Strategy, tactics, and luck, with Bob Perkins

Summary:

Bob Perkins is back on the show to discuss how to create your own education in the world of business, and the importance of keeping your business's strategy as simple as possible. Bob is a former senior marketing executive at household names like Pizza Hut, Calvin Klein, and Playboy.

Topics Include:

• Self-education strategies

• Why strategy is the most underrated thing in business today

• How to develop an operating system for your company

• The managers two tasks: set the right objectives, pick the right people

• The "tactics follow strategy" principle

• Defining strategy and tactics

• The paradox of too much self-education

• Creating space to develop your own ideas

• The best business advice you'll ever hear: KEEP IT SIMPLE

• Passion or skill? Developing passion for cultivating your skill

• And other topics...

Resources Mentioned:

Repeatable Revenue (formerly Sales Leadership Foundations)
Competing Against Luck - Clayton Christensen

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Transcript:

RJG: So welcome back to the show.

Bob Round two.

Bob Perkins: Thank you.

RJG: Yeah, glad to glad to have you back. Um, so I wanted to ask you first on, um, you know, so as we we were talking actually to like a- a mutual friend, uh, the other day. And, uh, one of the comments that he made is somethin' that I. I I've always, uh, has always stood out to me about you, and it's that I can call you with a business problem of almost any type.

Like it's a tech SaaS, uh, tech SaaS company. It can be a startup, it can be an old manufacturing company and you always have some, some insight or unique insight into, into that, that model. And so I, I always wonder. Where, what are your learning routines? Like, what are your, what are your books? What are you resources?

What are your your patterns like? h-, wh- Where does, uh, where would, where would you say that comes from? Or what, what specific resources or routines do you, do you emphasize in your learning pattern?

Bob Perkins: Well, you know, uh, I had a funny experience. Um, I was in politics for a long time doing direct marketing and. I decided I wanted to become a chief marketing officer.

And then I realized that I discovered the hard way that no one would hire a chief marketing officer, whose experience was had just been in politics, that there was a prejudice against that inappropriate, in my opinion, but that's another story. So I said, well, I should get hired by an advertising agency.

So long story I get hired by Chiat/Day. And I know nothing about advertising. I don't know what [laughs].

 ...a hot level is. I don't know what a GRP is. I spent my entire life in direct marketing. And if there's one thing you want, you can say about Chiat/Day is Jay then only cared about television advertising and outdoor everything else.

bored him to pieces. So I had to learn a great deal very quickly. So I gave myself my own little graduate school training reading books and talking to people and, and guy day bless his heart, who was the day of Chiat/Day, uh, much more approachable than Jay was a great mentor. But after a while, I discovered, gee, who can keep up with these guys.

And we had. Pretty heavyweight clients. Michael Dell, Dell computer was a client. Apple was a client briefly until we got fired before we could get hired back. [laughs]. Nike was a client. I mean, we had, uh, the largest savings loan in the United States was a client. So we had real people, real businesses. And, um, the fact that after six months I felt comfortable talkin' to anybody, convinced me that there was a sort of.

what The buzz word is continuous learning, but you had to stay interested. And what I really got interested in was business books and I traveled a lot. And every time you got stuck in an airport, you can go over to any airport bookstore, less so now than 25 years ago and buy a book and then Amazon came out and you could buy books.

And the one insight I had is you didn't need to read them. You needed to look at the, read the introduction, read the first 50 pages. But most of the time you could just after 50 pages, you could say, "I got it. There's I- I, I don't need to be an expert in this now, every now and then you find a book that's so good.

And so fabulous that you read all of it, But it's sort of the inverse of reading. One book perfectly is not nearly as valuable as reading 10 books imperfectly Hmm. because of the 10 imperfect books you read. And I'll give you a perfect example. in a second. One of them really becomes a lodestone for you and the rest just starts to infuse your general thinking.

So when someone asks you a question, you sorta can pull it out of your mind. But, you know when I first bought Clayton Christensen's the innovator's dilemma. I think I read 100 pages and said, I understand this book, I get it. And and I loved Clayton Christensen, may he rest in peace. But when I read uh, competing against Luck, his book about the jobs theory, I read that book twice.

I mean, tha- that book really resonated. to me. So I think you just have to develop the habit of setting time aside to read, and you have to get rid of the perfection of, I'm not gonna pick this book up. Cause I don't think I can finish it. Well, pick it up and read 50 pages. You'll be better for it. Hmm. And if you go through my Kindle list right now, you'll see that.

I probably finish one book in 10. I get 50, 60, 70 pages out of 10 books in 10. Well, that's not quite true. There are a couple that you read the first chapter and you go, why did I buy this book again? [laughs].

 [laughs]. But anyway, that's the, b-, that's my backstory.

RJG: So the the business books, I I am one of the, I I finish the books and it, it bothers me tremendously when I can't finish the book.

It's, a, and it's, it's, it's not a good habit necessarily 'cause I'm wasting a lot of time on books that I don't necessarily need to finish. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Um, but one of the things that, I- I've learned is I also have a habit of when I really love a book. Like, so I, you know, I read maybe a book a week, but when I really love a book, I start wanting to apply the principles and what that can do.

So you know, if you're a CEO and you've got 50 employees and you're reading a new book you're like, Hey, today, it's jobs theory. Like, we're, we're gonna be, we're gonna be talkin' about this. And then, you know, you, I start another book and I'm like, it's gonna be a different model or it's gonna be a different framework.

How do you prevent that from happening?

Bob Perkins: Well, I think. that, I think the, I think the most underrated thing in business today is strategy. And, you know, Peter Drucker famously said, the essence of strategy is denial and I'm, I'm working on a startup right now I would say the CEO and I have this constant tension of he is let's try somethin' new.

And I'm let's keep doin' what we're doin' [laughs]. And I I think that works out pretty well for us because he, he can't chase down every new thing that he comes up with. But after a while he can beat me into saying, Maybe this is a good change, [laughs]. but I think that's a real challenge. I think that's one of the biggest challenges in business, particularly since most of us are in businesses that don't, that aren't static. If you're running Bob's pizza and it's been in Cresco Iowa for 25 years, the world is pretty consistent. So you're not motivated very much to change. You don't have the exogenous variables, to use that wonderful word. But if you're in a startup like I'm doing now, where, if you're runnin' a- a, Pizza Hut, when I was chief marketing officer at pizza hut, one day Domino's was a.

A little chain in Michigan that nobody cared about. And the next day it was the national juggernaut. So there's a lot of pressure to change your strategy. And I think that too few people lock themselves in a room and think about, s-, and think about that very question. And just an example, I joined the board of a company in 2000, right after it was a tech company.

It had been worth $2 billion. 2000, the bottom falls out of the tech market. It's worth $200 million and probably headed for, toward bankruptcy. And one of the first things I agreed with the CEO was is the board, once a year would go on a three-day retreat. And alls we would do is talk about strategy. And of course we played a little golf and we had some great food and we drank some wonderful wine. But it was a really, it was sort of a sea anchor for the company. We came back from that we sorta had laid out the next 12 months. It took a lot to change that strategy, but if somebody really wanted to change it, they knew there'd be a board retreat next year and they would have an hour to present it.

And the board could spend three hours talking about it and then we could chew on it over dinner. So I think you need to build into your thought process, some structural way of saying strategy changes are very difficult on people. They usually, and people underestimate why they're difficult. They're they're not difficult because they are difficult because people hate change.

But they're mostly difficult because the people you hire to do strategy A may not be the people that need to do strategy B and nobody every thinks about that. You know, we designed a team to do X, but now we want to do Q well, those aren't the right people for that, and that's not their fault. And some of 'em might be able to to transition over, but a lot of 'em can't so.

So I think the changing strategy thing is wildly underappreciated and almost never thought about as sort of an organizational. Okay. Here's how we do this. Here's how we keep on it. And it's one advantage that I have. It's one advantage you have. If you're a consultant, you can tell client a, this and client B that and client C that.

So you feel like I'm using all my new ideas. But if you're the CEO of a company, you gotta be much more dedicated.

RJG: We've been, we've just recently started working with, with clients. We did a workshop a a week ago, uh, and, and we're doing a- another one with the forum now on, uh, on operating systems, like business operating systems.

So, you know, getting the the foundation in place and then, you know, building out Your your goal, whatever you want to call it, your wig, your BHAG, like, however you wanna, however you wanna frame it. Yeah. And then building back from that, your quarterly KPIs and all that. And I, I think I've seen that help keep things, keep things focused.

Have how many companies do you think are, are using an operating system well or clear on their strategy at the, in the C-suite of the board room?

Bob Perkins: I think it depends on. I think it's very, d-, I think it depends on three things. First of all, I it has a lot to do with the longevity of the company. The longer the company's been around, the less likely it is to feel the need to change.

It also has a lot to do with the turbulence of the industry you're in, I mean, You know, Ford motor company just to pick somebody out. And I don't follow the automotive industry at all, but Ford motor company never thought, Tels-, uh, Elon Musk could build a company, never thought electric cars would become a big deal.

And now they wake up and he's built a giant company bigger than them. And it's looks like electric cars are gonna take over the world. They went from a very stable world where we have dealers. We have distributors, we have manufacturing plants alls we need to worry about is what color is the interior to a totally new world.

And they clearly missed it. So how long has the company been in business? what's the stabili-, What's the turbulence of the factor and, and then there's a lot on what's goin' on with the product itself. Uh, I read a really good discussion today about Intel, how Intel had lost their way. And that's, a, you can call that the turbulence of the industry, but it's much more gener-, It's much more specific about their product. So I think it's, it depends on you get a young company. It's gonna be tempted to do that all the time. You get a company in a turbulent environment, they're gonna be tempted to do that all the time. You get a dying product. You're gonna be tempted to do that all the time, Mm-hmm [affirmative]. but just look, you know, pick a company that we all know and remember, and love AOL.

We all, I remember nine, 2000, 1998, 1999 AOL was gonna rule the world. They were giant. They were sending out millions and tens of hundreds of millions of discs And everybody was running around trying to plug in the phones. And If you would've asked me, is this a good investment? I would've said, well, they're awfully, they got a really high PE ratio, so maybe not, but they're clearly gonna dominate the world.

didn't work out that way. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So, you know, whereas I think Google just to pick somebody else who I didn't think would dominate the world and is they're channeling all that nervous energy into the holding company. They're saying, Hey, we got a lot of extra money. Let's let Google be Google and let's, we'll spend money on autonomous car.

I mean, they've spent billions of dollars for no return, but at least the core business is still bein' the core business.

RJG: Right. Right. So, so if you're the say you're the- the CEO or an exec at a, you know, m- mid-market-sized company and you Yeah.

 ...and you're lis-, and you're listening now and you go, you know, this kinda resonates, I wanna, I wanna sit down and start to to really clarify and define the strategy. Where would you, where would y-, what would you recommend for them? Where would they start?

Bob Perkins: I would take a week off and the, competitively sh try to learn as much as I possible could about my competitive set. I think the most underappreciated variable in running a mid-sized company is the competitive.

set, Because, yes, you may be. You may have a great little company and a couple of kids in a garage may invent something that makes your life miserable. It's Possible, much more likely that what, somebody in an adjacent competitive field sees an opportunity to move into your field and eats your lunch. So I'd spend a lot of time trying to get better competitive set information.

And then I would try to get better when I was on the, uh, a better sense of what the future, how long are- are you planning for the future? When we were, when I was on the board of 24/7, I mentioned these quarter-, these annual retreats we had. So one of the things we did is we had an economist come in and say, here's what the economy's gonna look like for the next two to four years.

And. We all know the old saw Hoover said, I want an economist with one arm so they can't say, and on the other hand, [laughs]. but so this guy said, I think you're gonna have two great years. And then I think it's, you're gonna have two tough years. So you should either sell the company or Batten down the hatches cause it's gonna be a rough economic environment.

So we decided to sell the company, sold the company, turned out. We were brilliant. You know, luck is very important here, but we understood the competitive set. We didn't re we had 40% of the market. Our biggest, compe- ...we had 30% of the market. Our biggest competitor had 50% of the market. We didn't think that was gonna change.

We didn't think we could change that very much. And we thought if we went into a hard time, W we would have much more difficulty surviving than they would. So let's find somebody that, can give us essentially, is a tuck-in acquisition and when you talk about a $700 million acquisition tuck-in doesn't seem to be the right word, but that's what it was really.

So I think the first thing you gotta do is figure out the competitive set. The next thing you gotta do is think about your horizon. What's your time horizon to make this work? And then thirdly, to go back to s- something I said earlier, you gotta really think about the, what are the people capable of. And I'm I'm not a big fan of hiring consultants, even though I am a consultant, I understand that's foolish, but this is an area where people usually don't have a very "Oh, Bob is the best chief marketing officer in the world.

'cause he really understands television, which was probably true when I ran pizza hut, by the way, I'm not sure I'd be the best chief marketing officer in a company that was driving its business with social media. So if you said, Hey, there's gonna be a change here and Hey, you're gonna have to go to social media.

Even though you think Perkins is a high performer and doin' a great job, is he or she gonna be able to do the new job? People don't think about that. very much. They come in and say, here's the new plan of attack. Let's go. And very rarely is it mapped out very s- strongly. So I think you've gotta pay a lot more attention to it.

Drucker says famously that managers have two goals. two uh, two tasks. One is to set objectives. And two is to pick the right teams and the pick the right teams. One is is the most underrated one in my opinion. Yeah. And that's particularly true when you're talking about strategies, changing strategies.

And

RJG: do you you've al-, you've said, and I I've now repeated this at least a million times.

uh, that tactics follows strategy. Like as a-

 Absolutely. Yeah. Where where does strategy begin and end? Like, what is, how do you define it? Not necessarily like a a semantic version of it, but if you're, if you're sitting down with a CEO, like, what is, what is strategy? Where does it begin? and Where does it end?

Bob Perkins: What's the product we're gonna sell?

Who are we gonna sell it? And Why will we make a profit That's strategy? It's that simple. It's um, and. With all due respect to Clayton Christensen, that's pretty much Clayton Christensen, by the way. But I think it's, it's really that you answer those three questions and you, you have yourself a strategy, everything else sort of dovetails in behind that.

What's the product we're gonna sell. Who are we gonna sell it to? And why can we do it? that it'll make a profit.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

 And y- You know, I I- I say, I, s-, I, as I grow older and God knows I am growing older, I think that to go back to your book idea, I think one of the great disservices we all do is not shutting the door and getting o- out a white piece of paper and answering those kind of questions based on the knowledge we have. I think most of u-, most of us underplay our skillset and how many, I mean, I was in a meeting yesterday talking to somebody about a business.

I know pretty well. And I said to 'em, I should've seen that. as a bad thing. I should've seen that coming. So we all agreed. I should've, He should've, they should've, we should've. you know, it was a friendly meeting. I got thinkin' to myself, why didn't you see it? coming? Well it's cause you never sat down and spent two hours saying how exactly is this gonna work really?

I mean, and we just, I think people shy away from the, those tough questions and it's easy to get all involved in different strategic matrices and cash cows and dogs and, you know, disrupt- ...I mean, there's a lot. of Fun stuff you can do, but at the end of the day, I think it's simpler than- than we make it.

It's just hard because it's hard to sit down and get rid of your own biases. I think that's the other thing. Hope Springs eternal. And I think ano- ...we were talkin' earlier about strategy. I think one of the toughest things in business is to balance optimism and realism. E-, Nobody wants a CEO who comes into the office every day and says, oh man, are we fucked?

and, This is terrible. and-

 [laughs].

 ...We'll never be able to get done," and, oh shit, I'm going home. My head hurts. On the other hand, nobody wants to come into the office day and have a CEO and say, well, we only sold two of these. And the plan was 100, but that's progress. And we're knockin' down doors and.

we're ..."

I mean, a-, So there's this balancing act between optimism and realism. And I tend to be, as you know, I'm a little more of the pessimist realist kinda guy. Other peo- people are a little more the optimist kind of people, but getting that balance right, is one reason that h- how you get a consistent strategy because the optimist always thinks there's a, The grass is green, both sides, both extremes think The grass is greener on the other side of the fence. If you're an optimist, "Oh, we can do another thing. That'll be great. If you're a pessimist, we have to do another thing. That'll be great. But if you're in the middle, you say, Hey, we can make this work the way we are.

So this balancing act between optimism and pessimism has a lot to do with your ability to maintain a consistent strategy and to tweak it. Y- You know, everybody says the first line in the Hippocratic oath is do no harm. That is not the first line in Hippocratic oath do no harm is not in the Hippocratic, Oath. but the concept of let's make as few as changes of possible is rarely a popular position.

But is often the right one. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. In other words, "L- let's not, we're goin' straight north. Let's not go back straight south. Let's go right. Five degrees or let's, let's change this a little bit. Um, but if you don't have the optimism/pessimism balance, right. It's easy to, it's easy to to fall sucker to the big change.

RJG: Cause

Bob Perkins: both ends of the-

 So you said-

 ...spectrum want the big change for different reasons,

RJG: right? Yeah. That makes sense. What was, you know, the, when I asked about the strategy, you know, if you're the CEO, like, what would you do? your, the first thing that you said was. Take a week off and it fits a little bit with what you said about the books.

You know, you can get lost in them. in the matrices and the, you know, in the frameworks and the books and, you know, there's a, there's a new author, with a new framework for a new thing. Yeah. Sure.

 ... and You could you could read every week. And I've, you know, I've, a-, I've I have learned this maybe the hard way that sometimes what you need to do is just.

get, Like let yourself think, like figure out your own thoughts figure out your own brain space, Figure out your own opinion. And it, And it also fits with what you just said about undervaluing, about your own set, or you're undervaluing your own skills and knowledge. You're always looking for, you know, for more like pouring more into this, but more often than not.

You're right. If we, if we create the space to think clearly. a a lot of times the- the answer's right here, but we just keep jamming more information like this book a week habit that I've had forever, it's just I'm hamming more and more and more into my brain to, at the expensive of time that you could just be kinda setting with what's already.

What's already there, you know?

Bob Perkins: No, I ag-, I think that, I think that we over-complicate, One of the problems with all of the advanced degrees in math and AI is that we over-complicate, I was reading a report this morning actually. And it was a piece of research that someone did. What will retailers find important in 2021 82% said it was the customer experience.

Oh really? [laughs]. I mean, down from 88%, [laughs]. I mean- the game-changer.

 I mean, I mean, gee, I think that's probably true. I would probably agree with that. but the point is you didn't need to read that chart. If you were sittin' around thinkin' about how to run a better retail. my stepson, has one of the most successful marijuana dispensaries in California.

And he took one look at the industry and said, and with very little advice from me, I'm taking no credit for this and said he took my, He did take my advice and he went to a lot of marijuana dispensaries and he said, "They were all boring. they were all stale. They all treat you badly. So I'm gonna have a place that looks like a Flamingo lounge.

Everybody's gonna be friendly. Everybody's gonna be, you know, we're gonna have a co-, a coffee shop. You can just sit out there and drink coffee do whatever you In other words, I'm gonna treat this, like, how do I make this the perfect customer experience? And it, he's knocking their doors off.

But if you, if you said. Now he is a lawyer, by Training. But if you said to him, how did you know to do that? he said, well, I just, I knew how I wanted to be treated. Hmm. You know, I didn't read any book. I mean, when I came in and I gave somebody my driver's license to prove I was, uh- uh, the right age and a citizen and all that kinda stuff, I didn't want 'em to go.

Thank you. I wanted them to go, Hey, JP. Nice to see you. How you doin'? Is this your first time here, we hope you have a great time. You know, here are our operating hours and here's a card. If you ever need any help call the manager. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So that's what they do. No one ever calls them, but everybody feels empowered.

Everybody feels, you know, they don't have in the exact opposite of choice. He went to all these stores and discovered that everybody had so many choices. He couldn't figure out what he wanted.

 Mm-hmm [affirmative].

 He's not a big user, but so he has a relatively limited product offering in his store, but he has very smart people who say, this is what I want.

They say, this is the product for you. Everybody goes great 'cause you know, it's, I mean, I had to go to the grocery store a couple days ago. and I'm walking down the beer aisle and I'm not a beer drinker, but how do you pick? I mean, there are more beers than there are [inaudible 00:28:43]. you know, I mean 42, 7,000 different varieties and, and, um, and people make a lotta money selling beer.

I get that, but I think that people make it harder than it needs to.

be.

RJG: Well, the, the the story that you shared about the, the marijuana dispensaries is also goes back to your earlier point about understanding the competitive set, take, Yeah. take time, go check out what's out there and then figure out where the, where the gap is.

And and if the market is Goin' back to the questions that you, you said about strategy Yeah.

 ...answer, these questions, and fill that gap and you have a good idea, you know, and there there's your strategy and you can see it kinda play. out there. Um, Yep. what's the. What's the, of, of all the learning that you've, that you've done.

Is there one that stands out to you as something that you that's that's most under-leveraged by you or anything?

Bob Perkins: Um, well I think, com-, I think competing by a, Com- competing against luck, uh, Christensen's book about new product development is far and away. The best single thing. That uh, that I've read and so b- but it gets back to my three questions.

What's the product, what's the consumer and how you gonna make money sellin' it. So just so anyway, so my own opinion is that beyond that, I think my biggest mistake i- is not thinking through what I already know. I I think if, if I was to write a business book ag-, a business book, I would write it on, keep it simple, stupid.

I would write it on.

We make this all so difficult. When, when in reality it's, it's much simpler than it is. And I'm thinking now about startups and mid-sized businesses. Once you run. A large, publicly-traded company. you got all kinds of challenges and problems, and you probably better have a bunch of MBAs that have charts and graphs and spreadsheets.

But I think for most businesses under $100 million in revenue, just to pick a number, keeping it simple and straightforward's a better way to do it. And I think it took me a long time to learn.

that.

RJG: Yeah, we see that a lot on the, on the audit side of things. When we go, when we do the audits for the sales orgs. and you, and we, you know, you pop the hood and you start looking at, you know, what's underneath the organization and you have this in like a small business with all this, you know, 14 different solution providers for different things and a a different CRM, and a different integration a different this. And it's, it's, almost always overcomplicated. It's like the, it's the result of, like in some sense, Buying buying the solutions and buying the new tech w- with- without having a well-thought out cohesive strategy, and then putting in the tools and the tech and to fill the tactical part of it. But that's, it's it's kinda the- the, the default mode of not having a clear vision and a clear strategy as you start piecing these things together and then realize the system kinda works, but it's not, it's not anywhere near optimized,

Bob Perkins: you know, in the little company that I'm involved with now, We've done, I think an excellent job of having the sales funnel and keeping track of people and keeping everything organized.

And we tried Salesforce for a while, And then we discovered that we just did better with the big Excel spreadsheet and some Trello boards. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not that, this is not a knock of Salesforce at all. This is just for a certain size organization. If you have five people, you're better off to keep it as simple and as obvious as you can.

And that's for us, that's a big Excel spreadsheet. and Trello boards.

 Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Now when we get to be 35 or $40 million and have lots of clients, I'm sure we'll be on Salesforce, but it's keeping the technology consistent with the level of sophistication of the organization. And, you know, I was in a meeting the other day and somebody said, well, when we have 300 clients we'll need this.

And I went, when we have 250 clients, you call me up [laughs]. and I'll make sure we have it by the time we hit 300. Yep.

RJG: Yep. People on my team can tell you that we've I used to like, show me that problem. Like, I, I don't, I don't need to plan ahead for every potential problem that we could have when we have that problem of too many sales to handle this thing.

I will gladly go ahead and and execute Mm-hmm [affirmative].

 ...something, a change, but until it, until it happens, let's, uh, let's revisit. Yeah. What's the, um, you mentioned earlier and it's- it's also in the the book too, the the Clayton Christensen, um, the element of luck. And I've, I think we've talked a little bit about this before, but what's your, what, what, how important is, is luck in- in success as it's, as it's traditionally defined.

Bob Perkins: Well, I think luck is, I think we've we've f-, we're now talking about the dirty little truth of life that nobody wants to admit, which is that luck is very important and very unpredictable. And, uh, and it it seems, Y- you know, let's just take, take bill gates. So bill gates. And Paul Allen went to one of the three high schools in the country that had a high speed T1 line back in the 70s, So they learned to computer code in high school in a way that virtually nobody else in the world did it was instrumental. in their building Microsoft 'cause they, learned a lot. So it was, they were very lucky that they were in that s-, high school. But there weer other kids in that high school that were equally lucky that didn't go on to build a Microsoft.

So how do you parse out luck and- and, uh, hard work and, and fortuitous thinking? I think the, in my head luck is more often a downside than it is an upside that people hope for. luck when they shouldn't do. that. In other words, is this gonna work? I, if I get lucky, it will. Well, you won't I mean, if you look at the, if you look at the companies that in our lifetime have come from nothing, whether it's Amazon, Facebook, Google, I mean, we have an amazing number of some of the chip companies, which are a few years older, but not much Oracle Salesforce, all these companies.

Had a great product. They knew exactly who they were sellin' it to, and they knew how to make money doin' it. And yes, were- w w were there elements of luck in all that? Absolutely. But nobody, I bet Marc Benioff at Salesforce never walked into a meeting and said, if we get luck, this'll work, now it may have worked.

And he may say in hindsight, we got lucky. Sure. But I think. Luck is very important, but- but it's more important in a, in a, ethereal way than it. is in a pragmatic way.

 Mm-hmm [affirmative]. it's Elon Musk had lots of lucky upbringings, but the fact that he was willing to put a lot of time, energy and money and passion to electric cars was not luck.

It was brilliant insight into the future of the country's consumer needs. Now he may have gotten to that because of a lot. of luck, But, so I, I I think peo-, I, I ask people, how lucky do you think you are? And anybody that s-, anybody that almost anybody I meet that says I'm not lucky. I know is a liar or self-delusional now.

Um, there are people who are in miserable situations who are, you know, in great pain and poverty. They're not, they're not lucky I get that, but most of us are very lucky in the United States and the fact that most of us don't want to admit that I think is a personality failure. Mm-hmm [affirmative].

 Uh, I think we're better off to say.

I'll take, I've been lucky. I'm gonna take all the luck I can get, but I'm not gonna count on luck to be successful. I think that's the right mantra.

RJG: Yeah, I think I've heard, I think it was Warren buffet. It's been, it's been years since I've read it, but he talks about the- the ovarian lottery and the, just the the mere fact of being born in the United States at this time in, in history or this time in life, because he, he, I I'm pretty sure it was him.

He made the joke, You know, if I was born 5,000 years before with the gift of math and analysis, that I have to be able to evaluate the va-, the- the- the value of a company 5,000 years ago, no one gave a shit [laughs]. like "The fact that. that, The fact that I was born in the United States with the opportunity at this time, all at least played some, you know, some foundational role.

And then of course, it's, you know, it's, it's, hard work and study

Bob Perkins: and

and- yeah, everything else, too. no [Csikszentmihalyi 00:38:20], the guy that wrote flow has a book. called Creativity, I think that's the title, but he says to be creative, a you have to have a creative person B you have to have an environment in which that creative person can be successful.

So you couldn't have had, E- Einstein could've been born 10 years earlier, and there would be no theory of relativity because all the physics that he needed to make the leap hadn't been invented yet. And then you need people that recognize. it. If everybody would've looked at the theory of relativity and said impossible, it would've died.

The fact that only four or five people could recognize it. They said this is the real deal. So it's a real, you know, triangle for a Csikszentmihalyi, or It's circular. What buffet said is true. You, it it's really, um, you know, and look at mark Zuckerberg. There he was at- at an Ivy league school with a couple of rich twins?

to- To work with and, and alls he wanted to do was build something so he could get laid. I mean, [laughs].

 ...no no disrespect to Facebook, but keep it simple. [laughs]. He wanted to digitize the Facebook. Cause that's what they called it actually.

RJG: So, Right. And what do and we can, just, we, we can, this'll be my last question, I think, unless you wanted to go somewhere else, but the, um, What's more important, kind of on this same, the luck skill, um, or the, uh, the, the luck component, but the passion or skill people talk about follow your passion or, you know, what's, how do you evaluate that?

Um, the, you know, what's, what's more important passion or skill?

Bob Perkins: Well, I think that in a highly, com-, in the highly competitive world that we live in. If you don't really love your skill and whether that's passion or not, let's leave that out of this for a second, then you won't be at the top of your class. So the first thing you have to ask is when you ask the passion skill question, what's success look like.

I mean, my little brother really smart. Was a Software engineer at Honeywell for 30 years and retired and thinks he had the best life of any person on the planet and lives in a little town in Iowa and rides his bike every day and thinks he's life's treated him perfectly well. And other people go, look at him and say, gee, he could've been made five times as much money.

He could live in a five times bigger house. He, you know, he's a really smart guy He really is smart. He's far- far and away, the smartest one in our family. So he had a skill and he had other passions and it- it, all. He had a great life, but so before you start asking about passion or skill, I think you have to ask the question.

What's your objective? What are you trying to accomplish with your life? What, when you lay on your deathbed, if you look back and say, My brother's not gonna say, oh, I should've made $100 million I probably will. That's [laughs] the difference between me. and him. And if you wanna be closer to the $100 million person, then you've gotta love your skill because you have to compete.

This is right out of outliers. Malcolm Gladwell. You really have. to ... To- to- to rise to the top, you have to really love what you do otherwise, you won't do it well. So whether that's passion or just luck, I- I- I, d-, I don't know. And the flip side is skill and passion. Don't guarantee success. I invested in a biotech company that has the brightest, most passionate CEO, PhD MD, yada yada, yada, and the company's never gonna make a dime as near as I can figure out.

So all the passion and skill in the world hasn't combined with. All the other things you need to do. H- he never answered the question of h- how are we gonna make money selling this product in my opinion. But I think most people talk about passion in an abstract way. They should talk about passion.

in, how do you lo-, much? do You love doing what you're doing because that's really, the Tiger Woods said something. Somebody once asked him, what does it take to be a professional golfer? Tiger looked at him and he said, you have to love to practice. [laughs]. And the interviewer said, "Wh- what, And tiger said, look, there are a lot of people out there.

that can swing a golf club. Very well, a lot of people, but he said, if you're gonna play in the PGA, you have to be in the top- top. one-tenth of 1%, you have to be so good. And the only way to get to be so good is to practice and the only way to practice every day and not to quit is to love practice. If you say, well, I'm practicing.

So I can be a successful PGA player after the first two weeks, you'll say, you know, I'm gonna be a successful somethin' else" [laughs]. but nobody ever talks about that. And I thought that was a brilliant. Response. You have to love your skill. You have to love honing your skill you have to love that. And whether you're, pa-, whether that's passion or that's somethin' else, that's another story I can be passionate I'm gonna succeed.

I'm down on that kinda stuff. Um, a friend of mine send out a Winston Churchill climb every mountain, you know, we're gonna take the beaches. I, No disrespect to Winston Churchill, who I love, but, and I, that kinda stuff, I just don't think works in the modern world. But, I really have a skill of marketing and I love to learn more about it.

I love to do it. And I don't mind getting up at six o'clock in the morning to spend two hours writing a marketing plan. Cause I love, I don't. I like to practice to back to tiger wood. That is what a skill needs to be successful.

RJG: Hmm. So if you, if you just have a good, a skill and you, and you love the skill and you love honing the skill and you understand what you want at the, at the finish line, and you can create a strategy, answering a few questions and you get just a little bit of luck.

We've basically uncovered the recipe for success here.

Yep.

 [laughs].

Bob Perkins: Well, I-

 I said It wasn't complicated.

[laughs].

 No.

RJG: Keep it simple. It's perfect. Uh, well, your, the story about your your little brother, reminds me, I know we're both, w- we both read, uh, some stoicism, but it-

 Yeah.

 ...it certainly reminds me of the power of perception too. Like what is success to you? And sometimes, you know, there's, the, you, there are some people that no matter how much they have, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not enough to feel successful and some people.

that, You know, if you, if you, if you want exactly what you have, it's, pretty, pretty good recipe for, for happiness and, uh, you know, feelin' successful. So, um, I'm really you know, glad, to, glad to have you. I feel I could talk to you for- for another hour. Um, before we go, where can, where can people find you? If they're, if they're looking for more from, from Bob Perkins?

Bob Perkins: Uh, well, I'm on LinkedIn, RJ Perkins, and, uh, I'm the COO of BritePool. that's, that's how you know, you're at the right RJ Perkins And my email's [email protected]. Okay. So here I, here. I am. As, as I have said to you many times in many respects, I'm sorta like an itinerant tennis player. I Show up with a bunch of rackets and cannon balls and hope somebody will play

[laughs].

RJG: [laughs]. well.

I always love playin' the the intellectual tennis with you. It's always helpful. Um, and I one other thing, you're, you're also, uh, a a member on the the sales leadership Foundation's forum. So, um, anyone that wants to- to hop in, uh, we have some lively discussion there on, on sales, marketing, strategy ops, um, things of that sort.

So, um, I think with that, we'll uh, we'll cut it loose. And we'll we'll end it here, I really appreciate your time I'm glad to have you back Lookin' forward to the next, one.

Bob Perkins: Glad to talk to you. best to Sam and the family.

RJG: Thank you.

Bob Perkins: Bye. Bye-bye.