How Robert Passikoff of Brand Keys Helps the World's Largest Brands Understand Customer Loyalty

[00:00:02] Hector: Hello and welcome to the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiesteban and I am your host for today. Our special guest is Mr. Bob Manaseer and he is the CEO of in focus brands. we're going to talk about how to scale by, sort of reading the market. always think about, the phrase of going to where the puck is, where it's going, not know where it's at, but trying to meet it where it's, going.

[00:00:23] Hector: So anyways, Bob, thanks for hanging out with us today.

[00:00:25] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiago Esteban and I am your host. And today we have a special guest, Mr Bob Manassir and he is the CEO of InFocus Brands.

[00:00:36] Hector: And what we're going to talk about is how to scale by reading the market and perhaps riding that wave and leveraging that. So Bob, thanks for joining us today.

[00:00:47] Robert: Oh, thank you, Hector. I always appreciate talking to you

[00:00:49] Hector: always interesting, when you look at someone and sort of what they've done, it's kind of challenging, given the depth of your experience. And so leave it open ended. But, when you think about where the beginnings of your, At least current rendition of a entrepreneur and a business owner, you've got a sort of an umbrella and company and you guys have a variety of different assets and entities going on, but, take us back to wherever you think is the beginning and catch us up on some of the key moments throughout that journey.

[00:01:16] Robert: and I'll keep it short. So I don't bore the listeners. I started my company, my first company when I was before high school. and I was successful in two companies in a row by the time I left college. And then my third company, I left college, I've learned everything from that's made this portfolio globally possible.

[00:01:38] Robert: So I always tell everybody you got to learn from the failures, the failures you remember, the successes sometimes don't really help you grow in the failures and the things you missed that make the scale possible in the future. And most of our structure now, how to grow, how to scale, how to launch, how to exit is literally still from that foundational failure I had many decades ago at this point.

[00:02:03] Hector: So I just realized that. Are you hearing some, some music in the background? It looks like it's grabbing my incorrect mic.

[00:02:10] Hector: Silence. So quick note to you, Paige. Um, there is a, a clip from the beginning. His, his intro, Bob's intro is actually on the, the recording before this. So just make sure you take that. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna take my intro, I'm gonna do that again. Uh, so we're gonna take that and then I'm gonna rerecord my next question for Bob.

[00:02:33] Hector: And so we'll hop in that way. Uh, so Paige, here is the intro. Hello and welcome to another episode of how to try it again. Here's the third intro page. Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiago Esteban and I am your host. And today we have a special guest, Mr Bob Manassir and he is the CEO of InFocus Brands.

[00:02:54] Hector: And what we're going to talk about is how to scale by reading the market and perhaps riding that wave and leveraging that. So Bob, thanks for joining us today.

[00:03:04] Robert: Thank you, Hector.

[00:03:05] Hector: So Uh, pagers are we're gonna hop back in. Here's our next question. So, bob, when you think about, all different brands and what is the sort of commonality?

[00:03:17] Hector: What is the common thread that you find pools all the things that either you've done or that you guys are doing together?

[00:03:24] Robert: Well, one is a shared culture and philosophy. So we hire not on hard skills. We hire on the way people view business. and way they view themselves. So it's more a personal relationship first, because we can train anything. I can't train you to not need managing all the time to take ownership and projects to be accountable to take responsibility for your failures.

[00:03:50] Robert: I can't really teach that and it has to be an eight. So that's what we look for first. And when we're invested in companies or partnering with companies, we always look for that team culture, lack of ego. Like we all have ego, but it can't be paramount because it just gets in the way of doing great work.

[00:04:07] Robert: And I think the overriding mission that I wrote a long time ago for all of us is it's not important that we're right. It's important that we get it right as a team. And that's kind of sustained us for two decades now as in focus brands.

[00:04:20] Hector: Yeah, I'm wondering if you see me. There being a sort of common path for entrepreneurs and business owners, it seems like a lot more people are obviously getting into it with the opportunity that comes along with the internet and the barriers to entry that happening. But I'm curious if there's still this general sort of evolution that someone needs to go through in order to, you know, they need to pass these levels or, they need to, to, Attain these certain skills, if you will.

[00:04:50] Hector: , if they want to make it in, the long run, does anything stand out to you in that regard?

[00:04:54] Robert: I mean, experience and understanding how to read whatever market you're in. I mean, at the end of the day, you're only going to be sustainable because you stay next to, or a little ahead of the people buying your services or products. And that takes a concerted effort, There's a lot of effort to understand whatever market that you're playing and to stay ahead of it takes a lot of work.

[00:05:16] Robert: It also takes some level of, and why we go back to no ego all the time, it takes some ability that you can say, I'm probably not right because what we hear a lot with, entrepreneurs and what you hear a lot in the media is entrepreneurs think something and then they make it happen. Well, what we think is not always right is what the market accepts that makes it right.

[00:05:38] Robert: And that's giving up that entrepreneur image. Like it's all about me and I'm building this company for me. No, I'm building this company because I see a problem or something I can fix or do better. And I, Identified the market that's going to buy it from me. And now I have to really understand them and I don't have to understand them on a kind of demographic base level.

[00:05:58] Robert: I don't need, I do need, but I don't, it's not important that it's their age or income level. It's their habits, their buying processes, what they do in their life. So I can get kind of into their heads. And I can have real relationships with them. And that's communication, that's marketing, that. Those are all the things that I think are really important to stay in front of your market or to stay relevant to your market.

[00:06:20] Robert: And it helps us scale because then we know what we're doing wrong, what's not efficient at all. And then the things that really work should be able to simplify, Scale is not making it more complex. Scale is simplifying to do more with less.

[00:06:35] Hector: Yeah. And I think when you do what you mentioned, which is reading the market and knowing where it's going. I think that gets a lot easier. I'm curious if there was a moment where you sort of realized that was a unique skill that, that you had. And, Imagining that, it sounds a bit prophetic, how do you try and tell the future? But I'd imagine that there is a skill to it, that there is a set of, sort of created some repeatable process around it, if you've been able to do it, consistently. But I'm curious if there was a moment where something Perked your ears up or you got triple sevens or something happened where you go, okay, this is something that we should probably lean into.

[00:07:13] Robert: Yeah, I've never gotten triple seven. So I'm waiting for that date. I don't know if it's a unique skill. It's once again, the philosophy that we're going to fail and we better learn from it. I guess the first thing is we hate giving up and I'm going to say that for my whole team. we don't like giving up, but at a certain point you have to say what I'm doing is not working and what can I learn from it, how can I improve it?

[00:07:32] Robert: I think the only unique skill is that experience. Of learning to get back up. And they always say that, right? You have to get up one more time than you get knocked over, but you can keep getting up and do the same thing over and over. And we see a lot of companies doing that. They just keep trying the same thing that's not going to work, You have to learn from it. You have to identify what's wrong. And sometimes it's the people you're talking to. It's the wrong market. There's a number of trial and errors that have to go into any business start. Before you get your foundation. And that's why startups are so hard. And what's such a high percentage of them fail all the time, because do you have enough resources to keep going?

[00:08:07] Robert: Do you have enough people giving you honest assessments? Not some kind of BS assessment because they're getting paid to kind of stand next to you. that, I mean, I hope I cleared that up a

[00:08:17] Hector: Yeah, well, it seems like if a business is, romantic, if you will, about how they want to provide a product or a service or how they want to do something, and they're not actually listening to the market, listening to their customers and then their number going to really stumble upon that answer.

[00:08:32] Hector: And to your point, think, and I can only speak from my perspective, my sample size of one, but I would imagine that a lot of other people had this, a sense that we would, that we had to get it on the first try, That like we had to nail it on the first try and that by, by pivoting or changing or even abandoning, something that we were all of a sudden failing in a sense, but it seems that failure you call it, I think you sort of, testing is inherent in this process of finding, where the market is headed.

[00:08:59] Robert: Yeah, and think if we break that down into something simple that everyone can think about and take out of their own thinking is we all start with I think, And that you have to start there. But very quickly, you have to remove your bias and you have to prove and what we like to do is disprove what we're thinking.

[00:09:15] Robert: Which is taking out bias itself. Cause if I say, I think this, then I inherently think I'm right. But if I say, I think this, and my first job is to disprove what I'm thinking, it kind of eliminates some of that bias that gets in the way of a lot of startups, a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, and going back to what you said, you see a lot of media where you, you are right.

[00:09:36] Robert: And then you get all this money and we have a completely different take in fundraising when we're fundraising. And we do a lot of fundraising for our partners and for ourselves when we need it. Is we go in really honestly, brutally honest with people who are meeting for the investment and say, here's what we've planned. not giving you any kind of projection financially, because that would just be fake. That's a dream. And we're looking for the right partners, And once again, going back to that on assessment, we don't have to be right. We want your input, but you also have to fit to what we're doing. You have to be realistic.

[00:10:08] Robert: You have to see the vision that we have, and we don't want just your money. We want your expertise and we want you to come to the table with different opinions because the magic happens between you and I, Hector, in the middle of between us, it's not me speaking to you or you speaking to me, it's the compromise and the collaboration.

[00:10:26] Robert: And that's what we try to build into all of our teams that open, honest dialogue.

[00:10:30] Hector: Yeah, when we get back from break, I'm curious about some of these methodologies because what I've learned, I've been self employed running my own business I guess for a little over a decade and I've learned that There's nothing different, There's nothing different between the people who are more successful or having more success. It's just a different way of doing things. It's a different perspective or a different mindset or a different set of beliefs. they are not any necessarily taller or stronger or smarter, necessarily other than their habits, their systems, you know, in the ways as they approach things are different.

[00:11:00] Hector: different. And so I'm, curious about, some of the changes that you like to come in and bring into some of the businesses or some of the partners, some of the things that you like to affect. but we're going to get into that right after this quick break.

[00:11:12] Hector: Hey y'all. Today's episode is brought to you by amplify media and we are a podcast and content production company.

[00:11:17] Hector: Well, but if I'm being honest, we're actually a thought leader accelerator company, if you listening to this, probably have a product, a passion, a mission, a message, something that you want to get out to the world and. Chances are that getting into the center of your industry would probably make it a little bit easier to do that.

[00:11:30] Hector: And that's where we come in. So if you want help, go to amplify media. com. That's a M P L a F Y media. com. You can also check the show note for the link. And with that, let's get back to today's episode. So, Bob, I'm fascinated with. Investors, venture capitalists, people who have worked with a lot of different companies, especially, you know, across a variety of industries, because I think I sort of hinted at the beginning, but it's like business at the end of the day is business.

[00:11:58] Hector: We have different products, we have different industries. you can dress it up a little bit differently, but ultimately a lot of it is the same and a lot of the solutions end up being sort of the same thing. And I find that there are common problems or common solutions that people end up, implementing.

[00:12:16] Hector: I have friends where, you know, they have sort of their one trick Pony, they come in, do, do one thing to turn around the company and then they get out, and that's their mo, but what is it that you find yourself doing often or what problems do you find yourself going in and, fixing often when you start working with a company or a partner?

[00:12:34] Robert: yeah, I'm just going to back up a little to what you said that there's only so many models for any business, right? There's eight frameworks on how you can measure your activities. There's six overall, I think, business strategies and a lot of it boils down to cost leader or differentiation and how you play that.

[00:12:50] Robert: So you're right. It's the same sandbox. How does some become successful and some don't? Some of its macro market forces that you can't help, right? A lot of companies went under from COVID and that's not an excuse anymore. I think they should have learned and moved on. But for us it's always about the execution and that's why everything we do is in sprints.

[00:13:10] Robert: Like I know people that buy campaigns for four or five months at a time or a month at a time, we're doing two or three weeks at a time on almost any project to make sure we're getting the right results. And we track religiously metrics. Because we talked to a lot of startups, we run a number of accelerators and they all want to buy ads right away.

[00:13:30] Robert: got to reach my target, but, and they want to build websites right away, but they don't even know who their target markets are. So how are you going to. Spend money on ads when you don't even know who's the real optimal or alpha buyer. And that's always like something we look at.

[00:13:45] Robert: You make all your money with the execution and execution comes down to people. And if you don't have the right people. In the right seats for your company. And that doesn't have to be full time employees that can be advisors, consultants, partners, supply chain vendors, whatever it is. If you don't have the right people to help you and to have those honest conversations about what they see going wrong, then it doesn't matter how great your idea is.

[00:14:07] Hector: Well, I think that that's, that's really, um, A good point going back to what we were talking about earlier when it comes to going where sort of the market is going that if you don't have a, frequent checkpoint or a frequent time to sort of look up and say, Are we actually doing the right thing? Are we headed in the right place?

[00:14:23] Hector: Not only headed in the right place, but are we getting there as quickly and as most effectively and efficiently as possible? it seems like those checkpoints make it really easy. And then you can either correct course adjust your systems to match. It's. where the market is what it's actually telling you based on the data.

[00:14:39] Robert: Yeah. And I think the other thing that, that entrepreneurs. And leaders do a lot as they think they have to know everything. Going back to something you said earlier, I don't have to know anything. I have to trust the people that are giving me the information that aren't BS ing me, So what I do a lot is I talk to our suppliers, our partners, our vendors about what they're seeing.

[00:14:57] Robert: It's not me trying to sell my services to them. It's not me placing an order. I'm literally just continuing to build a relationship. We have honest dialogue and it's about the relationship, not just about the transaction. And that's been a. That's allowed us to kind of avoid a few very big pitfalls that could have destroyed our businesses.

[00:15:15] Robert: I mean, one of them was the CMO, the mortgage collapse in 07, We missed that because we were talking to our financiers, our investors. We were watching the markets and that would have been a disaster to us because at one point for a number of months, our contracts went to zero during that time for good sense, The whole economy was.

[00:15:35] Hector: Yeah. It seems like, these cycles that we sort of go in and out of and, perhaps the cycles are especially magnified or heightened or, maybe their extreme is perhaps maybe the better word that I'm looking for at this particular moment. But it seems like these cycles are inevitable.

[00:15:51] Hector: And that if we want to play game of business for as long as we're going to be around that, withstanding these cycles, is important. And I think that, going around this theme of what we've been talking about being able to identify where it's going, being able to be honest about that It's sort of key to withstanding those cycles or, not thinking that it's going to be as, as great as it is forever or not, realizing that's going to be as bad as it might feel right now, those sorts of, things I think come up in business, the longer that you stick around.

[00:16:22] Robert: I think it's always about calculated risks, right? We're all risk takers cause we have to be, but it's calculated how much intel you're going to get in to make some semi cogent decisions that might work out. But I also think the thing that can save almost any business is that constant learning for yourself and for the markets.

[00:16:40] Robert: My film studio, we were a full film studio in the early nineties and then digital revolution hit. And we had all this film gear that was completely useless, really expensive when we bought it, but completely useless within a few years. And we had to literally learn how to do what we had been trained to do. A completely new way with all new equipment. And part of that is why I rely so much on people and culture and team, because without that team learning together, we would never made it through that. that happens in every industry. Things just happen, right? AI comes in and thinks it's going to change everything. I don't think there's anything truly changing everything. It all becomes a piece of the puzzle. You have to know something about early on websites. We're going to end all advertising. Everybody's gone on the web. And now. Obviously it's just another piece of your marketing puzzle. It's not the be all and end all.

[00:17:31] Robert: I don't think there is any one be all and end all. And AI is a phenomenal technology. It's not going to take over everything. It can't, it's a great piece. And you have to stay up with it. You have to know some pieces of it. But I think the other thing where people just jump all in with the next fad is a recipe for disaster.

[00:17:48] Robert: Everything's building upon each other. And if you've been in business long enough, you see it. And that's why you should always have. People on your board or in your circle or as on your investor table that have a lot more experience than you do. The hard part is you get older, it kind of gets harder to find this.

[00:18:04] Hector: Well, and it also seems that there has to be. a willingness. And again, once again, I think we talked about it again, but perhaps it bears saying a willingness to be wrong, a willingness to have a different perspective. And I don't know if that comes with age or it's just because, people who are currently, in the older generation didn't grow up with, things like the internet, which I think are really powerful things and providing sort of a different perspective.

[00:18:29] Hector: But, Yeah, I think it's something that, people should pay attention to in terms of their willingness to take up a new or different belief, which I don't think is natural for a lot of people. At least it doesn't seem so.

[00:18:39] Robert: Well, also a conundrum for all of us that run our own companies, our entrepreneurs, business owners. There's a certain level where you need the ego because most people tell you you're going to be wrong or going to fail. So there is some inner will or fortitude that you have to have, but you have to know when you have to pull it out.

[00:18:57] Robert: And where to hide it. And I think when you're trying to understand business and trying to figure out the right answer for your company or your client is you have to kind of put it inside and listen to everybody around the table. If you've invited them to the table, you have to cut out some of the BS noise because everybody has an opinion.

[00:19:15] Robert: I don't want your opinion unless you can back it up. And that's another thing that we hold dear to our culture is you can say whatever you want to me. I don't care what my title is. You. If you're in a meeting at one of our companies, you can't tell who the CEO, the president, or the intern is. Because it's a shared environment and it's shared thought.

[00:19:33] Robert: And the only prerequisite is if you say something, you better have facts to back it up. And that going to what you said is like, going to be wrong. We're human. We're going to be wrong most of the time.

[00:19:43] Hector: Yeah. And the more data that you can have or be provided or utilize. I think the better your chances, you've talked about things not being, you know, the end all be all or not being a panacea, if you will, with that being said, are there any current things, technologies, tools, trends, That you are bullish on and that you are excited about and either saying, Hey, we've, we've either got to start paying attention to this and keep an eye on this or, something like AI where it's, not going to be going away.

[00:20:12] Hector: And so it's now it's just about finding a way to integrate it into, whatever it is that you're doing.

[00:20:16] Robert: rapid test almost everything that comes out. We love the new, right? Most entrepreneurs do, right? We get bored pretty quickly. That's why most of us are fairly poor managers. And one of the first things you should do when you reach a certain level of success is bring in professional managers who manage process and your job is to build the best process next.

[00:20:35] Robert: so we adopted AI very early, But we also put it in a compartment of how to use it and when to use it. And I think that's our view of any new thing coming out. we are yeah. Pretty all in on hydrogen technology as the next fuel, but it's a calculated risk, and I don't think it's going to completely replace anything.

[00:20:52] Robert: We just really know that, from our research and our analysis and what we've lived, we don't think EV works for the U. S. We've lived all over the world. It works in other places for a myriad of reasons. One is we have very large road systems and our commute to work is much longer than almost anybody else on the planet.

[00:21:12] Robert: Kind of fails the EV test. We think hydrogen could be the answer. So we've. Put some resources into some new companies and technologies in that space, right? So we're always looking, we're always testing, but going back to that kind of metric analysis, there is a fine line between where you can be overanalyzed, And then you're not making any decisions. And that's where the leap of faith always comes in. We can collect enough information, but it's never enough or we're going to sit here in neutral forever. So what is enough? And that can only be really a decision between you and your team and your investors or whoever's in your company.

[00:21:48] Robert: But we draw a very hard line is we're not going to sit in something for years, trying to figure it out. We're going to make decisions and move on based on resources and what our goal is for the next year or two. So.

[00:22:00] Hector: Yeah. I've got one more question for you before we have you share some ways that people can get connected. But before I ask that, is there any thing that. Should be said that we haven't said today that it might be relevant to today's conversation.

[00:22:13] Robert: Yeah, there's so many things and there's so much noise out there and best advice. The only thing I'll say is from anybody listening, if they're thinking about growing their company or more importantly, scaling their company, whatever got you to this level of success will not work for the scale.

[00:22:30] Robert: It won't, you can't keep doing the same thing, expecting better results. So whatever got you here to this level of success, Phenomenal clap, right? I'm going to applaud. I'm a big fan of all entrepreneurs. So I love that, but you have to change the way of working to scale. And I'll give you an example in focus brands is 20 years old.

[00:22:48] Robert: in January, we're a white label deploy team. We've deployed all over the universe to start grow, scale, and exit companies. We drop into companies as that company, we do the work we have to do, and then we. Usually leave or we hire people to fill the roles we created. I can't scale that because that's a lot of training, a lot of people in a lot of different industries.

[00:23:09] Robert: This year we're launching a consulting division. That's the only way I can scale the expertise and the resources we've built and the experiences we've built to help more people has to be in a consulting model. Consulting was never what we did. We executed, we're operators. So that's an example I'm living right now, right?

[00:23:28] Robert: And it goes against a lot of my own bias about consultants.

[00:23:31] Hector: Mm. Yeah, well, it's a willingness to change it. And you sort of answered my question, which was, what's the key to scaling? And I think that you said it, which is being willing to, do something differently than you're doing.

[00:23:42] Robert: And I think the other thing is people think scaling means it's more complex. Scaling means simplify. You need to simplify your operations in order to scale.

[00:23:50] Hector: This is great stuff. worth a few listens, guys. Bob, if people want to either get connected with you or any of the brands of the companies, just, where's the best place that you would send people if they wanted to do

[00:24:01] Robert: The easiest place is to find us on LinkedIn. We do most of our not so frequent posting there, and you can find most of my companies off my profile.

[00:24:10] Hector: Wonderful. All right, well, we call that up in the show notes as well. I want to thank all of you for being here. We appreciate it. If you, got any value if you were listening at all, your ears open. would love for you to share it with somebody who you think might benefit from it, hit that share button and send it to a friend, a coworker, a partner, colleague, someone that you think might benefit from it.

[00:24:31] Hector: And then I go get connected with myself and Bob on LinkedIn if you're not already, but appreciate y'all hanging out. We'll see on the next one. Later, y'all.