001: Scaling Up! 4 Steps to The Growth Discovery Process with Robert Bloom.

So our guest today is the one and only Robert Bloom. We'll be talking about strategy and finding your own inside advantage. Bob is the authority on this customer centric growth and he's the author of a couple great books on strategic differentiation. Bob was the US Chairman and CEO of Publicis Worldwide. He was managing a global team for the marketing and services company. But he got his start as an entrepreneur, like many of you, with a local US agency that he grew, took national and then sold and went on to lead the other company. Bob's helped develop strategies for companies like BMW, l', Oreal, Nestle, and even helped to launch Southwest Airlines, T Mobile, Juicy Juice brand and many others. So welcome Bob Loom. I understand you're in. Is it Lake Como?

Yes, it is Lake Como and it's hot as hell here. But I'm suffering, but I'm good.

Summer in Italy, we're still jealous.

Yeah, I'm suffering, but I'm having a nice glass of white wine. Now, I'm not sure that everybody agrees with all that, but that's what I'm doing. So just in the spirit of honesty. So I'm having a good time this evening and I appreciate your opportunity to be here and I hope that we have a successful exchange of views. Thank you.

Awesome, awesome. Well, so welcome. I want to start off with this secret that so many business leaders are missing when they try to develop strategy.

The critical thing is that most people start with a strategy, but it's one that A is in their minds and may not be contemporary at the moment. And the second is that the important thing that a strategy has to have, must have, is consensus internally. If you don't have consensus internally, that is all of your staff, whether you got three people or 300 people, if everybody doesn't agree that you're going in the right direction and have consensus for it, I don't care what you do, what you say, how much you exaggerate or don't exaggerate, you'll never get there. You have to have internal consensus. The other thing that is absolutely critical is differentiation. In this day and time, if you don't differentiate your brand, your company, your services, you won't make it. Competition out there is, it's all too mushy. Everybody's doing the same thing.

What I really got from the book and have used with my clients and I guess really all the Gazelles coaches use with our clients is that this notion that the differentiation, the thing that really makes you special is already inside the company somewhere. It's with your products, it's with your team, it's with your company, it's with something that you already probably have. It may not be developed yet, but the secret is within you.

That's absolutely true. You know, Bill, the reality is everybody's looking for wonderful thing out there instead of looking inside their company. Every business I've ever touched and saw and worked with over the years has been a company that has something unusual, uncommon, interesting inside the business, that makes the business work, that has made the business work, that it's built its. That it's built its client roster based on what that company is doing. But everybody wants to go off doing something else with other people, buying things, doing all those things and exaggerating. Look, you got something inside your business, capitalize on that. Everybody has something in it. We'll talk about that later. But everybody's got something inside their business that they could capitalize on and grow their business.

All right? So we're going to figure out how to find what it is inside your business that would be really valuable and catapult your growth. Let's start with a story you were telling me about in our preparation. Let's talk about BMW. Everybody loves that brand. Well.

It'S a brand that I share love for. This is just a funny, cute story. I got a call from Paris that said that the Germans were coming to the States and their purpose was to talk about how they could get more purchasers from the African American community. We have an African American group in Chicago. So they came over and they were going to help us with this thing. So they stood at. The Germans were there. There was two tall guys. I mean, they were big, and they were listening to everything. And then all of a sudden, this young guy who came over from Chicago said, you know, you really have something that has a lot of juice to it. You know, something that's. That you can. That's really. Is a. Branding is really important to you. And this German got up and said to him, let me explain. We don't sell our cars on how sexy they are. We sell our cars on how they function. Our customers want a car that is great to drive. Thus the driving machine was the slogan and still is the driving machine. So this. So he looks over at this kid and he's trying to say to him, the German guy, you know, yeah, I understand that all, but. But, you know, you really have to have a sexy brand. And this German got up and said to him, we could make the car run more quiet. We could make the car look sexier. Everybody is looking for something to change their company every year, and something hot and so forth. We don't want to do that. We want to sell our cars based on one simple premise. And this is the point, one simple premise. And that is that driving is unexcelled. We want everything to the driving machine. So this, the poor guy from Chicago wilted. I saw him kind of just, you know, shrinking down because he'd just been beat up by this German. And then the German looked at him and he said, but he said, if you want to come in the showroom and buy it because it's a sexy car, it's okay, too. You could pay. I've always been amused by that. You don't think the Germans have got a lot of humor? That was really a funny thing. And so we learned a big lesson there. One thing. Focus on one thing. That is the driving machine.

So how did that develop? What did you do with that? What did the execution look like?

It was an unusual situation in some respects and not unusual in other. First of all, they gave us a fantastic product, okay? Without that bill, you and I and everybody else that's listening and watching and whatever, we can't do anything. They gave us a great product. That product was so superior in one respect, and that is that it was a fantastic car to drive on the Autobahn, on the autostradas and so forth, and nothing. Everybody can copy that. But nobody said, this is the driving machine. So the point of this whole story is that you can stand for something. You must stand for something, Something that's different from other people. If you say, hey, this is a great brand, it's a really sexy brand, you're like everybody else. And what the Germans taught me and us at the agency was you can't be everything to everybody, but you can be important to one customer. And that is someone who is looking for a driving experience that excels. And so that's one thing that you can stand for. You can't stand for 10 things. You can't stand for four things, but you can stand for one thing. That's the message that I'd like to leave you with on this particular story.

It's great to think about what that one thing is that we stand for. And that goes to some of the tools that we use for sure, in figuring out what the core customer is, what the brand promise is, and then what all the things are. And I think we'll get into this when we talk about your four steps and how do you do it and how do you own it. What are all the things that go into fulfilling on that brand promise? Because you wouldn't go out and call a Yugo a driving experience, right?

That's right.

It's a certain kind of driving experience.

Very true. That's right.

Okay, good. So let's look at then why this is important to you or how you even got into this. Let's talk about your history for a minute and what the thread is of this core work of finding this inside differentiator over the years. Tell us your story.

It's kind of an interesting one in a small way. My father was a very strong person and he was convinced that I should be an engineer. An engineer is the farthest thing from my being. I could not have saw two years in engineering. And I said, I can't do this sort of thing. So I shifted into. I want to shift into petroleum, not petroleum engineering, but in how the world works from a standpoint of how the, the things work in the world. And I went to see this. I was in the United States Navy getting ready to go off, and I went up to see this chief petty officer. I said, chief, I'm going to change my major. I'm not going to be an engineer. And he looked at me, a grizzled old guy that he was, and he said, bob, he said, how would you like a foxhole in Korea? I said, well, let me rethink this whole thing. So I spent two years at the United States Navy as a naval officer, destroyer. And I was in the right ocean, in the Atlantic Ocean. I've had lots of luck in my life. And so it was a great experience. When I came back, my father's advertising agency had 12 people and 40 clients. And the first thing I thought to myself, wait a minute, wait a minute. Maybe we should have 40 clients and 12 people, not the other way around, you know. And so I wanted to change what we were doing. And then we had a lot of good luck. You mentioned Southwest Airlines. These two guys came in and said, we want to start an airline. And I said to myself, you got to be crazy. I mean, this brass headquarters, when they were existing, it's American Airlines headquarters. And that turned out to be Southwest. That gave us the push that we needed nationally, and then it gave us some traction in a lot of ways. And the worst experience I had was they asked me to come to a big meeting in the Wallow Astoria. And I look over and someone woman looks familiar, but I can't quite place it. And it's Gloria Steinem. And at that time, we had the girls in hot pants and that sort of thing. And she took. She shredded me in about 10 minutes about feminism and so forth, of course, which is a whole. Was a whole new thing at that point. And she took me down totally. She's a. She's an awesome lady. So I learned a lot about it, anyway, that you wanted to know. That's, that's, that's how I got into this whole thing. And that's how we grew the business. One step at a time. One, you know, one accomplishment at a time.

I remember well the early. Well, I guess I wasn't paying too much attention to him, but the early branding on Southwest was a little bit different imagery than we have today.

Yes, it was. That's another story. It'd take too long to tell you, but it was a very interesting experience. One of the most interesting. I've been really blessed by, by having clients with having real challenges. I mean, really big things to climb over. So I would say to you, coming back to this thing is, what do you have to do to achieve your growth goals? And let me just jump in and say you have to accelerate your growth. If you don't accelerate your growth is not the solution. You'll be dead before you're really successful. You've got to accelerate the growth, and that means you have to really take. You have to have the right strategy. For me, strategy is a beautiful thing. I love it. It's really a wonderful, great tool. And everybody wants to do it another way. It's very simple. Look, my whole premise is one thing. Simple. Keep it simple, make it not complex. Most people in my category make everything so complex and so difficult. You got to do all this, then you got to do all of that. I only have four steps, and each of the four steps are sequential. And each of the four steps are vitally important. Whether you like that or don't like it, it is one thing that you can do to accelerate the growth of your company. And it must start with the first element. There are four elements. The first element is who w H o who is your customer.

Okay, so say more about that. What do we mean by who? I mean, I can tell you. Oh, my customers. Female, 35 to 40. 45. Right. We know that she's educated. She makes about 120 grand a year.

No, you don't want to do that. Let me just challenge that. Yes, it is. But you can't talk to women 18 to 45 or whatever it is. What you have to do is to Talk to that human being. You must do. I'm looking right now at Bill Gallagher's photo. That's exactly what. No, seriously, I am on Skype. And what I'm saying to you is you must look at your customer the same way. What kind of dog does she or he have? What kind of car do they drive? These are human beings. You can't talk to a statistic. You can't talk to a large group of people, 18 to 45 or whatever it is. You must talk to this human being, understand his or her company's or personal needs from that standpoint. When you do that, you really understand your whole. That's who the customer is. And that's the very first step. And we had a fantastic success. Nestle was a client of ours. They bought a company called Juicy Juice and had no, no sales, but they had, they had a campaign for Juicy Juice which was all to little kids animated. And what was Juicy Juice? We looked at it very carefully. And what was Juicy Juice? It was a 100% juice product. So that's the point. 100% juice looked like, smelled like, tasted like others, but it was 100% juice. All kids love something that's sweet, that looks great, that's red, all those kinds of things. But this was 100% juice. So what did we do? We cut out the whole idea of talking to kids. They don't care what they drink. That's the end point. It's moms who want to do that. So we developed a whole campaign on moms and focused totally on one thing. A mother. Let me just go through this. A mother with children, young children. A mother with young children. Note how specific this is. A mother with young children who wants to give her kids healthy food and drink. So it's very simple. Keeping it. What does mom want? What does the driver want? What does he or she want? When you really get inside that person's head and heart. And heart, when you really know that and really study it, it's not something that you can do half hearted. And you got to really know that customer on a personal basis. Here's the suggestion. Just like I'm looking at this picture of Bill Gallagher. Look at your customer as if that person was right in the room with you. Talk to him in your head and talk to him or her. And that when you, when you get it, then you really get your hoot. The who is what the customer wants. And let me tell you what the customer doesn't want. He doesn't want ad people like the rest of us here, maybe, perhaps, or what they want is they want something that they need, want or desire.

Well, I think I did something like this with a company I worked with, and we were. We were working on a shift in update in the branding and a change in some of the product strategy. And we knew some of those demographic kinds of characteristics, but we wanted to go deeper. So what we did is we actually found an assortment of our core customers, or what we thought were the core customers. And then we sent people out to their homes. We said, hey, can we come meet with you? And so on. And we interviewed them, we talked with them about their experience with the products. We looked then around what's on their coffee table, what's in their kitchen? What does their closet look like? Are they neat? Are they messy? How are they different from everyone else? And we developed a very clear, vivid picture that our customer was not just like every other customer with this company. And it created a truly differentiated strategy. And it was really simple to say, this company stands for this and not for that. So we had this, like, there are other brands, magazines, things like that. We found adjacencies that we could use. We found customer lists. It was a huge strategic insight.

You know, congratulations. I mean, very few people do that. Let me also say in my system, it's very important. You want no more than 15 words. Yes, I know that's hard. And who. Who is the core customer? You can't go, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me explain to you what the core customer is. Think of a. An archery or gunnery or whatever you want to do. What's that rich red center right in the middle of that, of all of those circumference around them? What is it? And that's what your. That's your core customer. Yes. You have to have a lot of other customers. But let me explain. If you don't get the core customer, that person who wants, needs, has to have what you're offering. If you don't grab that person and make him your own, then you can't get those. All of those other concentric circles around there. That's what you need to do is go after the core customer in 15 words or less. It's not a word count if you're 18, if you're 16 or whatever. It just makes no difference.

But, you know, but you're going for clarity, not a paragraph.

You're absolutely right, but you nailed it. I mean, if it's not clear, you can do anything you wanted to say. Yes, well, of course we're doing that. You have to stand for this one thing.

Well, fewer words take more time, right? They take more work to get. All right, so let's talk about the what then?

What is each one of these? What is what your core customer wants, needs, desires. That's if you, if you don't make these two elements work together, that here's this core customer, you now know him or her, and you have to look inside your business. What is it about your business that that core customer wants, needs, desires? Is it a fur coat? Is it a, you know, is it. Whatever it is, what is it that that customer wants and needs from you? You have to make your. What has to be what your core customer wants, needs, desires. Once you do that, they have to link together just like a link fits. So you got a who that is, who is a core customer? What. What is it that you're going to offer them that's going to be very special? What do you do inside your business?

Well, how about an example of this from either maybe a service company or a B2B company or.

Sure, let's take the B2B company because it's an interesting one Australian client of mine who's really an interesting guy and he's in the shipping business. And he was really. The business was going through real tough times. And so actually I met him at one of Vern's things and so I worked with him for years. And what I said to him was, he said, you know, we really, you know, we really treat our customers well. We treat, we do everything for our customers and everything like that. I said, who doesn't say that? You know, who doesn't say that? Everybody says that. What do you do that's different? And he came up with thoughts, he and his team that came up with thoughts that I thought were really impressive. And they said, we'll never put your cargo on the top of the ship. We'll never do that because it's going to get damaged and it's going to. And it might cost you a little more, being truthful, but your cargo is going to get there. It's going to get there on time and it's going to do it because the way we work. And he called himself the shipping bloke. Sounds like Australia. Well, he is. And so he developed a whole series. Not me. He did. He got it. And he developed a whole series of way to communicate with customers about what does the shipping bloke say? And don't do this and do that. And by the way, your rates are going to rise in Six months and that sort of thing, he would tell them something valuable from that standpoint, you know, blah, blah is easy. But this guy really nailed it. And frankly, it really was not him. Once I kicked them in the butt, then they got into that. But they did it on their own. And he was in fact, a great shipping bloke.

So I got more specific and real and relevant to them over time. Awesome. All right, so let's move on to the how and the own it.

Okay, how is one that's is complex to a lot of people and it shouldn't be. None of these are. Each of them is three or four words. It's fine. And so you want a very few. So you want very few. 15 or less with who? 15 or less with what? Okay, what is it you're going to sell to who? And they got to be. They got to be. They got to be linked. It's just like a puzzle or anything like that. And you get to how. And that how is kind of an odd thing. And that somebody says to you, okay, I hear you. You know, you sound like you're a pretty good guy. You sound like you know what I want. Let me ask you a question. How do I know you're really going to deliver this? How do I really know that it works? Whether this is a medicine or whatever it is, how do I know that you're really going to take care of me? What is this guarantee you're talking about? So how is how you sell what to who? And you can't do that. You can't sell what to who unless you persuade or convince the, the customer that you're really going to do what you say you're going to do. Doesn't have to be fantastic. It just has to be, this is what we do. And that really links back, if you have time and you want to. Back to the one of the other stories that I mentioned to you earlier, and that is this the guy who was in the business of recruiting and he said to me, oh, we do the best job at recruiting. And I said, well, let me ask a question. Who doesn't do the best job? Who doesn't say they don't do the best job? And I encourage this guy who got it, really understood. They developed a whole system of how we deliver a better employee. And this gets into how a lot. How do I really know that that person is any better than anybody else? Well, Here are these 10 things that we do. And they went through these things. To be candid, I can't remember them. All. But they went through all these things that they do with these people, including, you know, the usual checks about this and that sort of thing. So when we deliver a candidate, we do it and it's our. You can bet that our person that we're going to send you is going to be very compatible with what you need and it's going to be a superior employee. Because here are the 14 things we do.

Well, we like to talk about Southwest a lot in the same vein and how they deliver low fares on a consistent basis and lots of flights is by having things like the same airplane all over the place and loading in a particular way and using their own reservation systems and not selling through other people and paying those commissions and so on. So I get it. All right, so let's look, we're starting to run out of time, but let's talk about how to own it.

Okay? Owning is important. Let me just say you could do all this work we talked about real quick, and you're going to fail unless you stand for it. You want your brand or company or whatever it is, whatever it is to stand for this. You have to own what you say you're going to own. So if you're going to look, let's come back to BMW again, they own driving experience because they don't talk about anything else. They own that. So what you want to be able to do is to own your what.

So I really hear commitment here.

Absolutely. You got to own that one and it's got to be yours and yours alone. And 15 words or less simple so that everybody knows it.

Consistent, committed, clear, like that. So simple. And we all know that it takes a lot of work to get simple. Thanks so much for sharing all that with us. All right, so how about some other resources? Where can people get more information? Information about your inside advantage and your latest book.

The latest book is called the New Experts, and it's all about the radical change that's happened in buying and selling. When Adam and Eve were there, they knew exactly everything and they had the power over you because you went up to see them about something and they could charge you anything they wanted to. Now they can't. The seller is not any longer in control. The buyer is in total control. Why? Because they've got the Internet. They know more. And most problems come when someone wants to buy from them and they get called on by somebody who doesn't know what they're doing. It's happened to all of us. I mean, there is no one listening that we don't find somebody across the counter or in, in a car dealership or whatever it is who really doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. And we know more because of the Internet. So this is the new experts. There are four steps to that, too. Very important. Four steps. Why? Because it'll tell you how to get three things. Repeat customers are the cheapest customers you can get. Don't spend your money on looking out for new people. Get repeat customers. And those are the kinds of things that you have to do.

Well, we'll go through the new experts in our next conversation and we'll save that. So the inside advantage, the new experts, Bob Loom, Bob Bloom Biz is the website and of course, through me or your Gazelles coach, if you're working with one of our coaches. Thank you, Bob. Thanks for sharing your experience time and your experience with us today. All the way from Lake Como, Italy.

Bill, thank you. And thank everybody for listening to my blah, blah, blah. I should have been. I should have listened to myself and be more condensed. So. But thank you for putting up with me tonight. I appreciate it.

Mille grazie bona sera.

So that's very good. Grazie. Ciao, Ciao.

Sa.