The Frontline represents the membrane between the customer and the internal ‘guts’ of a business. The Frontline represents the company’s brand, its values and strategy. And yet the Frontline rarely gets the leadership attention it deserves. They remain at the bottom of the organization chart, wrestling with the imperfections of the internal machine and somehow turning a ‘dirty’ inside into customer engagements that produce healthy financial outcomes. In this episode, I discuss why Audacious Leaders dedicate copious amounts of their personal time to help Frontline people, rather than constantly taking direction from their boss. We didn’t achieve A BILLION IN SALES by spending my time in the Boardroom or the CEO’s office. We achieved breathtaking performance because our Frontline folks executed our strategy with flawless precision. I focused on finding out what was getting in their way and helping them do more of what was working and less of what wasn’t. I will show you how to turn your Frontline team into an unbelievable force that is feared by your competitors and loved 🥰 by your customers.

Building an effective strategic plan for most businesses is typically a challenge. The process can be time consuming, expensive and is based on traditional academic planning principles aimed to define on paper a successful end game. Traditional planning techniques produce a theoretical outcome which, because it’s textbook based, business leaders believe will work. In this episode I respectfully disagree with traditional planning methods and offer my Strategic Game Plan—SGP—process as a proven alternative that was instrumental in helping me take an internet startup organization to A BILLION IN SALES! I will break down my planning Move for you and will show you how to simply and inexpensively build your plan in 48 hours! And I’ll share the success stories of others.

Branding today is focused on what businesses PRODUCE as demonstrated by this typical brand statement: “I help individuals reassess their life choices to discover their true paths to success.” Whereas claims like this might be useful in defining what the organization delivers, they offer little value in telling someone how the organization is different from their competitors and why they should be the supplier of choice. Current branding methods are unhelpful to people looking for reasons to buy from one company over another. In this episode, I will show you how to build a brand that stands out from your competition and convinces people to buy from YOU and no one else. And I will share my Audacious Branding Moves that will make you the ONLY ONE who does what you do and will drive revenue performance you can only imagine.

Most organizations focus on delivering what their customers NEED. The problem is, competition in the ‘NEEDS’ space is fierce; low prices are the main emphasis with the impossibility of any business achieving any meaningful differentiation via-a-vis their competition. In this episode I explain why delivering what people NEED doesn’t raise eyebrows; it doesn’t build customer loyalty and it’s not really effective in separating one organization from another in highly contested markets. If you want to stand out and be noticed in a way people CARE about, look for ways to SURPRISE! them. Give ‘em what they DON’T expect or need. It’s a proven MOVE I used to build a raving Fan base enroute to A BILLION IN ANNUAL SALES. And it will work for you!

A ‘Dumb Rule’ is a rule or policy that customers HATE; it is used to control customer engagement and not enable it. Dumb Rules create internal friction in an organization that prevents smooth fulfillment of what customers need and want; they make it impossible for the customer to get their desires satisfied in an easy way. And they force the customer to leave and find another company that is friendlier to do business with. In this episode, I present my ‘Cleanse the Inside’ Moves that successfully increased the viscosity of my organization to deliver high levels of performance that delighted customers and kept them with us. ‘Dumb Rules Commitees’ were formed and successfully eliminated the policies that did nothing but annoy people and tempted them to leave.

Everyone seeks perfection in business and in life. We aspire to be ‘perfect’ in everything we do. How is that even possible in a world that is imperfect? And who determines what’s perfect and what is not? Today’s environment is characterized by words like ‘uncertain’, ‘unpredictable’, ‘volatile’ and ‘chaotic’, with constant change as its theme. So perfection-seeking is an impossible dream! In this episode, I discuss why it’s crazy to spend time trying to achieve perfection and why success in my experience is all about trying things FAST. My success in taking a startup to A $BILLION depended on being IMPERFECT FAST; constantly trying new things, learning from each try, and moving on.

Every business seems to put an extreme focus on attracting NEW customers. New customer acquisition programs are ‘sexy’; give-aways to get people to leave their current suppliers and join another team are prolifically offered despite the added costs involved in providing the tokens offered as bait. Forgotten in all this hoopla is the existing loyal customer who is ineligible for the Killer Deal, but who has paid handsomely for the products and services they’ve received over many years. They get NO new deal. They get NO respect. In this episode, I share the marketing Moves I made to grow customer loyalty by offering special deals to EXISTING customers FIRST, and why offering special deals to attract new customers makes little economic sense.

What’s the first thing most people do when confronted with a challenge or a problem to solve? They ‘Gargle Google’! They look for how others—Best in Class—have addressed the issue and then they copy it. Google Garlers call this being innovative and creative, but it’s NOT. Copying others merely increases the ‘herd of sameness’ by one. In this episode I discuss why Claptrap, Aspirations and Narcissism pervade the landscape of competitive differentiation to the point where ‘Un-Differentiation’ is really happening, leaving people with no clear idea of how one business is different from another. I share my solution to this dilemma which is to determine how you can be the ONLY one who does what you do, not ‘better’ or ‘best’ but THE ONLY.

A culture that ‘leans in’ to Saying YES! to their customers will always outpace a competitor who is more of a control freak, wanting to control the customer engagement process. A YES! business is more interested in creating special moments and experiences for their customers while their NO! counterpart is constantly in the rule or policy enforcement mode. In this episode Roy unpacks his Moves in using YES! to create customer loyalty and sustainable competitive advantage that led to A BILLION!

Customers expect your product or service to work as promised. Having a product that works doesn’t impress them much; it doesn’t make them loyal to you in the long run. But when they have a service experience that “takes their breath away”, they become a raving fan and they tell everyone around them how amazing you are. In this episode, Roy breaks down the Moves he made to build a Service Strategy that created “gasp-worthy” customer service experiences and enabled his team to get TO A BILLION IN ANNUAL SALES!