Brian Sher has established himself as a respected pioneer and business growth specialist. He has helped countless businesses grow over a 20 year period including start ups as well as businesses doing tens of millions of dollars per annum. He has an outstanding reputation in the business world and is a successful best selling author on the topic of business and marketing. He has been involved in helping many businesses grow and expand through his various companies and is The Fortune Institute’s CEO.
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Franziska: Welcome back to the Basic Bananas Radio. Today we have another fantastic guest and his name is Brian Sher. Brian Sher has, over the last 25 years, established himself as a very respected pioneer and business growth specialist. He has also helped countless businesses grow over a 20 year period, including start-ups and also businesses that are doing over tens of millions of dollars per year. He has an outstanding reputation in the business world and he is also a successful bestselling author on the topic of business and marketing. Brian has been involved in helping many businesses grow and expand through his various companies and he is also the Fortune Institute CEO. Welcome, Brian!
Brian: Thank you very much, nice to have you guys with me this afternoon.
Christo: Thank you, thank you for joining us.
Franziska: Now, I know this was a very short snapshot of what you’ve done in the past 25 years. Can you just elaborate a little bit more about your business journey because I know our listeners, they always love the personal touch and we know who has been doing what and maybe some secrets that nobody knows.
Brian: Yeah, sure. Sure. You know, very, very quickly ‘coz 25 years is a long time. So, my journey began when I couldn’t get a job. I really didn’t think I was suited for business. I never really planned too much on being in business but I found myself unable to get employment. Having done a degree in marketing, I figured, well, probably the best thing for me to do is to jump myself into where I can begin marketing myself, which is what I did. And like many people, I started at a marketing consulting practice, helping small business people; grow their businesses, simply because big businesses wouldn’t hire me.
So I figured, well, small businesses, they can’t afford a full-time marketing person, so maybe I could help them on a part-time basis, which is exactly what happened. I started working for 2, 3, 4, 5 clients and helped them grow their business. And not only did I learn a lot from them while we were practicing a lot of their stuff, I was also reading, learning from a lot of the original marketing mentors from the United States. So, I learned a lot as I went and I started practicing. I saw it work and I saw it didn’t work. As a consequence of that, eventually, someone came to me and said, “We should potentially be in business together.” So I started my own product business which is a business called Vision Publishing and many of you might remember the Vision Books summaries but we saw the summarize business books and sell those as a subscription product and that went very well.
We grew from a 0 to about 100 employees in about 3 1/2 – 4 years. And that business I eventually ended up selling and moving on from, started another business in the health and pharmaceutical area, and grew that up into a successful enterprise. And now just ever since, done more, I’ve lost count, but I think I’ve started 15 businesses in a 25 year period and maybe more. As I sit here, it is very hard for me to keep track of them all. Generally, I’ve build them up and sell them off and then gone to something else.
So, right now, the Fortune Institute is a business that I’ve started with Simon Reynolds and the whole idea of this business is to try to help as many small business people and educate them on the techniques that work for growing a business, not only sales and marketing but in all aspects of business. Because business, sales and marketing is important but as the business grows, there are many, many other issues including personal issues that sabotage the growth of businesses. Is that right, did I summarise it ok for you?
Franziska: Yeah, and it’s more than a summary. It’s even, you know, some really valuable tips already for our audience. Also for the listeners, if you want to go and listen to the interview we did with Simon Reynolds about a year ago, it was a really great interview as well with Brian Sher’s partner in the Fortune Institute. Now, Brian, something that you talked about a lot, and obviously that you’ve practiced a lot in your own businesses and with your clients, is having a unique selling proposition and standing out, can we talk a little bit about that and why it is important to have a uniqueness, to have a unique selling proposition and maybe we even know what it is.
Brian: Yeah, well, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that I think most businesses make, I say most I’m not saying all, because some businesses are naturally unique. Some businesses naturally have something but in near nature that makes them unique. But the bulk of the businesses that I see and probably that you guys see as well and probably one of the biggest problems that we encounter is advises to small business people is the fact that people going to start a business and they go out there thinking that, “Well if I’m of a bit of service or my colleague or my product’s better, then customers are going to come running to me.” And that’s not what happens.
In fact, most of the time, customers cannot tell the difference between one company, one business and another. And as far as they are concerned, one dentist is the same as the next dentist, one chiropractor is the same as the next chiropractor because there is no differentiating points that customers can see or distinguish from the outside. So as a consequence, there’s not a big advantage that you can have in your business unless you’ve got something that’s unique or some point of differentiation. Now that’s easier said than done because a lot of marketing experts talk about fact that what you needed to do is to differentiate yourself from everybody else. The question then becomes is ‘How do you do that?’ and ‘What’s the process in which you do that?’ and ‘What differentiating points should you take?’ and very few people actually give you any tools or techniques on how to do that because they understand the concept that differentiation of uniqueness but when it comes to putting it into practice, it’s not as simple and straightforward because you really need to know how to go back doing that.
So, we can spend a bit of time if you like talking about that. Is that going to be helpful to people listening today?
Christo: Yeah, that would be awesome.
Franziska: We’d love to.
Christo: I think we have definitely encountered the same chronic question really frequently and I’m really happy that you’ve said that as one of the mistake is just thinking that just applying a little thing or having a bit of extra customer service that you’re a great example, thinking that people are just going to queue up to want to work with them. So if you could share some information on how the actual business owners can go about creating a USP and maybe how or where they should share it or a couple of different examples of that would be fantastic.
Brian: Yeah, sure. And I’ll give you a simple example. Just today, I went to the dentist. Let’s talk about the dentist just a minute. Dentists saw pretty much in every suburb, in every city here in Australia. You don’t have to go very far. If you want to find a dentist near you, you can open up the yellow pages if you still look there or you can go online and type dentist and it’s going to be 5 dentists almost within 5 kilometers of you. Well today, I drove 40 minutes to go and see a dentist and the dentist charged $120 or $130 for a consultation. Well I just paid $280.
Franziska: Oh, you know the funny thing right?
Christo: This is getting interesting.
Franziska: Christo and I went to the dentist today and I paid $380. I didn’t have any holes but same thing. We drove for 20 minutes even though we could just walk.
Brian: Well, that’s right and I didn’t even get a clean.
Franziska: I didn’t get a clean. Christo got some holes fixed.
Christo: Well then, enough about the holes. Let’s hear about why you drove across town and paid the extra money to go to that dentist.
Brian: Well yeah, not because this dentist is of a bit of service than my previous dentist, not because this dentist provide a bit of quality. I’m sure your holes were filled just as well as my holes right? But the reason that I drove is because this dentist has differentiated herself saying she’s a holistic dentist. Now what does a holistic dentist do? They don’t use mercury fillings. They don’t do root canal treatments. They don’t use x-rays. They keep you away from all those toxins. Now if you’re into health, if you’re concerned about your long-term health, you can drive 40 minutes and pay a little bit extra to go to somebody who says their uniqueness, ‘We’re a holistic dentist and we use no toxic chemicals.’
Now that’s important to you. You’re going to drive all the way there. And so, what she’s done was she differentiated herself from all the other dentists because all the other dentists just said, ‘I’m a dentist and if you want to come to me, then just come along. Yes, I fill holes. Yes, I do fillings. Yes, I do clean. And I do everything else that every other dentist does.’ Now that’s a very simple example that most people can understand but does get more complex than that so no matter what business you’re in, it makes no difference what business you’re in, you need to start to work out on how to do that for yourself. And the starting point doing that is with your customers, your potential customers.
So for example with the dentist, I’m a potential customer or somebody who is concerned about an algum, fillings that have mercury in them. I’m concerned about vaccines. I don’t like vaccines. I don’t like x-rays. And I feel when I go to other dentists is that they can force you to have it. But by going to this one saying that she’s a holistic dentist, I could go there and feel relaxed that she’s not going to force these things on me and she can still deal with the issues that every other dentists deals with. Now, how do you that? You start to look at what the market is, and you start to identify what sort of demands, what sort of demand is out there, what sort of customers are out there. And become more specific, ask yourself the following question, why should your potential customer by from you as opposed to somebody else?
So that’s a very important question to ask yourself, why should my potential customers as opposed to everybody else? Now if you just say, I’m a dentist- that’s not a good enough reason. You have to have something in addition to being a dentist or something that appeals to the emotional concern of your; either your potential customers or your customers. So, it’s got to have an emotional appeal, as you know, you guys have been to one of my seminars; I talked about the concept of a plumber because everybody can appreciate a plumber and virtually everybody’s called a plumber. So, what you need to do is; you need to ask yourself other than why they should buy from me, you need to ask yourself- what are the fears, frustrations, desires and concerns of my potential customers? Now what does that mean? You get a pen and a paper and you start to write fear and then you start to list the fears that your customers or your potential customers may have in doing business with you or someone like you in your industry.
So, let’s take the dentist again and I’ll come back to the plumber. You might be a dentist that says, “We promise one of the fears that going to the dentist that most people will have is that they’re scared of pain.” They don’t want to go to the dentist because it’s painful. So if I was a dentist I’d be saying, ‘Okay, one of the fears is pain. So maybe I could differentiate myself by saying “We guarantee you that you’ll never experience pain when you come to my dental practice.” So, you can then quickly start to figure out a couple of unique differentiating points by just doing that. You can do the same thing by saying for the frustrations. What are the frustrations? What are the desires? What are the concerns? And by listing down these points, you can very quickly start to find out what some of the areas that you can target that your customers may be concerned about.
So, then to the plumber example. If you want to call the plumber, most people when I ask them, what are your fears, frustrations, desires or concerns with the plumber, most people would say, “Well, you know, what frustrates me about the plumber is that they don’t show up on time, they charge too much, they leave a mess and they usually don’t dress very well. They’re dirty.” So, if those are the main 4 things that concern people about hiring a plumber or a plumber coming into their home, then if I was you and you’re in the plumbing business, I’d be targeting some unique selling proposition or some differentiating point which communicates to people that if you’re a plumber and you’re first going to show up on time, certainly you’re going to not overcharge them, thirdly you’re going to not leave a mess and fourth you’re going to dress well or you’re not going into the house dirty.
So, those are 4 potential differentiating points. You could use one of them. You could use all of them. You could use them in different circumstances. You could use them in you advertising in different ways. And so, by doing that, all of a sudden, when you’re advertising yourself, people can immediately emotionally connect with you because, I don’t know about you guys, but if I was looking for a plumber and I was concerned about a plumber who didn’t arrive on time, then a plumber who said something along the lines of “We guarantee to arrive on time or your service call is free” will definitely get my attention as opposed to Joe’s Plumbing 24-hour service call. So those are the 2 options for you. You can either be Joe’s Plumbing that just says ‘Emergency 24 hours. Give us a call.’ And I know as a customer, even though you say emergency, you’re going to show up when you’re going to show up because it’s on your schedule. But when you tell me you’re going to arrive on time or the service call is free, I’m more likely to call you with that proposition than somebody who says emergency plumbing because you’re giving me some demonstration of the fact that you mean what you say.
So it’s very important that you think about these concepts in terms of your own business. Now there are literally hundreds of different industries and there’s thousands of different businesses and ways businesses. So it’s not something you can just make up on the run but if you work through it and you work through it with your guys of course, then it’s going to be something that you can figure out pretty quickly.
And by the way, one of the other points that I want to make is that where a lot of people get stuck and the reason that they are confused is because they try to have one unique selling proposition or one that’s unique across the whole company. And if you got 20 different products, you may find that it’s impossible to come up with something that’s unique across the whole company that you can definitely have 20 different unique selling propositions for each one of your products. Sometimes, it’s actually product specific. It’s not company specific. And sometimes, it’s market specific. In other words, you may be the plumber but you may find that there’s 3 or 4 different market segments that you can appeal to for the same service.
Franziska: I love it. And I love this topic because it’s just so valuable. It’s one of the first things you have to do before you start using different marketing strategies and it’s one of the things we discuss a lot of plumber bunch groups. I was laughing a little bit on my own here, obviously, because Christo wasn’t laughing with me, about the plumber example because we have a few traders in the group and one of the exercises we do, I love your question when you say what are your fears, frustrations, desires and concerns. And one thing we often do in the group is ask your prospects or ask your clients about that so that it can get into their head. And then when we had a plumber in the group, most of the ladies said they don’t want bum cracks. They just don’t want to see bum cracks in their hinds. And that was a very good unique point that the plumber could use in marketing material that was very funny, corky and was suitable with his brand.
So if you pick up his material, it would say ‘No bum cracks. No dirty shoes.’ We wear the, what are they called, the shoe booties or something; the shoes socks. And also, what they guarantee is they leave the place cleaner than they found it. So if they find something dirty in the sink or somewhere they just quickly clean the stuff and they leave it cleaner than they found it. And that came out of doing the exercises you described. So, yeah, I love it. I love the stuff that you’ve outlined.
Brian: That’s alright then. I hear what you’re saying. It’s actually true that unless you get this right, you’re going to waste a lot of money for advertising because you can buy the same add as the plumber who’s offering the “No bum crack or we clean up the place for you better than we found it” and he’s going to get twice as many calls as you from the same add on the same place of the same size and he’s going to get twice the response which means that his business will probably twice as big or maybe even more. Simply because he’s doing, he’s offering a service that people really want and can emotionally connect with. That is really important. And then quite honestly, if any of your clients are not doing this or not having you guys help them with it, they’re absolutely crazy.
Christo: Yeah.
Franziska: Absolutely. And that is, as you say, that is a big mistake that you see a lot out there was the people who don’t work with you or us that spend all this money on doing social media or buying ads on the paper or doing a lot of other things, direct mail that costs them money but before they even are really clear on what’s unique them. And as you say, they have to first figure out what’s unique about them and then they spend that same amount of money and they’ll get a bigger return.
Brian: Yeah, and the other point is that it doesn’t have to be that bigger difference. I mean, the fact that the guard covers his bum crack, I mean his not doing anything different in terms of fixing the part because it’s not about the part. You see, the part everybody can fix, any plumber can fix the part. It’s not about that. It’s about all the risk or the concerns that people have. The emotional things that come up with people in doing business with you that really make the difference.
Christo: Yeah.
Brian: And that’s where people make a big mistake. They think that people want the cheapest price or they want something that’s logical. But I wouldn’t have driven 40 minutes to go to this dentist if it was logical. If it was logical, I would have gone 2 minutes off the road to the dentist over here. If it was logical, I wouldn’t have paid $220 or $240 and you wouldn’t have paid $380 for your dentist.
Franziska: Exactly. Actually I probably drove the 20 minutes because I know it’s more expensive because I think it’s better even though it’s probably the same deal. But that’s another discussion, pricing.
Christo: What’s your say and take on what we offer people to come back afterwards, like what kind of define a bit of USP and it is quite a broad thing. Like sometimes it might be in the way they deliver their product or sometimes it is that they’ve worked with celebrities or something. You know and it’s all these different points. It’s quite a broad question but we often have clients, you know, they are thinking ‘How do we apply this? Like where do we share it without kind of sometimes sounding like I don’t want to sound like I’ve got a big head’ or obviously it’s they’re worried about people on what they market if that’s the case. But just any ideas that you might have in different ways of sharing; even if in the delivery of the product or is it like you said, should we purely focus on the fees or the objections people might have with their industry and just pick the top three and share that? Or what about your take on where people would share that information?
Brian: You’re saying how should they share it?
Christo: Yeah, exactly. How they should share it?
Brian: With their customers?
Christo: Yup.
Brian: Well, the whole purpose of developing a USP or some unique selling advantage is to get new customers. Your existing customers know what you do. So it’s not about coming up with this for your existing customers. This is all about attracting new customers. So, it is really important that you look to see what other people in your industry are doing, in how they are selling themselves, in how they are delivering their products.
You know, what’s interesting though is this and I think you guys will agree, when you’re new in the marketplace, you probably better off finding the leading company or business if you’ve got competition in your space and then just copying everything they do because they are off seeking for an example. So in other words, what you’re doing is you are saying “Well, we can do the same as these guys” But there will become a point at which you then have to differentiate yourself because otherwise you are never personally going exactly the same. So at first what you do is you catch a market share from a competitor but then at a certain point you’ll just stop growing because between you and a competitor, your customers won‘t be able to tell the difference. And that’s the point in which you then have to start looking for differentiating points.
Now you can do that by obviously differentiating your product so you can say, “Well, if someone offers a bottle that’s purple, you can offer it in pink. Now that’s a very simple example that you might say, “Well, you just look at Apple.” Phones are phones but Apple has gone and differentiated themselves in the way that their phones have been packaged up the way and have been designed the way it looks, the user interface. But now everybody’s catching up, so Samsung all these others are starting to catch up. Where people are starting to say, “Well you know what? Actually, when I look at the Samsung and I look at the Apple, Samsung now has a bigger screen and I would prefer that.”
So a lot of people are now switching back away from Apple because before Apple had a bigger advantage. Now there is no distinguishable advantage between Apple and Samsung but Samsung has a bigger screen. So people say, “Well, I’ll go for the Samsung.” Sometimes it’s just a little thing that annoys people, like the Apple screen is too small. Then what do you do? You got a bigger screen or you stay on what you’re doing. Now the Sydney Morning Herald for many years insisted that they needed to be a broadsheet and that was a differentiating point and because they thought that was different. Well, now they’ve become a tabloid. So, sometimes it’s a matter of copying your competition but sometimes at a point you then got to go opposite your competition. Now then it’s probably confused people because it’s quite an advanced thinking. Keep it very simple. You just got to find ways to be different whether it’s your product, whether it’s the way you promote yourself. Maybe you do get a celebrity and that celebrity promotes your product. And the product is the same as everybody else‘s but it’s the credibility of the celebrity that makes you different.
Christo: Yeah.
Bran: It’s maybe the way you package your products, right? It’s maybe the way you distribute your products. If everybody’s going through petitions maybe you go through hairdressing salons. If everybody’s going to supermarkets, maybe you go to convenience stores. So you got to look at if everyone’s going to retail, maybe you go online. If everyone’s online, maybe you go through retail. If everyone’s promoting is another way, everyone’s promoting online, maybe you use direct mail. So your point of differentiation can be minor but it doesn’t have to be this huge thing to give you that advantage. But the bigger it is, the bigger the advantage is, the better it is.
Franziska: Fantastic. I think we’ve given our listeners so much goal that they can implement straightaway and also making it very practical. As we wrap up the entry, now let me see if I can get you on the spot here with one of our questions that I haven‘t told you about which is I’m sure you had so many funny and weird and interesting experiences in your journey. Is there one experience or one moment that you can pick out that you think was particularly funny or weird in terms of being a business owner.
Christo: Put it on the spot.
Brian: Well, I can tell you that I remember this. Unfortunately at some point of growing a business you have to fire somebody. And sometimes you got to fire a few people. And I don’t like to do that because somebody’s going to lose their job and they’re going to lose their income, it’s very disappointing for them, it’s disappointing for the company and it’s quite embarrassing. And I do remember enough unfortunately I have to let somebody go and I went up to them. And I said, “Look, I’m terribly sorry.” And I know this is as you do, it was one of the hardest things to do as a business owner to let somebody go. And one of the things that very few business owners look forward to but I had to do it on this particular day.
So I called the guy up and told him that I’m terribly sorry for whatever reason that was at a time in the company but we’re going to have to let you go. And it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I chose the afternoon. And he said, “Great” and he left my office. And I remember showing up the next morning and he was sitting on his desk. And I looked at his desk and I looked in and thought, “Did I fire that guy yesterday or did I just dream that I fired the guy because he was sitting on his desk. And sure enough, I called him into my office and said “I thought I fired you yesterday.” He goes, “Yeah, I know. I don’t think that you meant it.”
“Okay, look, you know I did mean it so unfortunately you’re going to have to leave.” For the next few days, he showed up hoping I’d change my mind.
Franziska: Oh, good on him. I like that example. Now Brian, you’ve got an event coming up. A big event that we’d love our audience to know. We’ll put a link below the show so that they can grab the tickets right away but would you like to just quickly talk about what the event is about and why our listeners should join us. We’ll be there too.
Brian: Yeah, look. It’s going to be an incredible event. It usually has, we’ve done it before, and it’s usually hosted by Simon Reynolds, this time it will be. Simon’s an incredible presenter speaker got some powerful stuff. He happens to be one of those people who has grown a business from 0 to a value of 5 million dollars overnight. He’s got a lot of valuable insights for anyone who wants to come and learn not only about sales but about all aspects of business. We’re going to have, it’s over 3 days. At NIDA down Kensington, Sydney. We’re going to have about 400-500 other very excited but no high business people. They want to learn the latest strategies on sales, marketing, productivity, culture change, stuff of recruitment, capital raising, all the online marketing stuff, of course Facebook. There is going to be so much to learn. All the details are on the link that you’ll send everybody.
We’re going to have some very powerful and very impressive people who have a bit of richness that’s coming, he’s known as Jack Cowin who started Hungry Jack’s Kentucky Fried Chicken. In Australia. We’ve got the guy who started Booktopia which sells more books in Australia than Amazon. He’s coming along and, you know, obviously, we’re going to have some experts in every particular field. And Franziska, you’re coming to speak, so we’re really looking forward to that. And we’re going to share a lot of great ideas. There’s going to be 13 speakers, the most important thing is that; there is going to be no selling. So this is not one of those events where you come to and every speaker is sending you to the back of the room to go and spend $2000-3000 in buying their box of goodies. This is a no-selling event, it’s content-only. It’s probably one of the premier events as far as business is concerned. So if anyone is serious about learning some incredible stuff in 2 or 3 days- in 3 days as a matter of fact, then they should really come along and attend this event.
Franziska: Yeah, certainly. I mean, I joined you guys last year and that’s exactly what I saw, I saw that it’s jam-packed and it’s not a pitch-fest which is really refreshing in this industry. And this year we have a whole bunch of our members joining us and we’re organizing lunch. So, for all of our guys that are joining us, I’ll put a link in the show notes and then, the guys that are listening can book in a ticket and hopefully, we’ll see them there too. So thank you so much, Brian, for today for sharing your gold nuggets. We really appreciate it.
Brian: No problem, thanks for having me, guys.
Christo: Thanks, Brian.
Brian: Bye-bye.
Christo: If you’d like to grow your business and give it a good kick up the butt. Why not go to BasicBananas.com where you can download a free guide with some marketing strategies that actually work. Go to Basicbananas.com and you can download your free guide right now.