Break Away from Boring! Be Different, Be Audacious with Roy Osing

Brought to you by the Straight Talk About Small Business Success podcast and Salim Omar.

Who is Roy Osing?

Roy Osing has a long list of accolades behind him. Osing is a former president of a major data and internet company, CMO and an entrepreneur with over 40 years of successful and unmatched executive leadership in every aspect of business. His leadership and audacious ‘unheard-of ways’ took the company from its early stages to a Billion USD in annual sales.

He is the author of the no-nonsense 7 book series ‘Be Different or Be Dead.’ Osing can be reached through his website www.bedifferentorbedead.com or by email-roy.osing@gmail.com

What is The Inspiration Behind Your Series of Books?

Osing's background is in the world of telecom. When the world of business began to change, Osing had to find a sustainable way to move away from the traditional concepts in order to survive. 

"I was confronted with the notion that we simply weren't ready as a business,'' says Osing. This led Osing to think about breakaway ideas he needed to do in order to survive the metamorphosis.

"My whole journey around 'BE DiFFERENT or be dead' was driven by the need to survive as an organization at that time. If we couldn't survive, we couldn't perform well," he continues.



Osing discovered that he had to take a different journey. He had to break away. "Breaking away to do things differently was necessary very early in his career to survive. I learned that this ideology was an incredible engine for growth," says Osing.

What Were Some of The Things That You Did to Make Your Marketing and Sales Teams Remarkable?

"I had to build a relatively young data and internet company from the ground up. I get goosebumps every time I think about it. We did take it with a billion in annual sales," says Osing. 

One of Osing's main factor in success was figuring out his competitive advantage. Osing created his own approach to this. He calls it the 'Only Statement'.

"It's a simple concept. It obviates the need to describe yourself in comparative or superlative terms like "better and best and leader, which don't mean anything. The Only Statement goes like this: 'We are the only ones that...' and you fill it in," says Osing.



Osing says that small businesses need to think this through. "They need to come up with a competitive claim that is clear and crisp and defines their uniqueness. What I've discovered is that the 'Only Statement' really works," says Osing.

What is Your Process as a Leader?

Osing has a process that he follows when leading his team. 

• "I get an executive team in the room and literally in two days we build a strategy and an Only Statement. It is within what I call a strategic game planning process. It starts out with saying, who are the customers that you've chosen to serve," he says.

Osing says that businesses do not serve mass markets. They serve clusters of groups that have the latent potential to deliver you your growth goals.

• The next question he asks is "what do your customers care about?"

"Not what they need. It's not about needs. It's about what they care about, what they crave, what their secrets are, what they lust for, what they covet. In marketing terms, if you can figure out what somebody craves, you have got an opportunity to premium price the solution because nobody else is doing it. Move from needs to cravings and then provide value packages that solve the craving," he advises.

• Test your market

"The result of the testing process could be negative or the customers don't care about it. You don't want to be the only one providing something that your customers don't care about. This gives you the opportunity to then refine your package and then you go to market with it," says Osing.



• It's always a draft. 

According to Osing, the world is always changing and to believe that it's permanent is to be fooling yourself. 

"Declare what you're special at, get to market with it, and be prepared to revise it on the run. That's the process that works in the real world today," says Osing.

What Does "Audacious" Mean To You?

Audacious is the subtitle of Osing's latest book, BE DiFFERENT Or be Dead: The Audacious ‘Unheard-of Ways.’ 

"I took a startup to a billion in sales. 'Audacious', upon reflection, is a perfect word for me. It describes who I am, how I think, how I behave. This has been a journey. It's still fresh and it's even more relevant today."

According to Osing, being 'Audacious' means:

• The willingness and propensity to be bold, to step out of the herd and to get away from the crowds. 

"Do something that's risky, do a lot of failing. As long as you learn from the first mistake, then you can make another one. You can't repeat the same mistake twice because that suggests to me that you didn't learn from the first one. It's all about getting away from the pedantics of the way things are typically done in business and organizations and careers.

 

• Stop copying people. 

"It's the wrong thing to do. Innovating is hard but worth it. We're still copying AI. We got a whole herd of AI users out there, which blows me away because I don't understand how people think they can be special and everybody's copy everybody else. This is one of my main messages. Get creative, be bold, be audacious, be prepared to fail. It's important that you do that," says Osing. 

3 Things People Can Do To Be Audacious

Ask yourself-

1.How big do you want to be?

It's a question about growth. How much top-line revenue do you want in 24 months? Five-year plans don't exist. They don't. The fourth year never shows up.

2.Who do you want to serve?

Where are you going to get the money? You want to choose customer groups that have the latent potential to generate the revenue under your how big.

3.How are you going to compete and win?

This is where you use the 'Only Statement'. We're going to compete and win by being the only one. 

"Sit down with your team or by yourself. Address the strategic game plan for your business by finding the answers to these questions. It is a dynamic and creative process," says Osing.

Final Words of Wisdom

"It is time to-

• Break away from the common approach that people use to running organizations. 
• Break away from copying. 
• Break away from textbook theoretical approaches to running a business," says Osing.

"It's time to move towards being practical, to build a leadership model that is based on lighting fires in people. When we light fires in people, they bring results," he concludes.

Closing Statement

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