number 1 herd of narcissists.

And it’s lazy marketing. It’s easy to say it when you have nothing concrete that makes you unique.

It’s hard work creating a unique competitive claim that is relevant and meaningful to the customers you intend to SERVE.

The way through the meaningless maze of aspirational thinking is to create The ONLY Statement…. “We are The ONLY Ones who….” to separate your organization from your competitors.

“You don’t want merely to be the best of the best, you want to be the ONLY ones who do what you do — Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

Cheers,
Roy
My 100 Podcast Shows that will make your business and your career incredibly successful.

My Podcast Show Audacious Moves to A BILLION will share the specific Moves I made to achieve jaw-dropping growth in an insanely competitive internet business.

”The Audacious Un-heard of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES” is the latest in my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series.

• Posted 4.8.24 at 05:10 am by Roy Osing
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April 1, 2024

5 Epic Ways to Grow the Value of Your Business

5 Epic Ways to Grow the Value of Your Business.

Are you focused on growing the value of your business?

You should be.

Working ON your business needs to take priority at some point over working IN it.

These 5 value-building Moves we made to create a BILLION DOLLAR organization had amazing results; they can work for you too!

#1. Differentiate your business from your competitors — Can value be created in your business if you are the same as everyone else in the markets you serve?

You need to be The ONLY ONE who does what you do.

#2. Focus on growing top line revenue — Revenue trends tell you how the market “feels” about the value you deliver.
Use it as the main indicator of whether or not you’re growing sustainable value in your business.

#3. Stop! doing yesterday’s relevance — You don’t have unlimited resources and you can’t afford to be spending time on activities that don’t add value to your business.
Whack! the stuff that isn’t on your strategy.

#4. Build relationships for long term growth; don’t chase short term revenue kicks — Set your sights on creating long term sustainable value; short term revenue bursts are fine but if you can’t maintain that level of performance over the long term they’re not value-building at all.

Put in place a relationship-building culture rather than one that focuses on sales.

Sustainable value—and growing gross revenue— is created from a customer base that is loyal to you and trusts that you will solve their problems/exceed their expectations over the long run.

#5. Execute first; plan second — Sure your plan is important, but don’t get mesmerized by it. Trying to get it “perfect”, whatever the hell that means.

While you’re trying to get your direction exactly right, your smart competitors are bypassing you because they’re executing their “imperfect” plan.

Spend 20% of your time to get your plan “just about right” and 80% of your time on how to execute it.

Cheers,
Roy
My 100 Podcast Shows that will make your business and your career incredibly successful.

My Podcast Show Audacious Moves to A BILLION will share the specific Moves I made to achieve jaw-dropping growth in an insanely competitive internet business.

”The Audacious Un-heard of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES” is the latest in my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series.

• Posted 4.1.24 at 01:51 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink