Audacious Execution: Roy Osing's Secrets to Building a Business with a Billion in Annual Sales

🚀 Ready to break the mold and skyrocket your business?

🎙️ Join host Amber Stitt on this episode of Pathways as she sits down with Roy Osing—former president, audacious leader, and author of Be Different or Be Dead. 

💸 Roy shares the real-world, battle-tested strategies that helped him lead a startup to $1 billion in annual sales—NOT by playing it safe, but by embracing boldness, loving humans (yes, really!), and smashing the rules that hold organizations back.

💬 Roy opens up about:

👩‍❤️‍👩 Why hiring "Human Being Lovers" (HBLs) is the secret ingredient to dazzling customer service.

👬 How embracing mistakes and turning “oops” moments into opportunities can create fiercely loyal customers.

⛷️ The power of being different (not just “better”) and how to carve your own lane in ANY business or corporate role.

👀 His “Only Statement” method: standing out in a sea of sameness.

♥️ The importance of passion, tenacity, and execution—why your mind suggests, but your heart gets things DONE.

📖 Real stories from inside the boardroom, front lines, and moments of epic recovery.

💪 Whether you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur inside a larger organization, or a leader looking for the edge, Roy’s insights and stories will inspire you to challenge conventional thinking and lead with bold authenticity.

📽️ To watch this podcast: https://youtu.be/Ws_iJ6QDP4I

🔗 To connect with Roy Osing:

📲 Website: https://www.BeDifferentOrBeDead.com

📲 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royosing

📲 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roy.osing

#Leadership #Entrepreneurship #RoyOsing #BusinessGrowth #BeDifferentOrBeDead #CustomerService #PersonalDevelopment #pathwayswithamberstitt #amberstitt

📻 Thank you for tuning in to Pathways!

🔗 Connect with Amber on Social Media:

• AMBER’S INSTAGRAM
• AMBER’S LINKEDIN
• AMBER’S FACEBOOK

📲 Be sure to visit Amber's website:

www.AmberStitt.com

And remember, let's take action today!!!

Transcript

Roy Osing [00:00:00]:
When would you ever get the president of a company having a conversation with you about loving human beings? And so I ended up coining the "human being lover" was kind of like my tag. So what do we need to provide dazzling customer service? We need a HBL. What's an HBL? And then the conversation would begin.

Amber Stitt [00:00:20]:
Oh, my gosh. Well, this is one of your elements to the creating billions of dollars, correct?

Roy Osing [00:00:25]:
Right on. I mean, it's so obvious. But that's an example for people who are kind of intrigued by the journey, but are kind of confounded by it. It's not about complexity. It's about simple things. And if you listen to the people who transact and engage with customers, if you really listen to them. And do what they tell you, okay? As a leader, do what they tell you, even though it may be against what you've been taught at your MBA school, just do it because they know more than your Prof. Okay.

Roy Osing [00:00:57]:
How do I know that? I got a billion in annual sales. That's how I know it.

Amber Stitt [00:01:02]:
Hello and welcome to Pathways. I am your host, Amber Stitt, and today we welcome Roy Osing to the show today. Welcome, Roy.

Roy Osing [00:01:10]:
Thank you for having me. I'm honored, Amber. Thank you.

Amber Stitt [00:01:12]:
Did you know that we're related? Did you know that?

Roy Osing [00:01:15]:
I did not know that. But I would not be surprised because the Viking race goes worldwide. And I recognize that in your eyes you have a Viking sort of posture about you.

Amber Stitt [00:01:26]:
But the last name Stitt, that's not really one of those that stands out. But Nabity is my maiden name, and I guess there's some Scandinavian in my blood. And we have cousins in Norway that I've never met. But my grandmother, she lost her cousin a while back, and she was talking about that the other day. I said, "Really? There's still more out there?" So one day I'll get over there.

Roy Osing [00:01:47]:
Well, you know what? And you'll love it. I mean, we've been back a few times, and I've taken my grandchildren as soon as they hit 11 years old. I took them on a cruise to Norway to show them where the trolls who came out into the light suddenly turned into stone. And they were mortified by that. And ever since, they've hated the sunlight. So I've left them with this in indelible etched picture in their mind that says stay out of the sun.

Amber Stitt [00:02:10]:
Yeah, that's funny, because I remember seeing there's gnomes that are kind of cute around holidays in the US, or tying back to some other time or country. But there were trolls sometimes sitting on the mantel at grandma's house and we're, "What is that thing?"

Roy Osing [00:02:25]:
Yes, and I have all sorts of them and my grandchildren have them and they picked them up when we took them there. Oh, and they all have names and they treasure them. They coveted them and they treasure them. And yeah, it's too bad I don't have one out in my office here, but I have one in my den in the house. And he's like a foot tall and he's got this huge nose and I call him Albert. And Albert takes care of me. He gives me guidance, he gives me his judgment, and he gives me a bit of levity and humor at the same time.

Amber Stitt [00:02:56]:
Well, I'm excited to have you on the show because I want to talk with you about the audacious, unheard of things you can do to just do business better. And did you develop this while you were a president of...I mean this is a former company you worked for and I don't even know what year that was. Was it over 40 years, or was it not too long ago?

Roy Osing [00:03:17]:
I left in '02. So I was fortunate enough to leave early and so I took the chance and yeah, so I've been out about doing my thing with my thing ever since and everybody thinks it's new. And that's kind of like a laugh for me. I have to chuckle every time somebody says, "Wow, this is really new stuff." I go, "No, no it ain't. I've been working with stuff for 40 years, it's not new. Problem is I have been relatively unsuccessful convincing you to join me in my journey."

Roy Osing [00:03:44]:
That's the truth. And so this sort of process and others I really welcome as a way to talk about some different things that you won't find in any other textbook but Roy's. And it's not based on solely on theory. It's based on what actually works in the real world. And that's a huge piece that's missing in the way we educate people who want to go into business and who want careers. There's a Roy's formula here that is so simple. When people hear, they go, "Did that really work?" And then of course I get the mathematicians, that want me to do a correlation analysis between inputs and outputs.

Roy Osing [00:04:21]:
And I go, "No, no. All I can tell you is the sum effect of all the silly things that we did was a billion in annual sales that you can trust."

Amber Stitt [00:04:30]:
So, okay, silly things, we're going to come back to that now. You have authored 7 books. Were you always tenacious? I heard you use that word in previous interviews. Or, you're big on outcomes and not just like poking at all these little microscopic details? Were you always like this or was this developed along the 40 years of just being in the business?

Roy Osing [00:04:51]:
Well, good question. I actually think my mother was the one that caused me to have the DNA that I have, because I can remember she was one of 12 in her family and she would tell me stories about dinner time was a bit of a chaotic fiasco because everybody was fighting, right? 12 kids fighting for their portion of the food. And so she would tell stories like that. And it never occurred to me until actually I started having conversations like I'm having with you that I realized, wow, I mean, she really had to fight for survival. She had to fight for relevance. She had to fight for attention.

Amber Stitt [00:05:25]:
I see.

Roy Osing [00:05:25]:
I do that. I do that in a different way. It's running through my veins. Like I don't suddenly wake up in the morning and say, "Wow, I'm going to be audacious." No, I just freaking am and that's it. It just exudes. And that's it. What I learned to do, though, is I learned to apply it in a way that actually added value to people and organizations and allowed me to achieve things that were recognized as being extremely high performing endgames.

Roy Osing [00:05:52]:
And so it's a channeling, if you will. What I've discovered is I'm the only one doing this stuff. I'm the only one that talks about goosebumps. I'm the only one that talks about killing down rules. I'm the only one that talks about cut the crap and all of those little things, right? Have a life of their own in driving performance in an organization. And the point I want to make with you, all the stuff we're going to talk about here, I didn't do because it, it was cool to do.

Roy Osing [00:06:17]:
I did it for one reason and that's because they contributed to top line revenue growth that eventually led us to a billion in sales. If it hadn't made a contribution to the top line, I wouldn't have done it. And so for everybody out there, it's not about being cool for the sake of being cool. It's not about being different for the sake of being different. It's about being different in a way that people care about and you get rewarded because your performance goes up and other people benefit. This is about other people.

Amber Stitt [00:06:42]:
You're saying anyone can do this if they try it?

Roy Osing [00:06:44]:
Yeah. Anybody can do this. But here's the thing. You have to believe that pain is a strategic concept.

Amber Stitt [00:06:51]:
Okay.

Roy Osing [00:06:52]:
You have to be prepared to go against the flow. You have to be prepared to be unpopular. You have to be prepared to get the hell out of the herd of common, conventional thinking to do something right that others haven't even imagined. And so that's the world that I'm talking about here. And it is not a world for somebody who wants it easy. It's not a world for somebody that says, "Hey, I'm entitled to that." It's not a world for people who want to work from 9 till noon, go to the dentist for the rest of the day and then get back to it the next day.

Roy Osing [00:07:26]:
No, it's.

Amber Stitt [00:07:27]:
Nobody wants to do that. No.

Roy Osing [00:07:28]:
Who would want to do that, Amber?

Amber Stitt [00:07:29]:
The dentist! No, I'm just teasing. Well, my mom and I say things like, "Suck it up, buttercup," but that isn't very nice to say, I suppose. But you got to take some action. And I told you, I like it when we're taking massive action. And that's where the magic...you just...things start happening when you do the work.

Roy Osing [00:07:47]:
Well, it's all about passion and emotion. It's not about the intellect, okay? And actually achieving results. And this is what a lot of people don't realize until you actually start having a conversation. Your mind actually doesn't achieve anything. Okay? Your heart and your soul gets it done. Your mind may suggest something, okay? But until the rest of you decides it's a good idea and you're going to turn that brave idea, or audacious thought into crude deeds, nothing happens. And the problem is that we teach people to think a certain way, but we really don't teach them how to execute, okay? We don't. There's nothing going on there.

Roy Osing [00:08:26]:
I mean, have you ever had an "Execution 101" course in your life? Other than this particular conversation?

Amber Stitt [00:08:32]:
Oh, no. Not unless you're literally going to find select few people that'll call it out. And you're paying to be in that club. There's like a small grouping of people.

Roy Osing [00:08:41]:
But you know what? The execution that I'm talking about is not kind of like an algorithmic function of what you do with certain input variables. It's completely different. It's like in the trenches stuff, okay? It's like being there with your people to help them. Asking them how you can help and doing it to make it easier for them to deliver value to end users. That's what it's all about. It's not about sitting in a boardroom talking to the chairman of the board. I used to get in all sorts of trouble because I would not attend certain meetings, and my CEO would say, "Roy, really, I mean, you need to be at these meetings. What were you doing?" And I said, "Well, I was with a client."

Amber Stitt [00:09:19]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:09:19]:
"You know, the client that gave us $5 million a year?"

Amber Stitt [00:09:22]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:09:22]:
I just made the judgment that that was kind of important to do. So part of it is you can get away with that thinking and that action, but you need to perform. If you're not delivering the results, then you get called, and rightly so. I was in the camp that did outrageous things, but nobody could criticize us because we got the job done. We got the job done. One way or the other, we got the job done.

Amber Stitt [00:09:47]:
Can you tell me one of your wildest moments? Was there ever a point where you're like, "I'm going to do this, but, gosh, I don't know..." Did you have a story like that?

Roy Osing [00:09:54]:
Every one of them. Everything I did was like, "Oh, my God, is this going to turn out?" And my test...seriously...

Amber Stitt [00:10:02]:
I'm just picturing Elon when he blows up...you know, some of these things are blowing up, and he's like, "Data, thank you." And you're like, "That's a lot of money, but hey..."

Roy Osing [00:10:08]:
Well, exactly, well there's always consequences. And by the way, you can't mitigate risk. You can't. Yes, you can. You can mitigate risk by keep doing this stuff.

Amber Stitt [00:10:19]:
Well, my brain goes insurance, but we're not talking about that.

Roy Osing [00:10:21]:
But to not do anything right, to play it safe, is probably the most risky thing you can do.

Amber Stitt [00:10:27]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:10:28]:
What I've learned is you got to have to be on the edge. You have to be on the edge leaning into what people care about and doing things differently in order to actually satisfy what they crave. The world is not about needs anymore. It's about cravings. And my view of marketing has always been, I want to discover what Amber craves. I think I can figure out pretty easy what she needs. But if I start to play into that "needs space", there's a lot of other competitors, and it's probably price sensitive. But if I can figure out what she craves...

Amber Stitt [00:11:00]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:11:01]:
And I'm the only one that plays into that space, she's going to pay me lots of money to do that, and I'm going to have very few competitors. So the algorithm, the model for marketing, has changed completely, at least for me. It changed completely. And the sweet spots we went after were based on salespeople trying to figure out what people craved. I didn't really care about their internet demand. What I wanted to know is, what do they crave? Where do they go on vacation? What kind of family values do they have? And the story, I will tell you, if you want, is a story of an absolute customer service screw up. Where we had this huge customer in downtown Vancouver, and we cleverly put them out of business for five hours, right? Network went down, huge business. I know the CEO, Michael, gives me a call, and he's just ranting at me.

Roy Osing [00:11:51]:
I said, "Okay, Michael, I will take care of this," So I'm in recovery mode, and I have a recovery strategy. So what we ended up doing, to make a long story short, because we don't have two hours, I ended up going down to see this guy with my vice president of sales, okay? And I handed him a check for $30,000. The lawyers went absolutely apoplectic when I wanted to give them money, right? So I give him the $30,000 bucks. And I said, "Michael, I'm so sorry we screwed you over. It was bad news. So sorry. Here's a $30,000 check, but I don't think it's enough. But do you want it?" He takes it.

Roy Osing [00:12:24]:
And you know what he says to me? "That's okay, Roy. We all make mistakes." But I didn't stop there. $30,000 bucks. And then I said, "And I have a gift for you." So I turns around, my vice president of sales gives me this box. You're too young to remember old candlestick retro phones that we had back in the day, right? That would sit on somebody's credenza and they would be red colored, and they were the coolest things to look at. He'd always wanted one of these things.

Roy Osing [00:12:51]:
This is what he craved. Okay? How did I know? I got the information from his EA, "This is what Michael always wanted, but he was too cheap to buy it." Out comes the gift. He opens a gift, and I gotta tell you, he just about fell over. He was so excited about this phone. He says, "The best thing that anybody has ever done for me." So the story is over.

Roy Osing [00:13:15]:
A screw up. I landed the most loyal, highest quality referral that the world has ever known. Because this guy told a story at least a million times and continued to buy lots and lots of communication services from me. And I started to get requests to go out and speak to groups about what I called "service recovery." You know, fixing it fast and doing the unexpected. Because I actually perfected that in the organization, anyway. Yeah, that was a screw up story. That was remarkable in my view.

Roy Osing [00:13:45]:
And I still get goosebumps when I think about seeing him open that box.

Amber Stitt [00:13:48]:
That's a way to pay attention to details, just leaning into the issue. You're not running from it, moving into it.

Roy Osing [00:13:53]:
But we've all been taught not to make mistakes. And the reality is what we need to be taught is, it's a fallible world, there's going to be mistakes. I don't care how much AI you chuggle, I don't care any of that stuff. There will be mistakes. The real critical thing is do you understand the power of an "oops"?

Amber Stitt [00:14:13]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:14:13]:
If you understood the power of an "oops", you would have a strategy in place, right. To leverage that mistake, that screw up into creating a more loyal customer who quite frankly forgets the mistake you made. And all they remember is what you did to remedy it and blow them away. That's the kind of stuff, Amber, that's the stuff that's the grist for my mill. That's what I learned that you will not find anywhere else other than "The Audacious, 'Unheard of Ways' I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES".

Amber Stitt [00:14:43]:
Awesome. Okay, so you've talked about entrepreneurship and a lot of times people think that you just have to start out your own company to have an entrepreneurial mind. But I believe after listening to you talk, it is not always true that you have to be out there being a business owner, you talk about it from within an organization. I think sometimes people skip that, even more now than ever we see people that "I'm an employee" and you're just underneath the corporate brand. But I don't think you feel that's true. And am I on point with that? You want to talk about that a little bit?

Roy Osing [00:15:19]:
Yeah, very definitely. We all have limitations. We all have boxes to run around in. We always have degrees of freedom. The real issue for me is are you making the choices within your limitations that are going to add value to what you're there to do? In other words, ho hum, I know you've got a problem

Roy Osing [00:15:39]:
I don't care. What I want to see is I want to see some tenacity and grit to actually do something with the position you're in and you can do it like a simple little thing I talk about, look, you need to be different. "Be Different, or Be Dead". It's a statement about differentiation. The world, quite frankly, is mediocre in terms of defining how they're special in a way people care about. By the way, it's not about narcissism because I don't care about the color of your hair. I don't care about your pronouns. I don't care about your sexual preferences.

Roy Osing [00:16:07]:
What I want to know is, what are you going to do that's unique in satisfying what people care about? That's all I want to know. Anybody can do that. Anybody can do that. All you need to do is care about caring and serving other people. And so I'm always asked, "Well, how do you start?" Okay, simply, when you get up in the morning, okay, you ask yourself the simple question, "What is the one thing that I could do differently today?" Just one thing. And it doesn't have to be big. It could be, "Well, I'm going to take the garbage out, but I'm going to do it via downtown." I don't know.

Roy Osing [00:16:44]:
It could be a silly idea. The point is, you need to teach your mind. I call it "my be different lens". Every time I'm confronted with a challenge, it's like, automatic for me. I ask myself the question, "How am I going to do this differently in a way that nobody else has thought about and deliver what people care about?" That last piece is really important. I'm going to deliver what you crave, Amber, in a way that will surprise you and nobody else has figured it out. That's the challenge. And hell, anybody can do that.

Roy Osing [00:17:14]:
Regardless. If you're sitting in a culture that doesn't encourage innovation, you can be innovative. You can be that person. And the interesting thing about it is that's the virus you want to spread. Because once you start behaving that way, other people will notice and go, "Huh, what's Amber doing? She's rocking it. She seems really happy. People love her.

Roy Osing [00:17:38]:
I want a piece of that." And all of a sudden, cultures change over time.

Amber Stitt [00:17:43]:
Yeah. And that's where I think when I'm mentioning magic happening, you're seeing it's not being narcissistic. I said, "Is this always been a thing for you? Like, I just. I am tenacious. I wake up and we're doing audacious things." I remember being in a legal office and, "Oh, you're so inquisitive, Amber. You're so curious." And I was annoying to some.

Amber Stitt [00:18:00]:
But fast forward into my 40s, I have a lot of partners and groups that want my big energy. And sometimes it's not always well received. So having some awareness, it's not just about, like you said, IQ. It's maybe that paying attention to your surroundings and putting it where it needs to be at times, but celebrate who you are. And it's not always personal branding inside a company if you're standing out and making moves. It's like if you're always acting with integrity, of course, and being ethical, but then pushing that big idea. And you might be kind of lonely in that march into the next big idea because not everyone's going to understand it.

Amber Stitt [00:18:36]:
But you never know who's watching. And it does make a difference. And I know that once I saw this, I started trusting it. I had more confidence.

Roy Osing [00:18:44]:
Yeah. And look at. It's about gathering what I call an army of advocates. Okay. This whole be different journey is a tough one because you won't be understood, you won't be supported. I had enemies like you wouldn't believe trying to shoot me down every time he turned around. And I forgave them for that as I left them in the dust.

Amber Stitt [00:19:04]:
Right.

Roy Osing [00:19:04]:
Okay so...

Amber Stitt [00:19:05]:
I didn't really notice you back there.

Roy Osing [00:19:08]:
Oh, there you go. Can't see you! But it's the belief that eventually the process will yield the kind of results that you want. The logic is so simple because you're playing into a space that isn't crowded. You're playing with a space that nobody else does. And so you know, it's painful enough, but it's the rewards. If you keep going at it, the rewards are there to be had. When people tell me that they can't succeed by doing this, what they really say to me is, "I don't care enough.

Roy Osing [00:19:37]:
I'm lazy. I don't want the pain. I want to be popular." This is not a popularity contest, this whole "Be Different, or Be Dead" thing, it's just not. Because you will attract attention, but it will not be the popular kind. And you don't want to be popular anyways.

Amber Stitt [00:19:52]:
Yeah, well. And I believe that that formula you're talking about, I don't know that you ultimately say this is the end result, but when you do this work that is potentially painful, what do they say, "You can't make diamonds without pressure." There's freedom in that final kind of output there where you get to decide how you want to be. And I know you talked about that, too. And you talked to me about this boat you would go out on for 20 years. I'm guessing that was a choice because you've learned how to put the energy where it needs to go, and scale. But, I mean, you had a choice there, of how you want to live.

Roy Osing [00:20:24]:
I don't know whether it was a choice, but I'm kind of driven by context. And so in my life and my career and my business, I was always the kind of person that would never pay much attention to a tactic unless I was able to legitimatize the tactic within a strategic context. But I would always start out by, "What are we trying to do here? What do we want to be when we grow up?" And I had to develop what I call the strategic game planning process, my own planning process that enabled execution in order to do that. But once I had locked and loaded on that, every single thing I did was homeomorphically, there's a math term, driven to that strategy. I mean, I call it "chasing yummy." So if you want to go outside your strategy, you're "chasing yummy," right? It feels so good to do, but probably you should spit it out is what you should do, because it's not yielding any strategic advantage. I didn't have a choice other than the means to the end. And what I used as a means to an end were frontline people, people that actually knew what they were doing in an organization who were close to competitors, who are, more importantly, close to the customer.

Roy Osing [00:21:35]:
And so programs like "Killing Dumb Rules", which basically is all about expunging the rules in your organization that customers hate. And all it does is create de-dazzling moments and disloyalty. That's really complicated, isn't it? But the people who could do that, the people who were causing pain, were the people who actually had to say "no" all the time. And they were the reinforcers of the dumb rules.

Roy Osing [00:22:00]:
And so what I would do is I would be guided by their advice, "Can you tell me 10 or 15 dumb rules?" "Oh, I can give you 100, Roy. I can give you 100." So we listened to them, and we had dumb rules competitions. We had dumb rules award programs. I would send people on vacations because they identified the stupidest rule we've had as judged by the leadership team and the customers themselves. Because I used a lot of customer advocacy kinds of techniques to do it.

Amber Stitt [00:22:31]:
Nice.

Roy Osing [00:22:31]:
But those ideas, I tagged them that way, but they came from people who actually knew how to run the business. And there's lots of them. And the problem was we don't listen to them because they always say, 'Well, I can't do that because of them.' And they point upstairs. So what they're really saying is, "I'm not important. I don't have a voice. They won't listen to me. I'm sorry.

Roy Osing [00:22:51]:
If it were me, I'd do things differently." Because they really care about you, but they're in this straitjacket. And so the choices I made really were all around, what kind of resources do I need to do what the front line tells me to do?

Amber Stitt [00:23:04]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:23:04]:
Wasn't complicated. It didn't start in an oval office. It started on the front line, on the coal face between employees and customers. And the goosebumps thing was another one that just actually did come out of space for me. I'm into hiring human being lovers, right? So one of the tactics of providing superlative service experiences, I reasoned, and it was a very complicated thought process, I reasoned that in order to deliver what I would call "gasp worthy service experiences," you need people that actually like homo sapiens.

Amber Stitt [00:23:41]:
Even more now than ever. Because everyone can tell when there's a ChatGPT email coming their way.

Roy Osing [00:23:47]:
Right, I know, but..so what I did is I figured, okay, what I need to do is identify these people when they're born, right? I need to get them at birth. Because this is not a training issue. You can't train people to love people. You can train them how to have a smile in their voice, or grin, but you can't teach them, right? So I say, okay, it's a recruitment issue. How can I recruit people that love human beings? Now I realize I can't go around to nurseries in hospitals and try and tag them at birth, because if I could, I would have done that.

Amber Stitt [00:24:17]:
Do not clip the tag on the baby.

Amber Stitt [00:24:20]:
No, on their ear.

Roy Osing [00:24:21]:
No, don't do that. So I came up with this notion called "Hiring for Goosebumps". So I would be involved in the interview panel of hiring people, which was kind of intimidating for the potential candidate, but it was also kind of intimidating for my leadership team that sat in the room, that all I wanted them to do is listen to how I did it, learn how I did it, and eventually I'll let you do it yourself. Anyways, I'd say, Amber, you want a job? That's great. First question is, "Do you like human beings?" And you would go, "Of course, I do." You'd kind of lean back. And I know what you were thinking. You'd be thinking, "Okay, this is a trick question."

Roy Osing [00:24:56]:
I think I know the right answer, and I have no idea where he's going with this. So you would say, "Mr. Osing, yes, I do." And I said, "Okay, that's good. Now, what I want you to do is I want you to tell me a story. I want you to tell me a story that would prove to me that you love human beings. Okay?" So what happened with that story is one of two things.

Roy Osing [00:25:16]:
The person that kind of intellectually got it but didn't really like people, they would tell you a story that would leave you cold, right? It was just so superficial. It's so phony. Easy to spot, show them the door. But the person who had this stuff running through their veins, this innate born with desire to serve others would tell you a story...I get goosebumps just thinking about it, okay?...Would tell you a story that was so rich and passionate with emotion and just carried the notion of serving and empathy, it left you with goosebumps. I got them right now, okay? Because I can remember some of these things. I would hire that person on the spot and they go, "Really?" And I go, "Yeah, I'm going to teach you what an Internet service is all about, right? What I can't teach you is how to love people. You have that.

Roy Osing [00:26:04]:
Naturally you are going to take us to where nobody has been." So that got known as the "Hiring for Goosebumps" recruitment process. Audacious move number whatever the heck it was. And people kept saying to me, "Does that really work?" What they're really saying is, "That's not in any HR manual." In fact, I had a podcast host that got so upset with me about this, she canceled the rest of the show just because it was so off the wall. Because what she did is she started quoting back to me all the reasons in the textbook that would prove that that wouldn't work.

Amber Stitt [00:26:34]:
Well, that's weird. Why would you need to be so resistant?

Roy Osing [00:26:38]:
Totally resistant. That's what I call juvenile academics. And they're running all over the place, Amber. They are. I mean, they're just a species unto themselves, but that's another good one. And people loved it, by the way, when would you ever get the president of a company having a conversation with you about loving human beings? And so I ended up coining that. Human being lover was kind of my tag. "So what do we need to provide dazzling customer service?" "We need HBLs."

Roy Osing [00:27:05]:
"What's an HBL?" Then the conversation would begin.

Amber Stitt [00:27:07]:
Oh, my gosh. Well, this is one of your elements to the creating billions of dollars. Correct?

Roy Osing [00:27:15]:
Right on. I mean, it's so obvious. But that's an example for people who are kind of intrigued by the journey, but are kind of confounded by it. It's not about complexity. It's about simple things. And if you listen to the people who transact and engage with customers, if you really listen to them, and do what they tell you.

Roy Osing [00:27:36]:
As a leader, do what they tell you, even though it may be against what you've been taught at your MBA school, just do it because they know more than your Prof. Okay? How do I know that? I got a billion in annual sales? That's how I know it. Boom!

Amber Stitt [00:27:54]:
And frankly, back to some of the conversations we've had of just reading it and not really living it. If someone else is not putting out the billion, the million, or just having the success themselves, you probably shouldn't be taking their advice, period.

Roy Osing [00:28:09]:
Well, yeah. And I've got a whole piece on mentorship that is really important to me. It's like, I believe that your best mentor should be an MBA, but I don't mean MBA in the way everybody thinks about it. It's Master in Business Achievement. So what you need to do is find those nuggets out there in the world of people that have been absolutely brilliant on taking an idea, whether it be an audacious idea, or kind of like almost an audacious idea, and making something out of it. Execution, implementation rules the world of audacity. It just does.

Roy Osing [00:28:47]:
It's not about the thought. And yet the world is skewed to the left brain. It is not skewed to the right brain where the passion exists and execution happens. And so mentoring for me when I talk to people is, "First of all, thanks for talking to me because I am an MBA. Good on you for making the right selection."

Amber Stitt [00:29:09]:
Can I put that in my signature block?

Amber Stitt [00:29:13]:
Do you think I can?

Roy Osing [00:29:14]:
But it's trying to get people sort of used to the fact it's not the number of initials behind the person's name that makes them a good mentor.

Amber Stitt [00:29:21]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:29:22]:
Because that's rooted in intellect. And I don't denigrate that. This is not about denigration of that. It's about saying it's not enough.

Amber Stitt [00:29:28]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:29:29]:
It's not enough to create magic in the world. It's not enough to create remarkability. It just isn't. There's another piece that somehow we need to inculcate in the way people think and the way they do things. And that's the stuff that I play in.

Amber Stitt [00:29:45]:
So those are one of those pieces that you teach about how to differentiate your business. If you're incorporating this from the ground up and everyone understands it. There's a vibe there, there's a culture, there's an energy. And that's going to help the customer. The client's going to see that, they're going to feel it.

Roy Osing [00:30:01]:
Yeah well, and that's a good issue to bring up, too, because it's one of the biggest problems that I see in CEOs of startups, is when they start, they typically don't spend enough time up front asking themselves the question, "How is my idea different from every other idea out there?" So they get mesmerized by technology and a solution and they think that's all they have to do. And they wonder why they're in the 10% of startups that die within the first 36 months. They don't take the due diligent time to actually do the differentiation work up front. So I had to create this idea called the "Only Statement". It's not about whether you think you're better, or best, or number one, because all those expressions are expressions of narcissism. It's what you think you are. It's not what anybody else thinks you are.

Roy Osing [00:30:53]:
I call it claptrap. So I go through claptrap aspirations, copycats, and narcissists. All of those categories yield to undifferentiation. So the world, unfortunately, is right in the middle of undifferentiation. So my solution to that is what has worked for me for 40 years. It's called the "Only Statement". Really simple. You don't want merely to be the best of the best.

Roy Osing [00:31:14]:
You want to be the only ones who do what you do. The only ones. It's binary. It can be observed. It either exists, or it doesn't. It can be measured. And so what's happening is startup CEOs haven't been coached on that unless we've had a conversation and I've had a chance to work with them. And so they come out with this belief that the technology will sell itself and they will claim that it's a better technology.

Roy Osing [00:31:40]:
And of course, what they find is the exact opposite is true, that there's a whole bunch of technology out there. Technology, by the way, doesn't differentiate squat.

Amber Stitt [00:31:49]:
And that's kind of where the AI comment, too, there's uses and it's helpful. There's solutions. There's solutions, great, but that's not what we're talking about because that's not going to last long.

Roy Osing [00:31:58]:
I mean, it's all very well to use technology as a means to an end. But you better have the end figured out, and it better be unique, and you better be the only one doing it in a way people care about.

Amber Stitt [00:32:08]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:32:09]:
And so what I try and do is say, "Lookit. Stop. You're just burning cash. Let's take a step back and create a strategic game plan for your business," which we can do in 48 hours, by the way. Easy peasy. Well, it is with me. I'm not really a facilitator. I'm dragging the content out of your head, and I'm massaging it in a way that I know will work.

Roy Osing [00:32:29]:
So some of them say, "Yeah, okay, let's do that." And we've had wonderful success. Others say, "Well, I'm not really comfortable with that." That's fine. You do your own thing. And we'll see you in the mortality line at some point, I'm quite sure. Because if you're not different, you're dead. Or soon will be, which is another line that I've got.

Roy Osing [00:32:45]:
And all you have to do is look around at all the businesses that have gone out of business. Look Amber, they don't go out of business because they have a cost problem. They go out of business because they have a relevancy problem. And the relevance is because they continue to believe that technology will do it for them, that being better will do it for them. And unfortunately, customers are too smart for that now. They're too powerful, and they can see through you. But if you deliver to an "Only Statement"...

Roy Osing [00:33:13]:
Let me give an example. I just did some work with this company that came to me. Wonderful young man. He's in the lawn maintenance business. And he says, "I'm just not getting any growth. I cut lawns, I clean up the stuff, et cetera. And my business isn't growing. Roy, can you help me?" I said, "Sure." So I took him through the process, and we got to defining.

Roy Osing [00:33:32]:
I call it the, "Who do you want to serve?' Which is your target customers, and we take a deep dive and say, "What do they crave?' So what he decided is he's going to go after homeowners associations. "Okay, what do they crave?" Well, what he discovered is they craved a lot more than just lawn cutting. And I said to him, "Well, what if we built a business? What if we built your business around being the only one that offers customized property development solutions to homeowners? What if we did that?" And they go, "Whoa!" Boom! So right away, we reframed their business. It wasn't about cutting lawns at a higher level. It was about defining who you need to be in order to claim that you're the only one that does it. So you understand where we're going with that reframing piece? Nobody does.

Roy Osing [00:34:19]:
And I had another client that thought he sold boats, and he ended up being in the business development business. Whoa. How did that happen? And of course, his anchor, probably a bad choice of word, was a boat. So the point is getting people starting on the right foot and even getting them to take a step back, take a deep breath, and apply 48 hours to their business. That's my challenge, is to try and get people to do that.

Roy Osing [00:34:51]:
And when it happens, it's remarkable. I feel so good at night when I've been able to help somebody break through the mediocrity that's out there of lack of business value proposition clarity, which is really what it is.

Amber Stitt [00:35:05]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:35:05]:
Yeah, it makes me sleep well.

Amber Stitt [00:35:07]:
Awesome. Now, I know I have gone to your website, but I want to make sure you tell everybody how to find you, because you have a number of things to digest, read while also working with you for those 48 hours. So can you share a little bit about that and how you can help?

Roy Osing [00:35:22]:
Sure. Well, I have a website, BeDifferentOrBeDead.com. So come visit. It's a friendly place. I tried to put as many resources in there as I could. I've been working on this stuff since '09, when I wrote my first book called "Be Different or Be Dead, Your Business Survival Guide". And so there's the page that I blog every week, literally. So there's a lot of content on my stuff.

Roy Osing [00:35:43]:
So, if you're curious about what goosebumps are all about, there's probably at least 5 or 6 blogs in there, and so you can go in and search it. There's also pages on my book so you can get an indication as to what's there if you wanted to buy one, that you could do that there, as well. I've also got access to the podcasts that I do, actually, so I'm guesting for wizards like yourself, but I'm also trying to learn how to do it myself by actually doing it. So there's that on there. There's a page that I've just started talking about recently called "Thoughtful Remarks". And what I tried to do there is capture what folks are saying about how they felt about the information, which I thought might be useful to try and have people lean more into this.

Roy Osing [00:36:24]:
And the other thing is, I'm totally approachable. Hopefully you've been able to notice that.

Amber Stitt [00:36:29]:
I can validate that.

Roy Osing [00:36:32]:
I've got an email address. It's roy.osing@gmail.com and hey, you know what? I have people emailing me now saying, "Hey, Roy, I heard about your conversation with Amber, about the 'Only Statement', and here's mine. What do you think?" Yeah, come on. How miraculous is that?

Amber Stitt [00:36:50]:
Yeah.

Roy Osing [00:36:50]:
And so please take advantage of me. I'm here to be had.

Amber Stitt [00:36:54]:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I just need to get some time to really craft some of this. So we're going to make some time so I can put some of your nuggets to work. I'm ready.

Roy Osing [00:37:04]:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity, really. I honor the privilege of being able to speak with you and your audience. I really do.

Amber Stitt [00:37:12]:
We so appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pathways. For more information about the podcast, books, articles, the blog, and so much more, please visit my website at: www.AmberStitt.com And remember, let's take action today! Thank you for listening!