[00:00:00] Bill Flynn: I don’t wanna work
[00:00:01] more than 100 days
[00:00:02] a year ever again.
[00:00:04] Last year I worked,
[00:00:06] um, like 30
[00:00:09] Pol Cousineau: I see in courses
[00:00:11] where people stack bonuses,
[00:00:13] countless bonuses.
[00:00:15] Bill Flynn: people do not buy
[00:00:16] products and services from you.
[00:00:18] They hire them
[00:00:19] to get a certain job
[00:00:20] or set of jobs
[00:00:21] done for them.
[00:00:23] Pol Cousineau: How do we apply
[00:00:23] this to training
[00:00:24] which isn’t necessarily
[00:00:25] something tangible, right?
[00:00:27] Bill Flynn: people don’t care
[00:00:28] what you do.
[00:00:29] They care
[00:00:30] what you do does for them.
[00:00:32]
[00:00:39] Welcome to Mind of All Trades, the podcast where edupreneurs turn knowledge into impact. I’m your host, Pol Cousineau, and together we explore the craft and commerce of educational businesses, we look at the strategy, we look at the systems, and we look at the real implementation work that has to happen behind the scenes.
[00:00:59] Before we dive in, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. We’ll be sharing practical guides, conversations, and examples for edupreneurs who are building real momentum in their business, and for coaches, course creators, podcasters, and membership site owners who need help with the tech behind the business.
[00:01:18] Check out The Digital Navigator. The Digital Navigator helps with fully managed websites, funnels, analytics, automations, and ongoing tech support. So instead of having a bunch of disconnected tools, your systems can work together, and you can spend more of your time focused on the business, the offer, and the people you serve.
[00:01:39] You can learn more at thedigitalnavigator.com. Now, let’s jump into today’s episode.
[00:01:46] Pol Cousineau: today’s guest
[00:01:46] is Bill Flynn, who founded Catalyst Growth Advisors in 2015. He is an executive coach, speaker, and advisor to CEOs of scaling companies with more than 30 years of operating experience. He’s an eight-time VP of sales, two-time CMO, and general manager of a 100-million-plus division across 10 startups, two IPOs, seven acquisitions, and hundreds of companies advised. Clearly, he has a wealth of information and advice for us today. He’s also a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s MG100 coaching community, nominated by former Boeing and Ford CEO Alan Mulally, and his writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Training Magazine, and ATD. He published his book Further Faster, and his second book, The Hero Trap, is coming out in October 2020 s- 2026.
[00:02:47] Stay tuned for that one. Both center on his core idea, great leaders build organizations that make their own indispensability unnecessary. He is based in Greater Boston. Bill teaches management science to CEOs and their leadership teams so they can take the guesswork out of growth. You can connect with Bill through his website, catalystgrowthadvisors.com. And I really love the management science aspect of it. I dig science. I read studies all the time. Whenever I have a hunch, if there’s some kind of evidence that I can look to either confirm it or maybe determine that it’s not true, I just absolutely love to make my decisions in that way. I’m so happy to have you on the show.
[00:03:38] Welcome to Mind of All Trades, Bill.
[00:03:41] Bill Flynn: Thanks, Pol. Very happy to be here. Thanks for having me
[00:03:43] Pol Cousineau: Yes, it’s so exciting. And as I was preparing for the show, one of the things that I found that was really cool about your experience is that you basically have the visionary and the operator hat in your business. From what I understand, you’re a one-man team. Can you share a little bit about how that’s working out?
[00:04:03] Bill Flynn: Sure. Well, um, as you mentioned, I’ve done, uh, I think 13 or 14 companies total, uh, 10 startups, and, uh, I am happy to not hire or fire anyone anymore. Uh, I have created, uh, a business that allows me to automate lots of stuff so I don’t have to do a lot of the, uh, uh, supporting things like, you know, financial stuff and, uh, and whatever.
[00:04:31] Uh, I don’t really need a lot of clients. I don’t– I usually have a handful of clients at a time. I think the most I’ve had at once is seven. Um, so it’s, uh, it’s a relatively, uh, straightforward and seamless business. Um, so from an operations standpoint, it’s relatively simple. I just basically get to show up and wave my hands and say all sorts of inspiring and motivational things to my clients, and hopefully they’re, they’re useful as well.
[00:05:02] Pol Cousineau: And did you intend to design the business that way when you created it?
[00:05:07] Bill Flynn: Yeah. I don’t wanna work more than 100 days a year ever again. last year I worked, um, like 30
[00:05:18] Pol Cousineau: Wow
[00:05:19] Bill Flynn: Yeah. So, uh, I, I have cr– I, I, I enjoy my life. I spend most of my time thinking and reading and writing and doing things that I wanna do. Uh, and then I work for my clients, um, about 25, 35 days a year.
[00:05:34] Pol Cousineau: Now, I presume that it wasn’t like that before you had your own business. Is that
[00:05:38] right?
[00:05:39] Bill Flynn: Startups, I worked 60, 70, 80 hours a week
[00:05:42] Pol Cousineau: Okay, yeah, that sounds a little bit more familiar. So was that one of the reasons why you made that shift, or can you walk us through a little bit that transition period?
[00:05:52] Bill Flynn: Yeah. Well, um, when you get to a certain level and, and hopefully you’re good at what you do, um, you can charge a lot of money. Uh, which means you don’t have to work as many hours, uh, to do it. Uh, when you work for someone else, you’re sort of beholden to them and, and the things that you’re asked to do. And generally, w- those of us who are, are, are v- relatively good at our jobs, what happens is if we do a good job, then they just say, “Okay, do more.”
[00:06:21] Uh, they don’t necessarily pay you any more, uh, they just keep adding more and more on. Um, and doing that, I did that for 25 years, so, you know, and, and the, the… There is lore out there that says a startup, one year of a startup is seven years of a regular business. So if that’s true, I’ve worked a lot already.
[00:06:44] Pol Cousineau: Yeah, so you’re retired four times?
[00:06:46] Bill Flynn: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:47] Pol Cousineau: on that math.
[00:06:49] Bill Flynn: and I should be like 170 years old or something.
[00:06:52] Pol Cousineau: Yeah.
[00:06:53] Bill Flynn: Uh, so yes, I, I decided I, I didn’t– that I wanted to try to do a business, uh, where I could make, uh, an impact, but I could pretty much decide what I wanna do, when I wanna do, um, and when I wanna do it almost all the time.
[00:07:09] And I’ve been doing that, so
[00:07:12] Pol Cousineau: And you covered many roles in your corporate work, so how did you determine the expertise in the area that you wanted your new company to focus on? Because you said when you develop experience and expertise, that might allow this level of freedom, but you also have to pick carefully, like, what’s in demand, what is going to be the area you bring the most value. How did that work out for you?
[00:07:36] Bill Flynn: Yeah. So I sort of, I did two things. Um, is obviously I had a lot of roles, mostly in the operating roles, sort of COO world, sales, marketing, service, support, that kind of stuff. Um, but I’ve also been studying, uh, business and management science for about 30 years. Uh, so I… When I decided to do this, um, I know I’ve never been a CEO and, you know, whether it’s right or wrong, if you’re gonna coach CEOs, they wanna feel like, you know, you’ve been, you’ve been in their shoes, et cetera.
[00:08:13] So I knew I had to, I had to provide something that allowed me to have the credibility to, to be able to do this. Uh, so when I first decided, uh, in 2015, 2016 to, to go to do this, I said, “Well, how would I wanna do that?” You know, are there, are there systems out there that I could leverage? So I looked at a whole bunch of them, um, and subsequently I’ve learned so far I’ve come upon there’s at least 24 or 25 different kinds of business operating systems that are out there.
[00:08:46] Um, I looked at about five, um, and boiled it down to two, which was Scaling Up or Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and EOS.
[00:08:56] Pol Cousineau: Ah,
[00:08:57] EOS. That one I think is quite familiar with our listeners. That’s the one
[00:09:00] that tends to come up the most
[00:09:01] Bill Flynn: Yes. Uh, and I talked to a whole bunch of people who worked on Scaling Up. I talked to a whole bunch of people who worked EOS, and I, I’m much more, um, aligned with the people on Scaling Up.
[00:09:12] It’s a, it’s a more complicated, but it’s a more thorough approach to, to growing a business. EOS is great, but it’s a very much an execution-oriented, um, model. And, and I’ve talked to a bunch of CEOs who have used EOS, and often they call me through reputation and because I’m a sales and marketing guy, and they say: “Look, you know, I’m, uh, my business is going well, but it’s not growing.”
[00:09:39] And then they sort of tell me it’s EOS, and I said, “Well, yes,” because EOS doesn’t really help you look out into the future. It helps you look into the business, makes it more efficient, more effective, but you have to also be looking out and preparing the business for the future, which it doesn’t do as good a job, in my opinion, as Scaling Up and, and other things.
[00:09:57] Um, so I picked Scaling Up. I figured that was good enough. I went to training, um, got certified, and it just, it was more, it gave me more confidence to be able to, to, to go into a CEO and say, “I can help you,” even though I’ve never been a CEO before. I mean, I’ve been a GM, which is kind of a CEO. Um, and, uh, that definitely helped.
[00:10:20] And, and interestingly enough is as I started to talk to more and more CEOs, I found out that most of them didn’t really know what they were doing anyway, uh, which bolstered my confidence even further. So I knew I could help them.
[00:10:33] Pol Cousineau: Right. But what I’m hearing too is that you identified a potential objection or concern that your customers, right, the CEOs could have, and then you said, “Hey, either what do I do to handle that objection or how do I boost my own confidence so that I can feel comfortable selling and proposing the solutions?”
[00:10:55] And I think this is interesting because your confidence in the pitch might matter more than their objections and everything that is going on, you know, in that area. Did, did you feel like that was the name of the game, is that self-confidence and how you would be able, like your pos- your posturing while pitching?
[00:11:16] Bill Flynn: Yeah. So you need both, right? You need competence and confidence. Um, but so, so one of the things I learned early on when I was selling is… So, so I was 23 years old when I first started selling, and, and I got a job through, through, um, a f- family connection who, he was a VC, and he introduced me to a whole bunch of companies, and they, one of them made me an offer to, to be in sales.
[00:11:40] And I said, “All right, I’ll give it a try.” I’d never really been in sales before. Uh, I was working in a pizza place before that through college and such. Um, and I, you know, I, I talked to people there and I said, “Well, you know, what makes a good salesperson?” They said, “Well, you have to create rapport, and you have to know your products, you have to know your competition, you have to be likable.”
[00:11:58] So I said, “Okay.” And I, and I, I worked on all those things and, and Pol, I gotta tell you, I sucked at it. I wasn’t very good. Um, and being who I am, which I’m a curious person, I’m always trying to grow and get better, I said, “Well, so why am… I’m doing everything.” I, you know, I knew my products, I knew ev- all, I had all this stuff down.
[00:12:19] So I said, “Well, let me just sort of ask myself, what is selling?” And the conclusion I came to is s- a good salesperson helps someone else make a decision. So I said, “So that’s really my job, is I’m, I’m trying to give them information, et cetera, to help them make a decision.” I said, “Well, then how are decisions made?”
[00:12:39] And so I got into neuroscience, so I studied decision-making, which, you know, and, and what happens in the brain when we make a decision is actually the limbic system lights up first, and it often lights up before we’re consciously aware of the decision we made.
[00:12:55] Pol Cousineau: And the limbic system, just remind me, is that the kind of subconscious system, or which one is the
[00:13:00] Bill Flynn: It’s the, it’s, um, the emotional center of the brain, if you will, right? It’s in– It’s not in the center, but it’s, it’s, it’s all over the brain. But the emotional side lights up first, and, and this has been study after study after study when people make decisions. Um, so I said, “Okay, so if, if, if that’s true, then I– what I need to do is I need to appeal primarily to the, to the emotional side of the, the person.”
[00:13:24] Um, and so I changed how I sold, and I became the number one and number two salesperson everywhere I went
[00:13:34] Pol Cousineau: And how did you do that process of changing? Did you have, like, a guide?
[00:13:40] Bill Flynn: Uh, I sort of, um, stumbled my way through, if you will. You know, I, I didn’t really have anyone to ask ’cause everyone that I talked to said the same thing, all the things I had learned before, which, which those were, those were necessary, but they weren’t sufficient. Uh, so I said, “Okay, so how could I, um, how could I help that person feel comfortable with me and, and, and, and have them feel comfortable with themselves?
[00:14:05] You know, what, what parts, what, what part of their brain, um, uh, what, what things would I have to do to help them feel comfortable?” So what I found was, uh, that when people are, um, feel safe with you, they feel, uh, that you care about them, they feel that you’ve acknowledged them and you understand them, they find you even more likable
[00:14:31] Pol Cousineau: That makes sense to me.
[00:14:32] Bill Flynn: Right?
[00:14:33] Pol Cousineau: Yes,
[00:14:34] Bill Flynn: so I said, “What should I do?” And so one of the tricks that I did is I said, “Okay, how, how… I need to establish that really early on.” And so in every meeting, when I had the first meeting with, with whoever I was selling to, usually it was some- someone in marketing, uh, at this time when I was doing this, uh, I, I did two things.
[00:14:52] One is I, I figured out relatively quickly who the bully with the juice was in the room, okay? And it’s not always the person with the title. Uh, sometimes it’s just someone else who has the expertise or the background or whatever. So you identify them, you wanna know, ’cause that’s really who you’re selling to.
[00:15:09] You’re selling to that person. They’re the one that are really gonna make the largest influence on the decision. Um, and, and… But I also wanna make sure that everyone felt like I was there for them. So I would, I would do that, and then my first question would be, “Okay, we’re gonna be here for an hour or 45 minutes, an hour, hour and a half,” whatever it is.
[00:15:27] I said, “So what, how could you describe for you what would be a good use of your, an hour of your time? What would you need to get from me so you would feel like that was, that was a good meeting,” right? And, and it was, “I’m glad Bill came in and helped us.” And then I went around the room, made sure I get the bully with the juice, but then I made sure everyone else, you know, “Does anyone else have anything else to add?”
[00:15:49] I wrote everything they said down, and then I tailored what I said to what they asked for. Now, I also said at the end, I said, “So, you know, people who are like you who w- who are looking for the service that I’m, that I’m providing also find this in- this information important. Do you mind if I share it with you?”
[00:16:10] And they generally at that point in time would be okay with it, because I knew that was also important. Um, and then I went, I, I did my whole pitch. I reviewed everything they said. I, and I went through and I said, “So you said you want this and this. Is there anything I missed? Anything that wasn’t clear?” Et cetera.
[00:16:27] Um, and if I did that well and my product fit what they wanted well, I never, ever lost.
[00:16:37] Pol Cousineau: Wow. Now that makes sense to me because you’re confirming what they’re looking at getting out of the time together, and then you also recheck at the end. So then there’s, “Okay, I’m being heard. I’m getting what I want.” If not, gives you a time to course correct, right? Obviously, if they say, “Hey, wait, let’s cover A, B, C,” great, right? And, uh, I just think that approach is good. On my end, when I do types of sales conversation, I normally have to do two calls to try to reproduce a version of that pattern, because on the first call, I’m trying to get some preliminary information, understanding what they’re looking at getting from our time together, and then I keep that one intentionally shorter.
[00:17:19] Then it allows me to make a tailored presentation for the second call so I can hit what they wanted. And then just like you, I ask too at the start, “Hey, these are what I’m planning on covering based on what I heard last time. Is there anything you want to add to make sure that this time feels complete?”
[00:17:34] So we’ve got a good sales process right now that anyone listening can reproduce a version of this. And I want to mention a resource because it’s helped me so much, and it ties into what we’re talking about. It’s a book called “The Science of Selling” by David Hoffeld. And this book is amazing, and it reinforces certain of the concepts that you’re sharing, Bill
[00:17:58] Bill Flynn: Sure. And if I can add to that,
[00:18:01] uh, I know, I know of that book. I have not read it, but I know of that book. Um, my favorite sales book is called “Demand Side Sales 101.” It’s by Bob Moesta, M-O-E-S-T-A, and he is the progenitor of something called Jobs to Be Done. Are you familiar with that concept?
[00:18:23] Pol Cousineau: I thought I was familiar with the book, but the concept doesn’t sound familiar anymore, so I don’t think I’m thinking about the right one right now
[00:18:29] Bill Flynn: Okay. Yeah. So, so jobs to be done, the basic premise is that people do not buy products and services from you. They hire them to get a certain job or set of jobs done for them. And when that product or service no longer does that job as well, or they find one that is better, they will then fire you and hire a new one.
[00:18:52] So what you need to understand from them are what are the needs that they are striving to satisfy and how do they go about buying? Because we generally sell on the supply side, but they buy on the demand side. So supply side, the way I grew up and learning it was your job is awareness, interest generation, qualification, needs analysis, demo or whatever you wanna call that next thing, showing the thing, closing and negotiating, right?
[00:19:26] That’s the sup- that’s what we do, that’s what we want to have happen. But that’s not how people buy. Um, they buy because there’s some sort of dissatisfaction. There’s either something pushing them or pulling them towards progress Um, and their, their process is such that if they’re unaware of it, then something has to make them aware.
[00:19:48] Um, either you calling them and saying, “Hey, did you know that this, you, you can do this 10 times faster?” Or whatever. Or they see someone, their peer or whatever, talks about it and like, “Oh, I never knew that.” And so there’s these forces, and we’re really good at that, right? We’re really good at marketing, we’re good at creating interest generation, et cetera.
[00:20:05] But what happens is they’re not aware, then they’re aware ’cause some event has happened, and they’re just sort of… They’re not really looking actively, they’re passively looking. And so they’ll see, they’re like, “Oh, there’s,” you know, that, that reminds them of something. Then some other event happens. Now they’re like, now they’re looking ’cause something bad has happened, or they’re like, “I can’t live with this anymore,” whatever it might be.
[00:20:29] Now they’re actively looking. Um, and then they start to do their qualif- they’re trying to figure it out, then they, they’re in the deciding process. Most of the times we meet them in the deciding process, right? Um, and these days, that process is 70 to 80% of the way done before they even talk to us, ’cause they can get all the information from Google or AI or whatever.
[00:20:54] Um, so we’re really at a huge disadvantage. Where when I was younger, so I’m 62, when I was younger, they needed me, because the only way they could get the information to make decisions was to bring people in and interview them, right? Now, ’cause there was no internet, there was, you know, you know, whatever.
[00:21:11] Um, so but we don’t sell that way. We don’t even think about things that way with folks, and we don’t actually try to understand what causes them to buy. We think personas are important, which they have a, a value, but that’s not why people buy. They don’t buy because they’re 32 years old, making this much money, living here with two kids, right?
[00:21:30] There’s some, there’s some functional, emotional, and/or social need that they’re trying to fulfill, that, that they hope will help, help them make their life better. There’ll be a struggle or something that they’re doing. So that’s what I teach people now, and that’s what Demand Side Sales 101 is all about.
[00:21:48] It’s this process. This guy Bob Moesta’s, you know, the, the theory or the process is 30 to 35 years old. Um, Bob Moesta has worked with 3,500 companies, including Snickers and Casper Mattresses and all sorts of others, and he has taught them this process. Um, Signals 37 is another one, or 37 Signals is another one.
[00:22:08] Um, uh, and it’s, it… If, if you do it well, it’s an excellent sales and marketing process. But most people don’t, one, don’t know what it is, and two, don’t follow it. They do the supply side model, which has risks, and I like to de-risk as much as I can.
[00:22:25] Pol Cousineau: Yes. I, I’m also a fan of minimizing risk, calculating them, and then when I’m taking a risk is because there’s something greater to gain than the cost of that risk. Sometimes risk for risk is doesn’t make any sense. But this is interesting because on the buyer’s side, now if I’m thinking about educational content, or let’s say I wanna hire a coach or I’m gonna join a leadership group or I’m gonna take a training, h- h- like how does that relate to the buying triggers i- in that moment, right?
[00:22:58] How do we apply this to training which isn’t necessarily something tangible, right? It’s a person that goes through a process. What do you feel are those triggers or that makes a person want to go out and look for a solution that would have a training component or mentoring or coaching component?
[00:23:16] Bill Flynn: Yeah. So if you s-, if you subscribe to this, um, it’s… So, so it could be functional, and it’s, there’s almost always a functional aspect, right? Is that there’s some dissatisfaction, uh, that they’re having. Um, maybe they’re not growing as steadily as they want. Uh, they’re not lear- they’re not learning. Uh, they’re…
[00:23:34] Maybe they’ve been embarrassed a few times because they didn’t know something. And so there’s something that, that sort of functionally they wanna do
[00:23:41] Pol Cousineau: A consequence or even a symptom might be observable.
[00:23:45] Bill Flynn: Yeah. Right? But there’s also potentially social and emotional reasons, right? Is that, “Hey, you know what? I, I wanna sound smarter than, uh, than I currently sound.” Right? “I want people to perceive me as a highly credible person, and I don’t think I’m there yet.” Right? So that’s a social reason for doing it, um, or an emotional reason.
[00:24:03] And then the s- uh, social and emotional, right? So how they see me is social, and how I perceive myself is emotion, right? So the, the, the, the, the metaphor I always use is a Toyota Camry and a Mercedes S-Class. From a functional perspective, they’re generally the same thing, right? So why do I spend two to three times more money for the S-Class
[00:24:26] than I do for the Camry, right?
[00:24:28] It’s social and emotional, right? It’s I wanna feel, I wanna feel like I’m successful, right? You know, I, I drive a Mercedes or a Cadillac or, you know, my dad was a Cadillac. Um, but there’s also social is I wanna be perceived as something. So I’m willing to spend a lot more money because that’s im- that’s important to me.
[00:24:46] I obviously have, have to have the money as well to do it. So, um, when we understand that as, as sellers, we are much better at satisfying those needs, either directly or indirectly. S- A lot of people would never admit that they bought the car because they wanted to be seen a certain way. But you can certainly signal, you know, in, in your advertising or whatever,
[00:25:12] Pol Cousineau: That’s what I was thinking because if you call it out, especially if it’s a social thing, that could be embarrassing or cause a negative emotion. And normally when people are in a negative emotional state, they’re not thinking, “Whoa, let me run towards this solution.”
[00:25:28] So you understand them and what drives them, and then do you translate that to a different language or you build that in your process?
[00:25:36] How, how-
[00:25:37] Bill Flynn: Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you could certainly have a very attractive young couple who look very successful in their outfits and whatever, get into the car and start driving. I mean, y- you know, it’s, “Oh, I, I wanna, I wanna be seen that way,” right? We see it all the time in advertising, right? Is, is we, we, we try to sell perception.
[00:25:59] Uh, you know, there’s, um, uh, um, what is it? MasterCard, you know, they’ve focused on priceless, right? They don’t do 2.5 APY and, you know, they haven’t. It’s like, you know, no, it’s priceless. I mean, the things I can do, the memories I can create, that’s why I wanna have a MasterCard, not because your rate is better or signup process is simple or whatever.
[00:26:24] Maybe that’s part of it. Um, so, so most of, most people that I talk to, um, and most salespeople, they, they don’t think this way Right. And, and I’ve done this. Uh, so I was a Vistage speaker for many years. Um, and, uh, for those… I don’t know if your listeners know what Vistage is, but it’s a peer-to-peer advisory service, and they bring in, you know, experts, quote-unquote experts, uh, two, two, like eight or nine times a year.
[00:26:52] They meet once a month every, every, um, every year. And I was one of those, and I think I did 40, 50, 60, 70 of them. And so I spoke to hundreds and hundreds of CEOs. And I basically did the same thing, and I would, I would, in essence, survey them. Um, and one of the things I did is I would stand at the front of the room and I would ask everyone to go around and say, “Could you tell me why you believe your customers buy from you?
[00:27:14] What is your customer value proposition?” And I said, “If you could draw, I’ll write it down.” And then I would have them each read it out when they were done. Um, and then I would stand at the front of the room with a little three-by-five card, and I had a W and a T, and every time they said what they, they, they said, I either marked one W or number, uh, one, uh, slash and one or s- uh, W and slash and T.
[00:27:35] And in W it would be w- if they ever started the sentence with, “Oh, they buy from me because I make really good stuff, ’cause I’m awesome,” I put it in the W, right? And if they said, “Oh, well, my buyers’ struggles are this, and so I offer this to help satisfy that struggle,” I would put… So now they made it first about them.
[00:27:56] The W is it’s all about me. And the other one, oh, it’s not about me, it’s about them. I’m trying to help them make their lives better. I will tell you, if, if I did that 100 times, 90 or so were in the W. And these are CEOs of hundred million dollar size, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, been around for generations and whatever, and they think that people buy from them because they’re great.
[00:28:25] And then I would go through this, and this is when I would always get in trouble ’cause I’m a bit of an iconoclast. I would stand up there and say, “I just wanna, I just wanna let you in on some bad news. It’s people don’t care what you do. They care what you do does for them.” That so, then I would ask them to rewrite their customer value proposition from their, from the buyer’s perspective and see if they could put themselves in the shoes of the buyer, and most of them couldn’t, which was re- really interesting.
[00:28:54] So they really didn’t know why… They didn’t really know their customer. Their businesses were going okay, but, uh, my thing was, your business could be going a lot better if you really understood why someone buys from you and also why they might not buy from you. And what I, what I would… One of the great stories I heard from Bob Moesta, and it’s a- actually in the book, is one of these companies hired him, uh, to sell condos.
[00:29:19] And, um, the condos had three personas, um, um, empty nesters, first-time buyers, and divorced dads. And so they were working on the empty nesters. So they built a, a, you know, a, a complex of empty ne- you know, of, of things for empty nesters, and they went to the empty nesters and said, you know, “What do you want?”
[00:29:38] And most of them said, “We want single-level living ’cause, you know, we’re older, you know, our knees hurt. Um, we didn’t want a lot of stairs. We wanted two bedrooms because, you know, when the grandkids come over or friends or whatever, you know, dining room, whatever.” And so they sort of laid this out, 1,500, 1,800 square feet, not too big.
[00:29:53] So they built these things and things went really well, and then sales just sort of stopped. And that’s when they brought Bob in. And he said, “Okay, so let me go talk to the people who almost bought from you and, and see what, what happened.” And so he said, “We interviewed these people and we kept hearing dining room table over and over again.
[00:30:11] Dining room table, dining room table. And also s- we have s- stuff. We have stuff in the attic, we have stuff in the basement.” And he found out that some of them, they didn’t wanna move because they didn’t know what to do with the dining room table
[00:30:25] Pol Cousineau: Hmm
[00:30:27] Bill Flynn: the dining room table is imbued with the life of the family, right?
[00:30:32] This is where we had dinners and conversations and birthday celebrations and hard talks and, you know, I, I mean, it had this reverence, and we couldn’t just throw it out. So what they, they didn’t move. They decided not to move because they didn’t know what to do with the dining room table. So he went back to the, to the condo owner and said, “This is a problem.
[00:30:52] What do you wanna do?” They said, “Okay, we’re gonna shrink the second bedroom and make the dining room bigger.” And guess what happened?
[00:30:59] Pol Cousineau: Sales
[00:31:00] Bill Flynn: Sales went up and kept going up. Now, what they also heard was stuff. So they said, “You know, we have all this stuff,” and I don’t… I mean, I’m a lot older than you are, and I’ve, I’ve moved a few times.
[00:31:09] You, you accumulate a lot of stuff as you, you know, you just, you don’t throw it away. You put it in the garage, you put it in the, in the, in the attic, the basement, whatever, and it’s just a pain in the ass to like, you know, “What am I gonna do with this?” So, so they said, “Great.” They bought a, a warehouse across the street and, and, and said, “Great, just bring your stuff.
[00:31:31] We’ll store it for you for two years, and we’ll have this big table. You can sort everything out.” And guess what happened? Sales went up again. So it wasn’t always just the push and the pull. They wanted to move, right? But they also were reasons that stopped them, which were habit and anxiety for not moving.
[00:31:50] So that’s what demand side sales is, to really understand the whole process of how we decide when or not to do something.
[00:31:59] Pol Cousineau: That makes sense to me because I’ve talked about moving with my wife, and then we said, “Oh, but what if we built a house?” Okay, great. But first we gotta sell the house, and then we use that money, and then we build the other house. We have four dogs. What are we going to do in between? I guess we’re not gonna sell the house.
[00:32:16] We’re not gonna build a house. We’re not gonna buy a house. It’s just easier to stay put here because the problem is actually what are we gonna do with the four dogs and what happens with this transition period? And most builders may not be thinking about that problem that needs to be solved. Now, there’s something that I heard, which is he went to ask the people that didn’t buy, that were close but didn’t buy, and my first reaction was, do you go and interview your customers?
[00:32:43] But it seems like the approach here is to see why people didn’t buy, or would you also talk to the customers to gather that information?
[00:32:51] Bill Flynn: Yeah, you wanna do both. So, so before, before you actually make a product or, or under- you wanna understand, one Do, do people want this problem solved this way first, right? Like, does anyone care? That’s the first thing you need to do, right? And, and you, you actually need to interrogate potential customers.
[00:33:15] And, and I don’t mean it in sort of like shine a light on them and say, “Where are you on Tuesday?” An interrogation process is, is an actual technique where you can draw information from someone that they didn’t really know they had. Um, so… And, and we see this sort of in, in, in, uh, a little bit in, in, um, movies and TV and procedurals and that kind of stuff.
[00:33:36] But if you go to FBI agents and, and, and people who actually do it for a living, they understand that memories are triggered through certain ways of talking people through something. So you might… They would say, “Okay, did you see the crime?” Okay. You know, and they, and they would talk to a whole bunch of people, and they’d say, “Well, yeah, I saw this, and I don’t remember that.”
[00:33:55] And they’d say, “Well, you know, do you remember, was it, was it raining or sh- or sunny? Um, can you, can you picture what was around you? Were there any smells that you had?” And actually, when you do that, because our brain is generative in terms of memory, it will trigger memories that if you hadn’t asked, would never have surfaced.
[00:34:15] So that’s what a really good interviewer does for customer discovery, is they, they try to understand what caused the person to want to do something. Like, you know, you w- if you wanna buy a mattress, you know, why do you buy mattresses, and, and why don’t you buy mattresses? And, you know, um, and they walk them through the process.
[00:34:36] And, and actually, there’s a great, uh… I think Bob and his, his partner Paul were at Harvard, and they did a live… They pulled one of the kids out of the students, I think it was HBS, so, you know, it was probably an adult. And they had bought a mattress recently, and he, they walked him through the process. And at the end, the guy thought he bought the mattress for a particular reason, but when they interviewed him, he found out that actually he had decided to buy the mattress, uh, he had started thinking about the mattress three years earlier, but it wasn’t until his wife gave him permission
[00:35:10] Pol Cousineau: Hmm.
[00:35:10] Bill Flynn: that he actually bought the mattress.
[00:35:13] So the trigger was the wife saying, “Okay.” Even though he, you know, he didn’t like… He, he was, it was, it was lumpy, he didn’t sleep well, and all these things happened, but he wouldn’t buy a mattress until his wife, who was also sleeping in the same bed, said, “Okay, you know, let’s, let’s get a new mattress.” But he thought he decided three years earlier, but he didn’t.
[00:35:32] He only decided… And he didn’t realize that until they started talking to him. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a real talent to be able to do this. Um, and I’ve, I’m not nearly as good as Bob at it, but I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of these customer discovery, um, interviews, and I was really bad at it at the beginning because you get in your own way Right?
[00:35:52] ‘Cause you, you, you’re helpful, right? So you hear people say to me like, “Oh, you know, we could do that.” But that’s not your job. Your job is to, is to be disinterested, not uninterested, but disinterested, like you have no stake in the outcome. Like you’re an investigative journalist, and you’re just trying to figure out what happened.
[00:36:10] What’s the who, what’s, when’s, where’s, how’s, all that kind of stuff. And when, when you get like that, and you can put your mind in that, you, you are much better at digging at stuff and hearing emotional words and following threads that you wouldn’t have followed before, ’cause you’re too busy trying to solve it as they’re going.
[00:36:28] If you, if you can stop trying to solve it and now try to discover, you get very good at this, and you’ll make better products, right? You just will. And, and you’ll make products… You know, we almost always over-engineer products, right? And you talk to clients and, and your best customers use, use like 20% of what you built, especially software.
[00:36:48] Pol Cousineau: Yes
[00:36:49] Bill Flynn: But our engineers wanna put stuff in, and it sounds good. We heard that one customer said they wanted this, so we add it as a feature, but no other customer ever added, you know, all those kinds of things. So when, when you get really good at really understanding what, why people buy, what causes them to buy, you become much better at designing products and building products that they want, and it’s a lot easier to sell because you’re, you’re…
[00:37:09] They’re now not choosing among many things. You’ve designed it for them, and hopefully the market’s big enough. They’re not, they’re not comparing you in, in like a, an RFP model. They’re like, “No one else does. No one else solves it the way you do. I want that.” Right? And, and one of the best examples is the iPhone, right?
[00:37:28] I mean, I paid tw- I could… I didn’t pay, but this thing costs $1,200.
[00:37:33] Pol Cousineau: That’s a lot for a
[00:37:34] Bill Flynn: That’s a lot of, for a phone, right? But for me, it’s worth it. I actually tried a, a, a, a Galaxy, and I didn’t like it. Um, and so many people will do that. They’ll, they’ll pay… Now, this is, there’s… To me, there’s two types of strategies. There’s joy to use, right?
[00:37:51] And then there’s low cost, right? So joy to use is Apple, Dyson, Nest, whatever, Tiffany’s. Um, and then you’ve got Southwest and McDonald’s and Walmart and, you know, they’re the, they’re the low-cost, you know, the, the, they’re sort of the low-cost value provider. ‘Cause Target’s not low cost, but it’s low cost for the value that you’re getting, ’cause you’re getting sort of higher end products, you think, and you’re not paying like you would if you went to a Neiman Marcus or, or Nordstrom’s.
[00:38:22] So when you understand that about your customer, you then design what they want, and they go to you and they never go anywhere else.
[00:38:29] Pol Cousineau: And there’s something that you mentioned which was a customer might only use 20% of the features or the capabilities, and I’ve noticed that. One of our sponsors for the show, Knolyx, and that is K-N-O-L-Y-X, it’s a membership community platform for educational businesses. One of the best features we added, and, and I’m saying “we” because I’m also a co-founder, is hiding features from the platform. And then just this week there was someone that said, “Hey, I think I might be ready to start, but I’m concerned because there’s all these different features. Can I just start small and then build from there?” And I says, “Oh, yes. There’s– We can just disable all those from the start, and then we can just keep enabling them.
[00:39:14] You’re not gonna have to pay more one way or the other.” But removing and stripping features was a highly demanded feature,
[00:39:23] and it
[00:39:23] goes back to simplicity, the experience that people want, and this applies to most things that are being sold. I see in courses where people stack bonuses, countless bonuses. Oh, number two, number three, number four, number five, especially when they’re not gonna do a sales call. And that type of selling was very, very popular not too long ago. I see now it’s reduced a little bit online, but there was this massive wave. And the problem with this is if people don’t feel like they’ll need all of these bonuses, they still sense that they’re paying for it. So this can actually reduce your sales if you push it too far because you say, “Well, why am I buying all of this? And surely I could be paying half if I, they didn’t give me all of that.” So it’s also trying to balance it, and then it’s also if you have a sales conversation, what is the language that you’re using?
[00:40:22] So for me, my crutch is I go highly technical, so then I have my reminders. “No, don’t go too technical. Speak in their terms. Try to use everyday examples.”
[00:40:32] Bill Flynn: You know, tell a story.
[00:40:36] Pol Cousineau: Exactly.
[00:40:37] Right? And then it’s being aware of where you’re making these moves that might be hurting your business. And for me it’s like, okay, I know I go too technical, so then I look at that consciously, and it’s being okay with admitting it and then seeing how you can improve those things, and also getting that type of, uh, of feedback. And today- With AI, I found that you can feed your transcripts into an AI and you can give it a little bit of training, and it can tell you those patterns. And then you could say, “Hey, how am I doing now?” And it said, “Ah, you did it again, Pol. You went too technical.” Then they didn’t understand, you gave a second technical ex- explanation. This is your reminder to go into a story
[00:41:22] and move into there, right? And getting kind of like that feedback loop, whether it’s from a human, watching your own recordings, an AI, something like this, and it’s developing that type of awareness.
[00:41:33] Bill Flynn: Yeah. That’s great. Good for you. Yeah
[00:41:36] Pol Cousineau: Now I wanna take a, a sharp turn here
[00:41:39] and take a look a little bit at your business, because you have different offers and you have, like, the one-on-one coaching, and then you have a cohort model for CEOs, and you also do some keynote speaking. So how did you pick these solutions or these, uh, delivery methods for what you’re providing in terms of transformation?
[00:42:02] Bill Flynn: Yeah. So, um, my– if you, if you sort of boiled my vision down, um, my vision is to bend the curve is the way I describe it, which is very intriguing ’cause like, what is that?
[00:42:17] Pol Cousineau: Yes, especially because I use the sharp curve segway.
[00:42:22] Bill Flynn: I’m, I’m, I’m lessening your, uh, your, your sharpness. So bend the curve. So, um, when I first started, um, really focusing on, um, what I wanna do as a coach, um, I started to research, you know, business success and business failure.
[00:42:40] And what I learned from the data is that, uh, and this is still true today, is that most businesses go out of business in five years. So it’s, it’s, uh, a little less than 50% of businesses. If you look at the Small Business Administration and Bureau of Labor Statistics, they both have the same general set of data, and they say the same thing.
[00:42:58] Now, so that’s kind of a sharp, you know, drop. Now, what happens is it continues to go down. As you go out 25 years, about 16% of them are left. So this is, this is death or, or, or life. So that’s simple. So that’s the curve. I, I, I don’t think that’s necessary. Now, some businesses should go out of business, right?
[00:43:21] For whatever reason. They didn’t pick well. They’re, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re not, um, ethical, whatever. So there’s obviously gonna be a drop. But I think there’s a lot of preventable reasons of, of why businesses go out of business, and, and one of them we just talked about, which is people, um, create offerings without really understanding if p- someone wants them, right?
[00:43:44] It’s their idea, and they fall in love with their idea, and they, and they try to convince people how smart they are. And, and sometimes they do a good job, and sometimes they don’t. And most businesses that start pivot. You know, they, they don’t always end up where they started. Um-
[00:43:57] Pol Cousineau: very common, I would say, that pivot
[00:43:59] Bill Flynn: Yeah, it, I mean, I did 10 startups and only one really ended up, we ended up where we started.
[00:44:06] The other nine all moved somewhere else. Some very drastic moves and some sort of just course correction moves. Um, so, you know, I, and then I studied business success and I said, okay, there’s at least what I thought was a pattern. And if you study, if you… So you have all the, all the businesses that die and then those that survive.
[00:44:30] Now, th- those that survive, they’re not thriving. They’re not all thriving. Very few of them are thriving So I looked at, okay, let me look at the outliers, the ones that are thriving. And the ones that thrive do the same few things really, really well. And that’s basically what I teach. I say, “If you wanna have a great business, you have to get really good at these three things.”
[00:44:56] Um, and, and there’s a lot of layers underneath, but one is you have to understand how to attract, craft, and develop teams because teams do almost all the work. It’s very rare that you have any company that scales to any size that’s reliant upon one or two people only. Um, and so that’s one thing. And we don’t…
[00:45:21] I mean, you go to business school, you go to whatever, they don’t teach you how to do this. You know, you have to sort of learn from mistakes. But there’s a way to do it, right? And, and Google has now started to study this and has been doing it for, you know, with their Atas- Aristotle project and their Oxygen project.
[00:45:36] They’ve been really studying teams. Amy Edmondson is doing a lot of work on teams, but she’s focusing on the psychological safety side. But there’s all this stuff that you need to do. Um, so I teach them how to do that. And then I say, “You have to ha- understand that your business is a system.” It’s one big system.
[00:45:53] It’s generally made up of subsystems. I believe there are seven, and those subsystems have components. Now, what’s great about any systemic modeling is that you don’t have to optimize every single system, because if you optimize one of them, it may actually compensate for something else, right? So if you think of it, I do it in a metaphor of a house, right?
[00:46:14] So i-i-if you have a house that has a lot of R factor in the walls, a lot of insulation,
[00:46:20] then you don’t need as expensive an AC and HVAC system. But if you have a lot of windows, then you have to compensate because a lot of, um, temperature is lost. Um, you know, if you use a geothermal, um, system versus a, a standard, you know, HVAC, you know, with the air handler in the, in the ceiling and vents and all that kind of stuff, that’s different as well.
[00:46:44] You know, so this… If you, if you have different sized rooms, if you have high ceilings, if, you know, whatever, there’s all sorts of things that you can do. Same thing with a business. If you have an okay strategy, but your execution is near perfect, you’ll still win a lot, and you’ll probably beat someone with a better strategy Um, so we, I talk about all that kind of stuff with them.
[00:47:07] So you have to have some sort of operating system. I, you know, I’ve now created my version of that, which is basically a little bit of scaling up, a little bit of EOS, a little bit of other stuff that I know. You know, I sort of have a, have a, have sort of a pastiche of, of a, of a, of a pro- of a system. Uh, and then lastly is if you wanna measure how well you’re doing, you need to have cash be your fin- your primary financial metric, not your revenue, not even your profit, ’cause you can make up profit, but you can’t make up cash.
[00:47:40] You either have cash or you don’t. And if you wanna grow your business, you need to fuel the business with cash, and you typically need it before you grow. So you have to understand how to generate cash within your business, right? Which is generally a thing between strategy and execution, how well you do each.
[00:47:58] Um, that’s it. Just focus on those three things, and you’ll be 80% to 90% of the way there. But most businesses don’t do anything with the first, barely have any sort of system at all that they use, and they are much more focused on profit, which again, is fine. But if you’re a business owner and you focus on profit and you pay yourself half of what the going rate for your business is, so make maybe $300,000 is what someone in your position would get paid, and you pay yourself 150, then you’re lying to yourself, right?
[00:48:31] You- that’s not… And you’re, you’re making the-
[00:48:33] Pol Cousineau: pretending the business is better than it
[00:48:36] is, and if you compensated yourself at the market rate, ooh, now the profitability of the business decreases
[00:48:42] Bill Flynn: Or goes away.
[00:48:43] Pol Cousineau: Yes. And then if you’re ever thinking about selling your business,
[00:48:47] you just killed your valuation now
[00:48:49] Bill Flynn: Exactly. Yep.
[00:48:51] Pol Cousineau: Yeah
[00:48:51] Bill Flynn: so that’s, that’s basically, you know, I go through a, a longer process, but that’s how I approached my business, right? So I said, “Okay, if I want to be really good at what I do, and if I wanna bend the curve, how would I do that?” First, I had to get good at what I’m doing, right? So when I first started, just like I said, I sucked at selling.
[00:49:12] When I first started coaching, I wasn’t… I didn’t suck, but I’m much better now than I was 10 years ago. Um, and I look at, and I, I see all the mistakes I made and all the things that I did. I still make mistakes and whatever. I’m not perfect, but I’m much, much better, and I hear it in, in my, uh, my clients, right?
[00:49:32] Some call me their, their secret weapon.
[00:49:34] You know, I’ve been told that I add more value per word than any other coach or consultant they’ve ever worked with. You know, they, they, they’re giving me… So I’m getting better at this and, and I, and I’m, and I generally know what I’m talking about and, and I’m constantly…
[00:49:48] I’m, I’m a learner. I read 40 to s- 50 to 70 books a year. I write articles because I learn, you know. I’m constantly trying to get better at what I do. I listen to every podcast that I’m on so I can see how well I’m doing, and I, I say “right” a lot, and I try to work that out of my, out of my, um, vocabulary. I certainly do a lot less of it, but I still hear myself say it every now and again.
[00:50:09] I’ll even test my… Huh?
[00:50:12] Pol Cousineau: It sounds a little bit familiar.
[00:50:17] Bill Flynn: Um, and I, I test myself, so I’ll, I’ll be– I’ll hear your question, and then before I answer it, I’ll say, “Okay, I should answer it this way.” And then I, I see how I did. Um, so I’m constantly– I’m always trying to get better at what I do.
[00:50:34] So I said, in order for me to do that, and, and, and I wanna bend the curve, how can I do that? So I’ve, I’m now sort of in phase two, where I’m… I think I’m a pretty good coach. I may be, in some places, a really, one of the foremost experts in what I do. Um, so I have a lot of credibility, and I’m in the 100 Coaches thing, and I’m there, I’m in there with some pretty formidable people, right?
[00:50:56] Ken Blanchard, the One Minute Manager guy’s in there. Dorie Clark, Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit guy’s in there. You know, I’m in with a really august group of people, and I talk to them, and I often hear, “Wow. You know, I’ve never heard that before. I’ve never thought of it that way before.” So I’m, I’m starting to get also signals.
[00:51:16] So I think I’m sort of in this phase two. Now I wanna be able to expand, right? And say, “I wanna touch as many– I wanna touch a million lives.” That’s my goal. Um, I’m at about 50,000, give or take. Um, so the, you know, the books. I’m now writing books that I didn’t write before. The cohort model is the, is the biggest coaching model, which is…
[00:51:37] A cohort model is basically, it’s like a class. You have six to eight CEOs and their teams, and you do sort of a, a course,
[00:51:46] Pol Cousineau: Their teams are actually part of their cohort
[00:51:48] Bill Flynn: Uh, I ha– so, um, I, that’s the biggest model. I don’t have any cohorts yet. They’re really hard to build because everyone has to start at the same day at the same level. You can’t sort of add one in two years in ’cause you’re already…
[00:52:01] Pol Cousineau: sales and marketing challenge, exactly, to get
[00:52:03] that filled at the moment and then bring people in. And I know some people listening are familiar, like online launches, and it creates so much pressure and anxiety, and that’s kinda a way to fill a, a cohort
[00:52:17] i- in there. So it, it’s more one-on-one with their teams right
[00:52:21] Bill Flynn: Yeah. So I do one, one to few, I guess, right? So I do, I do me with the senior leadership team, the CEO and his or her team, and that’s my main business. Um, and then I do one-on-one coaching, executive coaching, but I don’t do a ton of it, um, ’cause it’s not really what I wanna do. To, to me, one-on-one coaching is wonderful, but it’s business therapy, and that just doesn’t interest me as much as, as teaching management science and, and helping people affect everyone in the business as opposed to just, you know, maybe a smaller group.
[00:52:53] Um, so, you know, and, and maybe I’ll do other trainings and that kind of stuff. Um, you know, speaking is… I don’t really count speaking as really any of that ’cause it’s too ephemeral and, you know, and it, it doesn’t really go deep enough. It’s more of an awareness. Like if I can have someone in the audience say, “Oh, you know, let me do something with that information,” that’s great.
[00:53:14] They may do it with me or someone else. To me, that’s what speaking is. Um, and, and that has some value, but that’s why I don’t really do the Vistage stuff anymore. It wasn’t… The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze for me. So that’s sort of how I gr- that’s how I’ve decided how do I get to a million, right? Is, is this process.
[00:53:32] And I don’t plan to retire. I love what I do. It’s wonderful. Um, as long as I work fewer than 100 days a year, I’m good, and I’m only at 30, so I have 70 more to go, and I’m happy to do other stuff.
[00:53:43] ​
[00:53:45] Bill Flynn: we were the hero
[00:53:47] most of our lives,
[00:53:47] and decades have gone by
[00:53:49] where we’re rewarded
[00:53:50] and recognized for that.
[00:53:51] Pol Cousineau: and I’m sure
[00:53:52] a lot of people
[00:53:52] listening are like,
[00:53:53] “Ah, this sounds all too familiar.”
[00:53:56] Bill Flynn: the question
[00:53:56] you should be asking is:
[00:53:57] why did this decision reach me?
[00:54:00] Pol Cousineau: Okay, we lost 700 bucks,
[00:54:02] but I didn’t have to
[00:54:03] get bothered by that.
[00:54:04] Bill Flynn: how do you fire
[00:54:04] yourself from the day-to-day?
[00:54:06] How do you protect
[00:54:06] your decision capital?
[00:54:07] Pol Cousineau: I notice when
[00:54:08] there’s too many decisions,
[00:54:09] even if they’re not that hard,
[00:54:10] it creates a lot of
[00:54:11] anxiety, stress, and pressure
[00:54:14] just by the sheer
[00:54:15] volume of them.
[00:54:16] ​