Ultimate Business Growth with Jim Oneschuk | DFS 293

Welcome to destined for success. I'm your

host Jennifer Takagi and today is PATA palooza. De. I'm so

excited. I've met so many killer people that I would not have

been able to talk to you otherwise. And I have another

guests that will give us even more insights. I have John up,

Jim, I'm gonna get this right on his check. Did I get it close?

Oh, perfect. And he's in Toronto I honeymooned in Toronto. So now

we're almost related. I think we must be cousins. I think we must

be identifying.

Thank you so much for having me on your show. And

I look forward to our conversation.

Right, so the podcast is destined for success.

So why don't you share with us your success journey, and how

you help others companies, individuals reach their level of

success.

So I've spent much of my life either working at

other companies where we've sold into new markets, or developed

new products and brought them to market or I've started companies

or worked in smaller companies and worked for the founders. And

in those situations, every time success is moving from an early

business that is not even bring it breaking even sometimes

across a chasm, which is a term coined by Geoffrey Moore, who

wrote the book Crossing the Chasm. And it's quite a high

risk and resource hungry process that requires plan and strength

and character to cross the chasm. And success is when you

move from those early innovator clients, early adopter clients

into the mass market where the business is self sustaining,

that this is in context where 20% of new businesses failed in

the first year 50% fail in the first five years. We all know

these statistics, and those that the 7% who actually grow

rapidly, which would be defined as larger than 10 people growing

at 20% per year, compounded annually for five years, the

process where you hit that rate of growth is not random, it is a

hardcore plan to find success in that type of growth.

Wow. And I'm kind of a little bit mind blown

by some of these numbers. So how do you get there? How do you

cross over that chasm? Or is that your whole business to help

people step over that chasm,

I I run a course that teaches people to cross the

chasm. And I will take on a smaller number of people into

more of a mentorship or even one to one clients. But the essence

is the idea of a new business is really only worth 10% of that

business. And the success is in the other 90% of what you do.

And it starts and those aren't my statistics by the way, those

are generally accepted. And it starts with not being so

attached to your own idea of what a new product or new

service or new market looks like. But be malleable enough to

mold whatever you're doing to what the customer or the market

really wants to buy. So Jennifer, what you and I might

think is a good idea in a new in. In role growing a business

really means nothing relative to respectfully it really does,

respectfully compared to the what the customer wants. And so

where you start is you have to survey your target customer base

and be highly precise in what you mean as a target customer.

And even within the target customer base, say a specific

industry like colleges and universities or my focus is

business to business situations. So it might be is a mental

health online tools company that's selling to those colleges

and universities. But the essence is you have to go out

and survey the colleges and universities and find out what

they want to buy. It doesn't matter whether you have a good

idea, or I have a good idea. And there is a very precise way of,

of selling. And I can, I can guarantee you that whatever we

think is a good idea will be tweaked by asking the client,

what's keeping them up at night? And what would they think is an

ideal product and service? And going further and asking them,

you know, if, if you gave them what they asked for, how much

would they pay for it? You know, and I can't Can I call you back

in three or six months, if in fact, I'm going to deliver

something close to what you want. But all you so we can find

out this information just by talking with with the right

people. But it requires a lot more, you know, it'll take two

to three years to cross the chasm. How are you going to pay

the bills for that time? Do you have enough life savings? Do you

have potential family and friends who might be investors?

No, there's so many issues that can cause that 20% failure in

the first year and 50% over five years, that it really requires a

lot of thinking. So I'm

I keep smiling and chuckling and for those of

you listening to audio, you might have heard me making

sounds in the background. But for those who sit on video, when

I ever put the video up, I got my first client base. And I

really wanted to work with renew managers, because I felt as a

new manager, I was kind of thrown into the deep end of the

pool and it didn't know how to swim. And I paid to go to

training on my own. And I would work out deals with my boss so

that she would let me off work. And then I would pay for my own

travel my own fees to get in to get a trainee so I could do

better, no better, you know, be the best manager when the time

came. And I just knew that other people would want that. And

guess what they do want it but they want the company to pay.

But then the companies all say we have our own people to train

that. And so I'm gonna say anybody listening to this

podcast, and you're the one who's broken the code to get

into corporations to train their people on leadership development

and personal growth type things. My hat's off to you because I

was not successful at breaking into that group. And I think

there are really a small number of trainers who are successful

at actually breaking into that. So I'm chuckling giggling and

also kicking myself in the pants for Yeah, this would have been

great information.

There are so many little trade secrets and and the

secret sauce in what we talk about, that you don't learn in

business school. And you don't even learn through many formal

corporate training. I've been through the formal training in

many areas of companies like IBM and Oracle Corporation and Ford

Motor Company and, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. And the

types of things that we're talking about here, they don't

teach there. So for example, in your training business, in

launching a new business, it's generally accepted in most

markets that it's around 3% of the buyers are willing to take a

chance on a new product or service. And so you need to find

that category of what are called innovator buyers. And they're

extremely demanding, and they are in successful, high growth

businesses. They are usually friends of the family people

that the entrepreneur knows extremely well from previous

business situations or from their network. And that that

innovator buyer trusts the person so that if you're

starting a business, say in training to corporations, you

have to find someone that you know, who's willing to take a

chance on your training more than just because you've got a

good idea, right? If you look at all the successful high growth

companies, they started this way. Almost all of them, but

then, once you've sold to that early adopter type, sorry, that

innovator type by buyer, then there are other types of buyers,

one called the early adopters the next phase, and that's about

8% of the market. And they won't buy the the first client, but

there'll be an early on client, and they have other buying

criteria. And most of the market 33% of the market is made up by

what are called Early Majority buyers. And those buyers need

strong references, good case studies, good documentation, all

the things that you don't have when you're a smaller business,

right. So you can't can't waste your time trying to sell to

those people who are early majority. And then there's the

late majority. And then there's the laggards that you sell to

differently. But the point of all of this is to be successful,

you've got to cross the chasm and sell to that innovator buyer

differently than the early adopter. And hopefully, you can

cross the chasm to where the early majority buyer can be well

served. And that's I love the business development aspect of

what we're talking about. And this is what I love to teach and

talk with my clients about.

Well, and I I'll just say I ended up getting

into the Whoo, energy healing energy side of things and kind

of turned my back on the other, I'm still willing to do it. But

that's not where I'm gonna put my effort. And the ones who call

me initially, just out of the clear blue, my phone rang, hey,

will you come do a training on this? I was like, yes. Do you

mind Slater, I get another call like that. I'm just saying, Jim,

I thought that was going to be the rest of my life that my

phone was just ringing. Imagine my dismay when it didn't.

Well, then you get into more traditional lead

generation and, and tracking and closing a business. But you do

that with these different types of clients differently depending

on the phase of growth you're in.

I love it. I wish I had known this sooner,

but it's not too late. So I made a pivot in my visit business

just over two years ago. I'm still in the gaining clients, I

work with people, mostly one on one, but a lot of the work I do

I still could take into a larger group into a company or

something like that. So do you have any ideas on what an

entrepreneur can do to step into this, you have something that we

might be missing that we didn't even consider looking at,

besides investigating our market a lot better?

Right? Well, so the first point in that I've

made is to find those early innovator clients who are

personal relationships and over a cheese being with them. So you

end up with some solid references, right? But they're

depending on what the product or service might be. Even if it's

say a hard work product, to develop online videos and

striking up real education based selling where people value your

education, that you inform them about this product segment, or

not just what your product does, but how it helps their business,

those that are how generally what you're doing might lead to

other things, helping their business, putting it in the

client's terms. And you could even say have an online course

where the client pays tuition in order to attend the the course

to, you know, learn how to do the training that you're doing.

As an as an example, in your business, right? Where so you

end up running a course rather than actually delivering the

training. And through running the course that's people might

pay tuition to that you might, you might through that then find

leads to people who want to join group coaching for a year,

rather than actually buying your hardcore training service. And

then some of that group might eventually become your hardcore

training clients, but there's a bit of a roadmap. So there's

lots of things like that, that you can do that generate revenue

in the short term and help you refine your product or service

along the way.

I love that I had a business coach that

recommended But I, I write a course and record it. And I did.

And then nobody bought it for a number of reasons. And COVID

hit. And I had done training for the great state of Oklahoma in

person. And I got a call from my contact, and she said, Do you

have anything online, we can put in our portal? And I said, I do.

And so something that I had created, like two years

previously, or three years, they ended up paying a licensing fee

for six months to put it out on their portal for their

employees. And I ended up sharing two different training

things that I already done. So same kind of thing, then right,

you know, put together the stuff that you already have that's

easily accessible. Absolutely.

And lots of what you have, can you be converted

into checklists and, you know, short summaries that you can

give away piecemeal as free offers to get them to come and

take your course, I would, I would never try and sell a

recorded course. No, I'm, I would be more tempted to give

people access to the recordings, for free, wanting to entice them

to take the course. And just make sure that the course is so

overwhelmingly full of content that exceeds people who might

try to listen to the course, their expectations, and makes

them realize that they they're not going to get through this

without you and then register for your course.

I love that. I'm taking notes. won't get it

without me. That's really helpful. Awesome. So if someone

wanted to reach out to you and find out how you can help them

strategically, position themselves to cross that chasm

quickly and easily. How would we do that? How would we get ahold

of you?

Well, through you possibly, or more directly

through my website, which is ultimate, B gr.com. That stands

for ultimate business growth. That's the ultimate G, the

letter G and then br.com. Or you'll find my mobile app on the

Google Play or Apple Store under that same name, ultimate

business growth or my name.

Thanks, Jim. Jennifer, it's

such a pleasure to talk with you. I hope we can

talk again.

It's been a pleasure. I'm Jennifer to Kagi

and I look forward to connecting with you soon.