velocity

191: Pete Williams: What was a massive win became our shackles

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who’s really going to help us cut through a lot of the fog in regards to providing a better customer experience. Pete Williams was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia. Growing up as the only child of a math teacher and logistics manager he spent his winters in the country and summers by the beach. Although his parents were not business owners both grandparents were and the entrepreneurial tendencies skipped the generation and landed squarely on Pete. From running basketball card swap mates to designing websites for his school Pete’s small business journey started years before his business degree at Deakin University. Cutting his teeth with the Athlete’s Foot franchise during his studies Pete soon jetted off on a reconnaissance mission for the footwear chain across America. Upon his return to Australia Pete soon made a name for himself in the media across the country when he sold Australia’s version of Yankee Stadium, the Melbourne Cricket Ground for under $500. This crazy project resulted in his first book back in titled, How to Turn your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality, his latest book is called, Cadence: A Tale of Fast Business Growth.  

Pete is also a southern region finalists in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year program, a small business icon best-in-class recipient and an Australian Business Award winner for marketing excellence. He is the co-founder of numerous businesses across various varying industries from telecommunication services to e-commerce. Pete’s companies include Infiniti Telecommunications, simplyheadsets.com.au, SpringCom Telecommunications, and Preneur Group – an advisory-consulting firm that guides business owners through the process of increasing profits, margins and other key indicators by using the 7 Levers approach to business growth. Pete switches time between Melbourne, Australia and California with his wife Fleur and his son Eli. Pete Williams, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Pete Williams:     Absolutely, really looking forward to. 

Jim Rembach:     I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given my legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better. 

Pete Williams:     It’s a bit of it of a mix, I’m really enjoying being a dad. Eli’s five and a half years old now and it’s always a big learning curve to grow and mold a human being, it’s always challenging and fun, so that’s good. The books just come out that’s a big passion focus at the moment, and Telco—look I’m not passionate about Telco but I’m passionate about business and we’ve been in the space for 15 years and I learned a lot and done some really cool stuff there too.

Jim Rembach:     So as you’re as you’re going through that and looking at your bio and all the different things that you have your fingers on and even growing a kid—I have three and I can tell you all three of them are different so that whole—what do you do to help them grow is not the same. 

Pete Williams:      Well the crazy thing as you mentioned, I’m an only child my wife is an only child we’ve only got one child we’re just like in this bubble of how could you raise more than one so I look forward to having to deal with three. 

Jim Rembach:     Well, I think you do find some commonality and that kind of ties into the book, Cadence, when you start talking about these seven levers. I have the child all these different businesses in these different industries however there are some consistent things that we have to do and they have to be part of our cadence, and I have to share with you that I’ve been using that word quite often even before I got your book I started using that word because we say in society we don’t want to skip a beat and we have a lot of these things talking about cadence. So for you, what does cadence mean?

Pete Williams:      Cadence means to me—I’m a triathlete I used to race triathlons and cycle a lot so cadence is more of the cycling term and a music term. Which again as you said it comes back down to the same root definition of consistency a tempo that sort of stuff. So in business whether you’re in a business you’re an employer your middle management you want to be had that consistency and that cadence in what you do. Because as you get that cadence you can build momentum and that’s what drives growth in any endeavor. 

Jim Rembach:     Okay. You and I had the opportunity to talk off mic and I think it’s be appropriate for us to kind of bring that into this conversation because it’s something that kind of—I see alignment. And even when I was looking at the seven levers I started seeing alignment with other vernacular and other types of frameworks but it does come down to is, okay, we have to get to the point of execution and we have to make sure that we are finding our way forward. And so the whole waypoint concept and not going around in circles is critically important. And so when I started thinking about cadence and the seven levers while we do have these core foundational components, and we’ll talk about them in a second, then we get all the art around all of those seven levers. I think too many people that’s where they get lost. 

Pete Williams:      Hmm-hmm. I completely agree. Whether you are a business owner or you’re managing a team or managing a division in a business or anything in between you can’t get lost very easily and you are almost get distracted by the art and the creativity of the marketing or whatever you’re doing in terms of your job yet you still need that foundation that roadmap to keep you in alignment. You were saying earlier about the rocks on the road if you get lost in the wilderness and you’re trying to find your way out rather than just walking around in circles as you pointed out was sort of the common human trait, leaving rocks behind where you’ve gone helps to make sure you’re heading in a straight line. And the whole idea of the seven levers or any business framework for that matter it doesn’t have to be the seven levers. Just having a framework actually gives you positive constraints and that positive constraint allows you to be creative within the goal of what you’re working towards within that roadmap.  I see so many people getting almost distracted by civil bullets or the latest social media platform or being creative with their marketing and not knowing whether it actually fits in with the actual growth of their division or the company. 

Jim Rembach:     That’s a great point.  To me it ties back to the whole thing about being a triathlete. In order for you to finish that long race, if you don’t watch your pace and know that it’s a journey, you’re not sprinting—

Pete Williams:      You could blow up very quickly. 

Jim Rembach:     Exactly. Okay, so let’s get into these seven levers real quick because I think it’s really important for us to make sure that we explore to their best extent or fullest extent. So we have you call, suspects, prospects, conversions, average item price, item per sale, transactions per customer and then margins. Now when I was looking at these things I would say, if we just stopped and took them at face value we could potentially say, well this isn’t right for me. However, as I started looking at these and what they entail I started seeing that like you were saying a lot of businesses can use these in order to help them stay focused and not get lost in the minutiae. 

Pete Williams:      Yeah. I think there’s two big things that come out of this sort of conversations. The first thing is a lot of people either say one, it’s not that exciting that’s not that new I’ve heard of those things before—tell me something new give me something I don’t know—which is a fair point we’ll get to that, all the people say this doesn’t apply to my business. Yet, when you look at any business any business division any product, if you’re just working in a product team this can apply to your division or whatever the thing is that you’re working on. Profit in any division or any business is driven by these seven things no matter what the business is. Whether you are a landscape gardener, whether you work in a production team inside Apple, work in a corporation, whether you’re in a call center doing something around the customer service journey of a particular product these are the things that drive the profit. And they’re not that revolutionary, I’ll completely agree with that point however, the thing that surprised me when I kind of started playing around with this was that if you increase each of these ten things by just 10%, just a small boost, the actual compounding effect is a doubling of your business or your division or your product. And that to me is the secret sauce around this it gives that framework a focus. Okay, we’re not going to grow our business our division these are the things that I need to work on but yet you don’t have to actually get them out of the ballpark every time. That’s the beautiful thing is I don’t have to worry at doubling my profit or doubling my traffic, however, these small 10% wins compounds who actually a massive success. 

Jim Rembach:     I’ve actually seen somebody else kind of use this model. As a matter of fact, this week I saw a sponsored thing on Facebook where they were talking about this for basically online type of communities. And it was the same type of thing they said, okay, here’s—and they wrote it out in a formula. They used essentially like you would take the levers and take the first letter and they’re like, s plus p, they make the formula. 

Pete Williams:      Absolutely. 

Jim Rembach:     And they’ve talked about, if you just do that 10 % improvement in these, but knowing that you’re not going to get across-the-board 10% improvement because it’s like with anything else, when we focus on something we get a boost that means we’re not looking at other thing. It’s a constant fluctuation and a constant refocusing but overall you’re looking at the big picture. 

Pete Williams:      You pointed out or hinted at it before it is that roadmap for when you’re working on your product your division your team. One way to look at it is if you’re a middle manager and you’ve got your marketing team or your division and your role is to grow the profit of that division or that product well this could be a roadmap of focus. Okay, this month we’re going to work on the first lever I’m going to try and get that 10% win. The next month we’re going to bring the team back together and have our planning session for the start of the month and go, okay, we’re going to work on the next lever and you pardon the pun cycle through the seven levers over and over again to get that cadence and get that momentum. 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a great point. It goes back to what’s your underlying plan because if not you’re going to be spinning in circles. 

Pete Williams:      Exactly. 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, so when you start thinking about the book you actually wrote it as a story. What really brought you to bring it to that conclusion or that outcome versus really getting into the levers themselves and talking about how do you actually do that ten percent?

Pete Williams:      Great question. What got me there was the first draft is really, really bland and boring. To be fully frank with you it started off as a traditional nonfiction book. I think the lane startup was the sort of style we were going for very data-driven, very case they driven. I’ve been talking about this framework for about six or seven years now so it’s sort of got a bit of a momentum and become bigger than me which is great and other people are talking about it which is fantastic. So we start to grab all those case studies and things and make it that bland business book. It wasn’t engaging and it’s not me I like stories I tell stories. So I scrapped that and went, let’s go back to the basics of what’s going to make this engaging for people and helpful? Most people who need this aren’t in that world of business so how can we get it accessible to those people? So be kind of a parable. It’s actually based on a true story. When I was training for my first Ironman race a number of years ago the bike store literally across the road from the Telco business that we have here in Australia, Dakota the owner of that store, was a triathlon coach. I went to him bought my bike there he trained me to my Ironman race and during that 20 weeks I helped him with a whole bunch of ideas to grow the business. It’s based on that loose story with a whole bunch of other writer’s flair, shall we say, just sort of really make it engaging and get other lessons in there that were the pre and post that actual experience. 

Jim Rembach:     Thinking about that and talking about your journey and where you’ve come also when I read your

bio we talked about you having the Athlete’s Foot franchise and then taking off across America but then there was a gap because we talked about you’re coming back to Australia then you were recognized for all this stuff, Gosh! What did you bring back that allows you to do that? 

Pete Williams:      Athlete’s Foot taught me a lot. The Athletes Foot was such a great franchise very much focused on a lot of stuff. They had a lot of system based stuff they had their great in-seat rules which is all about getting suspects in the store and then sitting on and trying a pair of shoes. They really got the differentiation between a suspect and a prospect in that someone who walks into your store it’s very, very different to someone sitting down with a pair of shoes on their feet and they had that big process to get that distinction just something a lot of people when teams don’t really think about. So we had that I went to the US and the plan was literally to start in Florida and work my way back to California in a whole bunch of different stores but to be frank with you I was 21, had an Australian accent and I started in South Beach, you can sort of picture how that went didn’t really leave. The most at home in Florida working at one store at Sawgrass Mills which was amazing. So I didn’t really bring a whole pack to be honest still have an entrepreneurial vibe and was reading a lot of books and then sort of went back to Athlete’s Foot. When I came back to Australia to a new store it was pretty quiet spent a lot of time behind the counter just reading books because it wasn’t busy there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic, pardon the pun, and then just sort of learn a lot and get applying stuff as side hustles. And then they sort of started to grow into what is the group and other businesses today. 

Jim Rembach:     Got it. So when you start talking about these levers and you start talking about moving the 10% and we talk about the art a little bit and sometimes get lost in that art but when you start talking about moving those levers and trying to make those adjustments what do you think is one of the elements that really enables you to make the most movement? 

Pete Williams:      I think its focus. I need to be creative in my business in my team to do whatever I want to do achieve whatever goals I need to. The positive constraint is I think massively helpful in that okay this particular period of time be it a week or month or a quarter I’m going to focus on this lever to get this movement so I’m going to be creative within this framework a lot of artists and creators talk a lot about the importance of structure. I’m not an artist I can’t paint I can’t create in that sense of the term but when you hear about these musicians and artists they always say like they work best when they have a defined block of time or a process. From the outside you think isn’t creativity just so all over the shop and not structured? Yet apparently it comes structured and this framework gives you that, okay, only want to get a 10% boost, I think that’s a massive thing. 

The other side of that coin is the freedom the 10% gives you. What I mean by that is that so many people—if you take a moment I think, okay, I’ve tried to do a marketing campaign for my business or my team or my division before and we did it and we’ve got an 8% increase and we felt like we were a failure. We tried to increase our traffic and we only got a 9% boost. Well, hang on the label of the sales letter said I should have got 10 people who   visited my website last week. Or we’ve tried to increase our conversion rate and I only got a small boost. And in hindsight you probably thought an 8% increase and 11% increase was actually a failure. Whereas when you look at it inside the context of the seven levers all you need is 7-10 % win to compound and double your profits. So, the freedom that it gives you it allows you to sort of take off the shackles I guess and be creative. The pressures off and I think again having the pressure off is much more helpful for you to be creative. Does that make sense?

Jim Rembach:     Well it does. For me also when you were saying I started going back to the whole thing of it’s not a sprint it’s a marathon. We’re talking about cadence we’re talking about paying attention to your breathing all of those things that allow you to ultimately get to the victory line. Because if not you’re going to burn out and fall flat. 

Pete Williams:      Yes. Okay so I think taking the pressure off yourself when you are in your role in your job working towards that make it’s just like—well it doesn’t have to be that critical (17:45 inaudible)crazy you can relax you can breathe into it and enjoy the ride. It’s a terrible pansy but you literally enjoy the ride. 

Jim Rembach:     Well, I think that’s it. I don’t know if they use the same term in Australia but here they talk about 

Athlete’s bonking, you’ve exhausted everything and you’ve hit the wall and you can’t go any further. 

Pete Williams:      I did it at ten but in Australia bonkies are very different thing. In America you’re rooting for your team. If you’re rooting you’re doing again same sort of thing is bonking which is something you don’t at a public stadium. 

Jim Rembach:     That’s good to know we’ll make sure that we cut it. Okay, so this is clean for the US market as far as that would go maybe not for that short. Okay, talking about where you’ve come—you’re inspiration and your grandparents and all of that and having the child—I know there’s a lot of things that have influenced you. You talked a lot about your reading and gaining a lot of information and insight where you could but I’m sure there’s some quotes inspire you because one of the things that we look at on the show are those. Is there a quote or two that you can share that you like? 

Pete Williams:       There are some—from a management perspective one of my favorites is, what if you train them and they leave. What happens if you don’t train them and they stay? I love that quote. I was using that recently in the office with some team members such an important one for me. I think it’s Beware of the dream takers that’s a quote I do in that—this is your goal this is your life this is your passion beware of the dream thing. There’s going to be people who have their own agendas and try and take it away from you just be wary of them don’t ignore them don’t dismiss them don’t attack them just be aware of them. When someone comes and does gives you feedback—is there an agenda behind it? Why is that feedback coming? Is it supportive? Is it based by an agenda? Just be aware of the dream takers because they exist and if you’d be aware of them you can deal with them appropriately. 

Jim Rembach:     Also you talked about trying to make that trip across the American getting stuck in Florida and I could totally understand being the age you were and where you started you probably should have started like Ames, Iowa someplace like that. 

Pete Williams:      Exactly. 

Jim Rembach:     I know you had humps to get over. Is there a time that you’ve gotten over the hump that you can share?

Pete Williams:      Yeah. If you asked me months or weeks almost when you have a team everyone sort of has those experiences. One of the big ones for us I think in a Telco group kind of led to a massive shift for us. When we first started that business we thought we were really, really clever. And the way we started that was we went into the market with no Telco experience at all we just found a demand and a gap in the market where we could actually go and generate leads and we’re very, very good at being that sales and marketing company that happened to sell phone systems who gain the leads in and we were making the sales. And what we were doing we were literally passing the actual customer to subcontractors or really competitors to do the installation and the support of the customer and that was great for us to prove the business model prove the market. What we learned very quickly was we’re getting no repeat customers. Just think about it, if you bought a phone system from somebody and then someone else came to install it give you the training and support when you had a problem or needed to buy extra handsets or expand who are you going to get back to? The people who kind of just took your money or the people who actually came and installed it. Very obvious in hindsight. And that for us was a massive issue we hit a kid a glass ceiling very, very quickly. Then we kind of sat down went, okay, well what is causing this problem for us? What is driving profit in our business currently? And what drives profit in other businesses? Ironically that point led to the discovery of these seven levers for us. That was ten years ago and from that we kind of refined it, refined it, refined it and obviously it’s been a foundational point for our business growth which has been great. That was a massive issue for us is that what we thought originally was a massive win and it was a massive win for us that business model soon became our shackles almost that was causing us to continue to be able to move forward. It was interesting to sort of have those moments where you think you’re having a win and that turns into being the hurdle for you. 

Jim Rembach:     So, at what point did you kind of come that conclusion and you made that shift? How did that conversation go? How did that story play out?

Pete Williams:     It was probably over a few months really no one has that aha moment.  I think people say I had that aha moment off in the shower. And it’s like—no you didn’t. I don’t know anyone has that aha moments. This aha moment come overtime and in your memory it was this one thing but really I think it was just a sequence of events realizing that okay we’re having a problem here we keep hitting a glass ceiling, okay, what’s interesting? What’s her business model? Okay, that’s fine that looks really good. Okay, well what was driving the profit? What are we missing? It took a number of conversations and iterations and thoughts there was that no sat down on a whiteboard and one Thursday afternoon at three o’clock and the clouds part of the sun came down and wisdom rained upon us it was a progression of different events and conversations. 

Jim Rembach:     Talking about that there’s not really an epiphany thing there’s something that goes on and then we take some action and I think that’s really almost where this epiphany comes from as I’ve done this show for a long time because I ask people about their hump and about that time—it’s like they know something’s been bothering them for a while and then all of a sudden they don’t just say I’m going to do something about it they actually do something about it. As far as our mind that’s kind of when we think the epiphany happened but it’s really been building up the whole time we just finally said okay I’ve had enough I’m going to do something about it and it starts today.

Pete Williams:      Yes. You are spot on me that. 

Jim Rembach:     Talking about a lot of things going on, hands and a lot of different pies, as we say—when you think about goals, what’s one of your goals? 

Pete Williams:      For me now—the business is really good we got great team members. We actually sat down and did the vision in the business recently and one of the big things that came out is we want our people to live better when they when they started. It sounds a bit sappy but that’s one of our visions now. We don’t work with Jim Henson ie. We don’t deal with Muppets and a whole bunch of other really funky vision statements but one of them is, we only grow when our people grow. We give a good salary and we give them good benefits and we wanted people to live and go–I’m a better person after I left within 15-20 growth that before I started, that’s a big one for me now. I think the book with its recent release is going quite well. I want this moment to be bigger than me. The reason I real back-end for the book it’s not like I’ve got this book to try and sell courses and anything like in front of (24:55 inaudible) fine system great but other than that it’s just a book. And I wanted to help people and help divisions and help companies because it’s something I think is missing for a lot of people. It can be that roadmap and it can be a bigger thing than what I am what we are. 

Jim Rembach:     And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor:

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Jim Rembach:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Pete, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Pete Williams, are you ready to hoedown? 

Pete Williams:      I think I am. 

Jim Rembach:     Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Pete Williams:      Saying yes too often. 

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Pete Williams:      Hire slow fire fast. 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Pete Williams:     Planning tomorrow tonight.

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Pete Williams:      I think I am willing to get in the trenches with everybody.

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, it could be from any genre, and of course we’re going to put a link to, Cadence:  A Tale of Fast Business Growth, on your show notes page as well. 

Pete Williams:      Can I give two?

Jim Rembach:     Sure. 

Pete Williams:      My second favorite book of 2018 is Joey Coleman’s, Never Lose A Customer Again everyone in business or in a power of decision or customer experience or customer management should read this book, it is absolutely incredible. The other book is from 1923 it’s called, My life in advertising by Claude Hopkins, it’s my favorite business book of all time.

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader legion, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/petewilliams. Okay, Pete, this is my last hump day hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you won’t be in South Beach this time, and you were given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Pete Williams:      The understanding of the importance of second order consequences. I read a book recently one of the statements really stuck with me. It was, if you look back and rather than trying to pick three skills you had years ago just think of three mistakes they didn’t make where would you be? What would be better? And for most people it’s actually taking away three mistakes not actually having better skills 10 years ago. I think the ability to pause think through things and think hang on what’s the second-order consequence of this action or decision I’m about to make? I think that can save a lot of pain a lot of problems and actually you don’t have to be smarter just be less dumb. 

Jim Rembach:     Pete it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

Pete Williams:      cadencebook.com is probably the best place to go. Check me out, there’s the books there there’s links to my other stuff but really that’s the thing that probably would help them the most. 

Jim Rembach:     Pete Williams, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over a fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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