Speaker 1: 0:00

Do you have like a secret of like helping people like flip the switch into getting more of that leveraged mindset versus what I would call a growth mindset?

Speaker 2: 0:08

Well, I think you already said it in terms of leverage. So the question becomes how do you get leverage? And, in short, it is clarity around the late Clay Christensen's question what is really the job to be done?

Speaker 1: 0:25

Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. Welcome to the show Vern. How are you doing today? I'm doing good Buzz. No, actually, I think it's late afternoon for you right? Where in the world is Vern today?

Speaker 2: 0:41

It is. I am in the boulder of Barcelona, so a little beach town called Sitges, and the sun is just going down here. But I'm going to be heading back to the States here shortly.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Oh, spain is one of the places my wife and I have not gone in Europe, and we're hoping to get there in the next year to two years. We just got back from Ireland there's a little tidbit before we dive in today that we were talking about before the show. I have recently consumed a couple of your books, and one of the things that I noticed is that you have a love for jazz, and that's something that I have. I actually started my career my entertainment career at the age of 13 as a professional jazz trombonist, so when I was listening to your audio book as everyone should listen to his audio books, they're great, they're well produced and they have these nice little jazz pieces between each of the chapters, which is pretty fun, so I appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 1:42

So today we're talking about the prospect of scaling a B2B business, and most of us in the B2B business world are service-based businesses, and we all know that growing a service-based business is pretty arduous, but scaling can be. But scaling can be almost seemingly insurmountable, right, and so, with that, though, there are still about 6% of all businesses that do get into the scale, that start get into a scale mode. So I think the first question I have is like kind of helping people understand what's the difference between growing a business and scaling a business, especially in the service-based arena.

Speaker 2: 2:28

Yeah, Well, you know what? I think there's too much nuance between those words. I use the word grow and mastering the Rockefeller habits, and then we change the scaling up. But I do think it has to do with when you cross the chasm buzz, what Jeffrey Moore talks about and so you can be growing kind of haphazardly, but if you really want to hit scale much easier and quicker, then you cross that chasm and it requires an unbelievable laser focus and I'd say the big difference is it just gets easier, not harder.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Right and but I think that I I look at it as, like in growth, more great creates more, right. Where in scale, leverage creates more, which then lends to what you're saying. It gets easier because we're not having to work as hard to get more output Right, and I think that that's a huge shift in mindset and I don't understand why. I mean, I've been working in marketing for 20 years with my own company for 20 years. I've been in marketing, in and around marketing for 40 years, but the with over the last 20 years and working with about 1200 companies, I've I've haven't been able to figure out what. What is the log jam in mindset to help people understand that more doesn't always equal more? Do you have a secret of helping people flip the switch into getting more of that leveraged mindset versus what I would call a growth mindset?

Speaker 2: 3:57

Well, I think you already said it in terms of leverage. So the question becomes how do you get leverage? And, in short, it is clarity around the late Clay Christensen's question what is really the job to be done? So when you're kind of messing around just trying to grow the business, you're doing everything for everybody and, as a result, nobody knows why they should call you. Remember, our goal is not for us to have to call on others, but for people to ring us, and that only happens if you are super clear in the job that you specifically do, particularly as a consultant or service business for others. So I'll give you an example and you may also consider them a product company.

Speaker 2: 4:44

But I did a lot of work early on with the Post-it Note division at 3M, and 3M is an every range product in service you can imagine. But what they got crystal clear on is their word and that is the word science period. The reason I and, by the way, you'll see it in their tagline if you go out to 3Mcom and so why would I need to call 3M? What they have articulated the marketplace is if you've got any challenge that you're facing that you think science can solve, because they're mainly professionals, scientists Right, you call us and we are the leaders in attracting scientists, having the best scientists, having the best labs. Now, we've created 65,000 different solutions. Right, it can be confusing why you should call 3M, but if I need science and I need it done, well, I call 3M, and it's that clarity around the job to be done which is them to scale.

Speaker 1: 5:54

I love that. I think that it's a and that in the service, I mean for products, yes, like I think people get like they don't realize, like how many companies own so many products out there, right, and so, like you got Procter and Gamble gamble, you know there's how many brands under that and in within each of those brands, they do have a brand promise which you talk about in your books and that you know that's where you go to get this right. And then the company itself is holding all of these messages. And when we go to then to services, I think that you hit the nail on the head when it's like, hey, we're trying to be everything to everyone, which, in some, if you have a target market of like these are our ideal type of clients that we want to work with and we are the solution for all things in whatever your sector is. That's great. But, like you're saying, is that there's that one message of the one outcome that you create. Am I getting that right?

Speaker 2: 6:53

That is correct. So our company is called Scaling Up, and that is really too general. So we made it clear a couple of years ago that our job to be done is specifically to help other scale valuation and particularly scale the valuation of the business towards 100 million. And if you don't have any really aspirations to scale to that valuation by the way, we helped sell a company with 3 million EBITDA for 90 million you don't need a lot of EBITDA, right? You don't need a lot of EBITDA, right. If you think you want to get somewhere on your way to $100 million, then give us a phone call, because there's a lot of folks that do what we do, sure, but that is what we're best at, and that messaging has really helped the phone ring for us instead of us having to call others.

Speaker 1: 7:53

I love that. I think that like being known for that one thing is what all I mean. You can see it in any anybody can look. Just open up your phone and go to social media. Any of the advertising you're seeing from any major corporation, um has one thing right it's you for that. I love Burger King for one reason the Whopper. But I don't even order the Whopper all the time. But I love the Whopper. That's why I go there, because if there's anything I'm going to like, I'm going to know that I'm going to get that Whopper right.

Speaker 2: 8:26

Well, and you just highlighted something that service firms, particularly, are terrible at Product companies. They name everything buzz. I mean, everything's got a separate part number. I don't just have a Range Rover, I've got a Range Rover HSE Sport Turbo. You know, da, da, da, da, da, right, right, what service companies don't do is they don't name anything. And so the key is is to sub brand. So you just said, look, what comes to mind when I think of Burger King is the Whopper. If they didn't give it a name, you wouldn't know how to refer to it, you wouldn't know how to recommend it to others. So we really encourage service companies to sub-brand their unique design approach, their unique project approach, their unique delivery approach.

Speaker 2: 9:23

So I'll give you an example Rackspace those guys were early students of mine at that MIT program Graham Weston, lanham, napier and look, they're hosting servers for companies and you don't get any more of a commodity business than that. So they went out on the road and that's the first thing we had them do is go out and talk to customers. And they came back and said all right, there are three things and that's why Robert Cialdini was right with this as well which is if you want to convince somebody to buy your service over your competitors, you've got to give them three reasons. Three works better than two, or four or a list of 10. Right, let's get very precise. On your website. You should have three testimonials. If you only have two, people think you have none. If you've got four, you're trying too hard. Now, if you're servicing different sectors, hey, we service the government sector, the commercial sector, the industrial. You could have three for each. And so, anyway, they came back and said there are three things that we're going to do better and different than all of the other hosted server companies. But here was the key. They sub-branded it Buzz, they called it Fanatical Support, and this is how I knew the brand was more important than Rackspace. I used to Google their image so I could put them in a slide. I'd Google Rackspace image and Fanatical Support would pop up more than the company names, and that tells me that they won.

Speaker 2: 11:03

We've got a company that's in the service business, managing people's second homes, and they sub-branded it Away. They call the service Away. We will take care of it. When you're away, we'll remodel it. When you're away, we'll service it. We'll clean it. When you're away, we'll remodel it. When you're away. We'll service it, we'll clean it when you're away. And so what service companies, and particularly professional, need to come up with a set of sub-brands, and that's what actually makes you, then, different, and we know different is the key.

Speaker 1: 11:40

Yes, and it's something that I work with my clients on on a regular basis. I call it product high services. So we, we basically create their service in a way and we market their service in a way that it feels like it's something that can get in a box, they can put their arms around it, they can hold it, right. So, like we have the B2B marketing OS. It's a, it's a business to business marketing operating system, right, yes, and so that's where, like this year, as we were, and we have some platforms like buzz hub or buzz social that do specific things. Right, but, like I had a fractional cfo when, uh, we're actually wrapping up their second uh round of campaigns and we've got for them, it is fro, which is financial resource optimization, and he works with.

Speaker 1: 12:27

He works with people who don't usually like to talk about numbers, especially with strangers. They're construction people, and so for a CFO, it's like getting in the door with these people as a CFO is very, very difficult. But if you sit there and go, hey, what if I could optimize your finances? I have a framework that will help you do that, they can start going. Oh, so there's a process. I like processes, I'm in construction, everything's a process right, and so, however your people talk is how you need to frame like what Vern is saying your service so that they can get it quickly. Boom, boom, boom Right.

Speaker 2: 13:07

And so they can, and they can refer it, like we've been known early, early on, for this one page strategic plan yes, csp. And people would say, all right, what are you guys doing? Oh, we're doing that one page strategic plan thing, but at least it had a name, yes, people could point to. And that's what you've done by sub branding yes, yeah, and I think that everybody's listening.

Speaker 1: 13:33

You know, it doesn't have to be fancy, like a lot of people try to get, like. The right name is, like I have one that's just called. We have one framework that we call the evergreen social media blueprint. What do you think we do? It's not a fancy name, but people know, oh, that evergreen social media thing, yes, that one boom, you know. And if you have something that does one thing, like you have a framework that does one thing and it creates one output, boom, go for it. Right.

Speaker 1: 14:02

And that's where like for us it was we finally said what is the one thing we do? We create a marketing OS for B2B services. Oh, well, then we're the B2B, we're the B2B marketing OS. That's what we're going into 2025, solely on Vern.

Speaker 1: 14:18

You're hitting it on the spot for all of our listeners, because I think that this is where a lot of entrepreneurs get it wrong.

Speaker 1: 14:27

They think that they got to sell all the things versus the one thing, and I love that because you can scale marketing when you have one thing to talk about, versus trying to disperse all of the messages across all of the platforms to all of the people. It's like we can get just really concise, like who do we really want to work with Right, and then we put all our effort there. We're going to get more of what we want, doing the thing that we do best, which I think is something that you put in your book, talking about, like, focus on what you are the best at, right, right, and I think that people think that they're going to paint themselves in a corner because they're like well, I do all these other things. It's like if it doesn't lend to the one thing, then you might consider maybe getting that off your list, but if you do have things that go to the one thing, that's okay. Once they get into your ecosystem, you can then pull back the curtains and show them all the wares, right?

Speaker 2: 15:27

Well, and, by the way, that's really what happened to Yahoo Buzz. You know they own the word search. I knew what I needed them for, which was to search, and then Google comes along and takes their word, and the reality was I couldn't figure out what unique job Yahoo could do for me. Maybe in the finance side they were pretty good. They were a side of helping you organize your stocks and tracking and those kind of things, but it wasn't enough. Now let's speed forward.

Speaker 2: 15:58

Google gets distracted. They get into best thermostats and all kinds of other things. They have to form a new brand called alphabet, and last year they came out and said you know what? Two trillion of our two trillion net worth is due to search, and we think the next trillion is going to come from search. And, by the way, because they got distracted, they took their eye off of it, and now OpenAI is starting to crush them in search. So that's even. The bigger danger is look, there's plenty of people around the planet that need that. One thing that you do you just need to go find them and message to them, and getting distracted is the thing that'll keep you from scaling easier. That's why we started. Yet the other thing I want to point out is this applies internally to buzz. Okay, because we got to get our. We got to get our people organized to get something done.

Speaker 2: 17:07

And Hubert Jolie, who turned around Best Buy in his book the Heart of Business, said something really profound, and that is you don't have a strategy. If you haven't named it, words cannot be found. So when it came into turnaround, he called it Renew Blue. I don't know if you just saw, but Warren Buffett's pulling out of Apple and he's all in Domino's Pizza. Domino's stock has increased 7,000% since it went public. It's beat Alphabet, it's beat Amazon, it's beat Apple and their CEO at the beginning of this year, announced their five-year strategy. And he thing that you're focused on then you're not going to get scale easier from your people to support what is your external messaging Kind of one. Last example that's the genius of Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 2: 18:19

Last year was the year of efficiency. By the way, even all the analysts knew of Buzz Marketing is having a common, consistent brand. Every conversation every Thursday five o'clock Q&A with Mark Mark's emphasis last year was hey guys, what are you doing to get more efficient? And they did. Market cap went from 300 billion to 1.2 trillion this year, hey guys, what are you doing to get more efficient? And they did. Market cap went from 300 billion to 1.2 trillion. This year, january 16th, he announced all in an AI. And this year the theme, the single-minded focus, is all around how are we going to apply AI in everything that we do? So you need a single message externally, home of the Whopper, and you need a single message internally, hungry for more. And now you've got real alignment within the organization, we'll be right back.