Transcribed by AI

Intro 0:04
You're listening to dare to differentiate a podcast for business owners in crowded industries who want to learn how to rise above the noise. In this show, we focus not on doing everything for everybody, but I'm doing a few things for the right people with excellence. So if you're ready to leave the herd, then you've come to the right place. Let's get into the show.

Susan Tatum 0:26
Welcome back. I'm Susan Tatum. And today I'm talking with Eric Michrowski CEO at Propulo Consulting. Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric Michrowski 0:36
Thank you, Susan.

Susan Tatum 0:37
So before we get too deep into this topic, where we're talking about differentiation and focusing, can you give us a little, some context about yourself and and what the team that Propulo does, and how you got where you are?

Eric Michrowski 0:54
Absolutely. So I started my career really early on in the, in the airline industry, a lot of different operational roles in different organizations I was in. And and then started getting into not only operations, but then looking at how you transform, and how you make businesses significantly better. So look at something and then reimagine how it's done and done it across multiple different sectors. But the one common thing I kept coming across is that unless you could capture the hearts and minds of people, that the change was really not that sustainable, that you would end up with change management issues, you wouldn't get the full potential. So I really try to understand how do you actually capture the hearts and minds of people? How do you get people to want to do more for the outcomes, you want to achieve whatever those outcomes may be in your operation. And that's really where my journey started. And then it started out understanding in terms of that element. And then where Propulo came about was really trying to say, let's bring some real deep expertise in, in brain science and psychology, some deep expertise in terms of our research, and then marrying it with people who know how to run businesses, operations, and transform processes.

Susan Tatum 2:06
Well, so that's interesting, because yours is a very, I would think, process oriented work that you do. And you're and now you're putting the human element into it, which I love. Because I think too often we leave that out.

Eric Michrowski 2:22
Absolutely. Which was a challenge. And the struggle that I kept facing is people were to focus on the technology to focus on changing the process to focus on meeting metrics, and we forget that all the work is done by people. And you have people around you. And when you look at people in a leadership space, they would just stay in fairly soft and wooly territory, and they wouldn't really want to touch the area of how do you get business done? How do you get real outcomes and operations? So that's really where where the struggle was is operations are centered with people doing work?

Susan Tatum 2:59
Do you think that that some of that is driven by the personality types of the people that would tend to be executives and managers in the operations area?

Eric Michrowski 3:11
Absolutely. Yeah, I think I remember early on in my career, I did some work and was invited to join in this was back in the days where Lean Six Sigma was a huge thing. And it was invited down to GE aircraft engines. And they had done a lot of training, they try to support us to give us a lot of insights. And one of the things that they had shared is 80 to 90% of people that led at the time, then GE aircraft engines had the same Myers Briggs profile, for overall were roughly the same. And they knew it was a bias because they traditionally to be good in aircraft engines, you need to be an engineer. 90% of people came up with a very similar background and went into leadership roles, but then it means you're missing part of the equation. So I think that's probably the most glaring element that I've seen, but you see it in other organizations, other businesses, there's certain predisposition, that gets into those operational leadership roles. And that does skew towards process orientation structure, more, I would say, kind of linear, or rigorous training and thinking, but not necessarily thinking about people that are not necessarily the most rational beings, all of us.

Susan Tatum 4:26
So how does your Myers Briggs score scale? Are you like your clients?

Eric Michrowski 4:31
I happen to probably be more like my clients because I started in operations, running operations, but just had a different inclination that there was something different, but I have a profile that's not that dissimilar, even if I'm not an engineer by trade, but not that dissimilar from somebody who's very structured, who works well in an operational context.

Susan Tatum 4:54
So that gives you the credibility to get them to listen to you

Eric Michrowski 4:59
and I think an ability to connect, speak a common language, I would tend to agree, I think it's really been there, I understand the operational side, I can speak that language, I have a more kind of similar thinking pattern. But I realized that you need to bring people on board.

Susan Tatum 5:20
Well, I guess psychology itself is a science, right? So it's not like

Eric Michrowski 5:21
it is, Yeah

Susan Tatum 5:22
arts or anything?

Eric Michrowski 5:28
No, no, there's a lot of rigor, a lot of science, a lot of evidence behind it. And really interesting components to bring in, to try to bring into how we lead and how we run a business and how we run operations, how you design and work environment. But it's still not a linear mathematical equation. I remember, several years back, I was talking to an operational leader, and he was trying to understand the coefficient of different elements that drove change. And he really was hoping for an equation he says, when we try to we try B, we tried C, but we didn't get the same outcome as you because so he could understand the linear equation that would come from those three variables coming together when it came to people.

Susan Tatum 6:14
Because you've just introduced a big circular pattern into their linear path and messed everything up. So it's safe to say that there's not a lot of other firms that are are taking a similar approach.

Eric Michrowski 6:32
I think that's quite quite a fair statement. I think there's a lot of firms that do process that do strategy type of work. There's a lot of firms that that look at people leadership, those types of equations for bringing those together, is very rare. And you're really trying to bring different components, different philosophies that really come together in terms of I think about industrial organizational psychology really started thinking about how do I design the work environment, bringing a lot of the science and the research around it. But that should really mesh into how do I design the work process, which is how the work gets delivered. So those two elements coming very tightly together is what we try to bring to life in different engagements to solve different issues.

Susan Tatum 7:17
So what have you seen as an advantage of being differentiated from the pack out there?

Eric Michrowski 7:26
You have to be differentiated. I think people that try to be like everybody else, you're not going to succeed, particularly as the world keeps changing. And evolving. I think one differentiation is good in that, it allows you to stake a very specific strategic area that you want to focus on, right that you know that there are certain people that are just never going to connect with you. And I look forward to those because that means I'm not going to invest time in it in a potential opportunity that it's not going to work for me, it's not going to pan out. I think in some ways, even trying to be more polarizing, can help you right. So having an offer, that's different means you have less competition, that you're probably the only way that can solve that particular issue. In a way it is, which means if you're compatible, if you believe that that's important, you're gonna buy into it. And if you don't, that's okay, you can go somewhere else. There's lots of other firms that can do things in other ways.

Susan Tatum 8:22
So you advocate giving them an opportunity upfront to either get what you're saying or disagree with you, and then you realize it's not going to be a good fit. Is that fair?

Eric Michrowski 8:35
I think that's, that's absolutely fair. I think that's, that's important in terms of even how you pitch is if you're vanilla, and you offer something that's been offered to everybody, then you're not offering a flavor that kind of drives to buying decisions. Buying decisions tend to be based on stronger emotions. I love something or I hate something is a very, very strong emotion. If I hate what you're proposing to me, I literally had one somebody said to me, I'm not sure if they were supposed to say this, but they worked for a fortune 500 organization, they literally turned to me and said, My people all stupid, how can I believe what you're telling me? Makes sense? That's perfect. Because now you've told me I will never be able to convince you. Because there's a fundamental belief system that you think that you need to manage and control your people because you don't believe that they have capability potential and so far, so distressing, because that person also hired those individual. But it also means I'm not going to chase that person, I'm going to change that opportunity. It's unlikely that we'll ever buy. There's lots of firms that can help them. But the flip side is you also can bring a very strong emotional bond. When somebody says yeah, I've always thought this way. But I never figured out how to do it. You're speaking my same language unique, that creates a stronger reaction and a stronger desire to go to a buying decision.

Susan Tatum 9:57
Interesting. So you you had mentioned when we Talk to me before you're talking about that people have a tendency to want to compete on price within your industry.

Eric Michrowski 10:07
Yep. and price is a horrible place to compete on prices, you just, there's always going to be somebody who's willing to do it cheaper, paying cut corners or get it done, you'll never be successful if you compete purely on price. And so you're going to keep on going, but I just really prices, the last thing I want to compete on, because it's a no win proposition for anyone.

Susan Tatum 10:33
Oh, I completely agree. And I think that that holds true across industries. That's the last place you want to be. If you're trying to sell something of value, and you're trying to have good long term relationships. So the industries that you serve, you mentioned, the airline industry. So it's mostly industrial manufacturing type stuff, engineering,

Eric Michrowski 10:57
we touch actually a very broad range of industries from very high touch high service industries, from airlines to hospitality to utilities, manufacturing environments. Even we've done some work in mining environment, because it's really agnostic of industry. As long as you've got people and you're running an operation, then the principles hold true. And if you don't have people in your business, then we can't help you, there's other places to go.

Susan Tatum 11:27
And, and process oriented, it seems like you

Eric Michrowski 11:31
correct? Yes. Well,

Susan Tatum 11:33
so there's so in the across all of those industries, you see a tendency to compete on price.

Eric Michrowski 11:41
I think it's, you see that in almost every, in every segment in every area, I think it's really trying to find, obviously, you need to have the right price for the right offer. And I think the best example, early early on from a strategic standpoint was in the hotel industry, I remember when, when I was in the airline industry at that time, we kept looking at Marriott Hotels as a great example of a company that had found multiple different brands to really own every segment. But the person who's staying at the wrist is unlikely to stay at the Residence Inn hotel, is very different profile that that stays in the offer is very different, the pricing is very different. And they found different niche for each segment. But they've essentially own every possible segment. So that's one approach, where you have different fighter brands, for different types of engagements and needs. But most organizations don't have the ability to own all of those competing offers. And so I would really advocate saying how do you find the niche you want to plan and compete by being very different, and possibly never leaving margin on the table, I think margin and price, if you can maximize, it's a whole lot easier to make a whole much higher margin because he has a value proposition that is different. In my space in consulting, there are firms that operate on very, very small percentages. And their work really, really works. If somebody buys multiple year engagements with lots of different people. And they're essentially just turning into what I would call them or some body shop and they're placing people into position. And that's really all that they're doing. And they're doing it at a very low margin. But if you lose a big book of business, you could be instantaneously overnight, bankrupt. That's a really dangerous business model to be in.

Susan Tatum 13:38
Well, and it seems like you couldn't do a whole lot of customization for that either.

Eric Michrowski 13:47
No

Susan Tatum 13:348
Had the price ground down out to you? Yeah, I don't know, it's not a fun place to be in.

Eric Michrowski 13:49
it's not a fun place to be in. you're not going to be innovative, you're not going to be able to hire the best talent, you're really squeezing yourself to the bottom. And try not to maximize the total volume of dollars that you're selling, and accepting very small margins across the board. But if you're smaller, and you stay in a certain space, and you're really able to customize, then you can attract margins that are significantly higher than your competition. And I think that's a good place to be. And even when we advise clients in that space, I would always say, look at anything where you can maximize revenue where the conversation is in about a widget or transaction, the conversation is about what's the value of delivering for you. And I'm able to price based on that value. That's a very different price point. Same if I think about an accounting firm accounting firm tend to charge a cost for every transaction. Well, what if I actually was able to demonstrate what's the value I'm able to do by solving this problem, and I could charge you on that I can guarantee you that charging for that value, if you demonstrated is going to be significantly higher than cost plus, which is a traditional model.

Susan Tatum 14:58
Right and if you break it down into tasks like that, don't you run the risk of having, being replaced by technology?

Eric Michrowski 15:07
Absolutely. And you've seen this in the accounting space. Since we're on that, on that topic area is now accounting is happening more and more in the cloud. They're great technology solutions that make all of these, these elements, so straightforward that most organization can stand something up. But it becomes almost, it becomes too easy to even replace your accounting, because it's really somebody who's just filing your tax report. So there's not a lot of value in that particular service. So it's very easy for somebody that can undercut it, I can go 5%, lower, I can go cheaper. And all these transactions are now being made at a much lower transaction costs. But imagine if and I've actually found an accountant that does this, he basically says, Oh, I'm going to go one single price, but I'm going to take all your headaches away, and we can give you strategic advice, I'm going to show up as a partner at your table, like as CFO should, then I'd be willing to pay considerably more for that. Because there's only one price, you're not going to, I don't feel like you're piecemealing every single conversation, I can get a bill for it. But now you're delivering value for me. And that value those insights that's worth money. Not wanting to pay more for it.

Susan Tatum 16:16
Yeah, absolutely. Because pretty much, you know, it's it's not that hard to gather the data these days and just present a bunch of numbers. It's finding what the value is then telling you what to do with it.

Eric Michrowski 16:34
Exactly.

Susan Tatum 16:35
What's the most important thing?

Eric Michrowski 16:32
Exactly. One of the most influential thinkers in this space, I remember back in probably the 90s and early 2000s was Tom Peters. And Tom Peters really talked about your personal brand was one of his kind of key concepts he brought in. But the other one was, this is the era of knowledge workers, how do you find value? How do you define that value? He really shaped a lot of my thinking in that space in terms of how do you find and position yourself differently, so that you're irreplaceable? Anything else could be offshored or become a digitalized transaction?

Susan Tatum 17:08
Yeah. So do you in your work? Are you counseling your clients on an individual basis like that?

Eric Michrowski 17:17
We definitely are. So a lot of what we're doing or my team does is really providing guidance advice in terms of how do you offer something that's significantly different from a client standpoint? How do you create an offer that that the customer is willing to, to pay more for because of the values there?

Susan Tatum 17:36
So who is your, your client inside your clients? Are they operations people are marketing people or

Eric Michrowski 17:45
it predominantly is operational leaders, right? At the end of the day, most of what we tackle is really about production of something. And on occasions, it could be somebody in the marketing space, or it could be somebody in in a specific part, but it tends to be around how do I operationalize something so that every single time it gets to it gets done well. And to be a good operational leader, I need to constantly balanced for things, I need to create an environment that's safe, where my team members come home safe every single day, and needs to create an environment where my customer receives the value that I'm getting, and that the customer wants to buy more from me. And then I need to do it effectively and efficiently. So that I have a product that's taking has the right value for the client, but also that's at the right price point.

Susan Tatum 18:38
And that's an interesting, so this would be like a VP of manufacturing, VP operations, VP engineering, that kind of thing

Eric Michrowski 18:46

Yoo exactly, somebody in that type of a function.

Susan Tatum 18:51
So What kinds of things do I just find this really interesting? What kind of things do you weave into the process? orientation part of it, that involves getting the humans on board?

Eric Michrowski 19:05
So a couple of elements? I think that's a great question. So one of them is obviously involving frontline team members in terms of you solutioning, or your design work too many, too many times, the decisions done in the boardroom, and the executives have been trying to change others to adapt. And I think one of my biggest frustrations is we created an entire discipline around change management, which is really about essentially saying, How do I change you as a person? But nobody likes to be changed? Most most humans don't like to be changed externally without understanding the why. So we try to create all sorts of tips to try to make you want to change as opposed to say, How do I involve you in the change so that you're part of the solution. You're part of the design that you feel that hey, this is actually not something that's happening to me, I'm part of this change, and I understand why this needs to happen. So this is really in terms of how you engage and involve people in the solution. The other one is some common sense things around the process is really the method to deliver something to a customer. So what obviously, you want team members who see the customer who have interactions to be part of that design. So that's what that's really linked to them to the previous one. So they, it's a solution that makes sense to them. But I think that the dominant one as well from a human performance standpoint is how do I create an environment where people want to do more. So we know that that individuals love tasks or they know, we know that people love use of different skills throughout the day, we know that a lack of autonomy in terms of how I do my work, is is going to make me want to create a fight or flight response, which means it's going to shut down my executive decision making functions in my brain. And so I'm just going to end up doing what I'm told, as opposed to start starting to think about how I could contribute more. Start thinking about how do I build more coaching so that you're coaching to think through your solution, we tend to teach in most environments? How do I coach you to be to do the job the way I want you to do it. But maybe I actually don't know how to do the job at the best possible way. So I'm coaching you to think through and solve your own particular issues. And then an awareness of what's happening. And then understanding of how am I aligned to the outcome I'm trying to achieve in so many different environments, we've created almost a taylor ristic approach to driving where each person is so compartmentalized in terms of what they do, but I couldn't even tell you how my work contributes to what the customer wants. So therefore, I don't know what's good, what's bad, I just doing what I'm told to do. So these are basic things around, how do I organize How do I structure my work? How do I lead in that context, so that people just actually want to be there?

Susan Tatum 21:47
I find in my work that it's it's also helpful for people to feel like they're they're part of the decision that they made, they made a contribution to the development of the strategy or whatever, of the process, and they're being heard. I think he said that earlier. That's somebody paying attention to?

Eric Michrowski 22:06
Yeah Absolutely, it's basic human needs, right, is we want to be part of something we want to be heard we want to be listened to. So why should it be different when you show up at work?

Susan Tatum 22:16
Yeah. Well, before I drag us too far down this rabbit hole, and I really could because I, I think it's what in your own work. Just Just to go back over? We talked about it before, what are the advantages that you have seen in your consulting firm, Eric, that are a result of being so clearly different?

Eric Michrowski 22:39
I think number one is from a marketing branding standpoint, it's much easier to figure out what's the persona of the buyer you're trying to find, right? So we a couple years back went back. And I can very clearly articulate what is the persona of the ideal buyer. And so I can't go and look down online and figure out who whether the person that I'm going to meet matches that persona. But I have a very clear idea of who am I marketing, to what story is going to resonate with that person, what they're trying to do in life, what impact they're trying to leave on their business. So I can more easily see the signs of predictors of who is more likely to be in that demographic, essentially, which means I can have much tighter, clearer conversations on the right with the right people. But I can also very quickly, deselect who's unlikely to ever be able to, to buy, right because they, their philosophy may not be aligned with what we're proposing. And that's okay. That's perfectly okay. And it's just the sooner I know, the less time I'm going to spend wasting, trying to change something. And it really helps us as well in terms of articulate what type of work we're good at, and what type of work could be profitable. But I really don't want to touch. So I'm really become expert in key areas. And I'm recognized as an expert, which also means I can charge more for a lot of our services, because we bring the right value.

Susan Tatum 24:09
And as part of that, because you're not running around trying to be all things to all people. Your focus. Absolutely.

Eric Michrowski 24:15
I love being able to say no to somebody, if there's a no good fit. I remember a few years back there was there was a client that we had done some work with, who wanted to bring us in, supposedly to try to improve the customer experience. But what became very, very clear is actually what they wanted was to increase the size of the fiefdom. So they wanted a firm to come in and come up with a recommendation to say that that leaders team should double in thought. And so we realized early real story and he eventually admitted that's what he wanted to do. And so I was very happy to say sorry, that's really not what we do. And that's not the right answer. And let me give you two to three other firms that will gladly do this for you, and give you the right information. But that's not what we do. And so that ability to say what in and out of scope of our areas of expertise, I think means that when somebody says, I can solve something that you're more likely to trust because an expert in everything is an expert in nothing.

Susan Tatum 25:24
Yeah. And being able to say no, saves you a lot of heartburn. I have found that out the hard way.

Eric Michrowski 25:31
Yeah, absolutely not. sleepless nights that you wish that you wish you hadn't touched something with a 10 foot pole.

Susan Tatum 25:41
And it's never profitable to do that, at the end of the day. This has been never been really fun. And I appreciate your sharing your experiences with us. And I know that there's some listeners that may want to follow up with you stay connected with you learn more about what you're doing. So what's the best way for them to do that?

Eric Michrowski 26:02
I think I am fairly active on social media. So be it YouTube, Instagram, so if you search for my name on on on those ones, you can easily reach me through any of the social mediums or directly by email, and my email is Eric.Michrowski. So M-I-C-H-R-O-W-S-K-I @ Propulo.com. And I'm happy to engage share ideas and explor kind of options that I've seen work within different organizations, and also really encourage people to find something that's truly theirs that's unique, and their own voice that they can push to market.

Outro 26:55
A consistent flow of new business prospects is vital to the growth of professional services firms. The conversion company helps you find and engage those who are most likely to become profitable new clients, and avoid those who are not. To learn how we do it. Visit theconversioncompany.com

You've been listening to dare to differentiate. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.