Why Most Growing Businesses Eventually Break with Ron Szekely

Why Most Growing Businesses Eventually Break with Ron Szekely

Ron Szekely: We've all seen struggling entrepreneurs who, they can't get a, they can hardly put food on the table. You know, the business is crumbling, they're filing for bankruptcy, their family starts to fall apart. When it doesn't go well, it really doesn't go well, and, and they're so personally attached to their business.

It's almost like if my business doesn't go well, I'm a failure too.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: And. Equally smart people just get on the right path doing the a few systems properly, learning some of the best practices, and suddenly everything's working.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps.

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development www.capitalbd.ca

Let's do it. Welcome. To the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 320 of the Business Development Podcast, and today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Ron Szekely.

Ron is a veteran business executive with over 25 years of experience leading strategy, marketing, and innovation for powerhouse brands like L'Oreal, Keurig, and Sanofi. After a successful corporate career, building global teams and delivering market leading results. Ron turned his focus to the entrepreneurial world where his passion for growth, leadership, and practical strategy found a new home.

He's worked with both ends of the business spectrum, from multinational giants to nimble founder-led startups, giving him a very rare perspective on what it truly takes to scale with purpose and precision. Today, Ron is the founder of BOS360 Growth Systems, a comprehensive operating system designed to help founder led businesses in the 3 million to 50 million range.

Simplify operations, align leadership. Drive aggressive, sustainable growth. He works directly with leadership teams to clarify vision, eliminate friction, and create high performance cultures that execute with discipline. His methodology is to build on three foundational pillars, business, brand, and team, each reinforced by the critical forces of strategy, execution, and culture.

Ron's approach is hands-on, no fluff and relentlessly focused on results. He doesn't just coach leaders, he equips them to build companies. That last, Ron, it's an honor and a privilege to have you on the show.

Ron Szekely: It's an honor for me. It's great to be here, Kelly.

Kelly Kennedy: From, uh, from one business developer and marketer to another, you have had an absolutely incredible career, and I just wanna start out the show by saying, people like me are standing on the shoulders of giants like you, and I just wanna say.

Incredible career and congratulations on, on all the success that you've had.

Ron Szekely: Oh, thank you. It's been a, a very fun ride and I'm still loving it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Well, I'm excited to learn all about it today. I knew from our first conversation this was gonna be a really great show, so I've been very much looking forward to it.

So for our listeners, who is Ron Szekely, how did you end up on this path?

Ron Szekely: Great. Well, who is Ron Szekely? So I'm a, a happy guy, father of four loving life. Spent most of my career, the early parts of my career, working in businesses. Coming out of school, I worked at L'Oreal for the first 17 years, so 14 years full time.

Plus it was a few years while I was, while I was still in school. So I was doing my summers there and then right outta school, I started with them and they took me on a journey of. Learning what it is to manage a business, manage a team, and I guess most importantly there I learned how to manage brands and, uh, how important branding is in, in the context, particularly in CPG, but in business in general.

So I had a lot of fun working with mostly the L'Oreal Paris brand, but a lot of other brands within the company as well. Then I had the opportunity, to create my own ad agency. So that was something that I had always wanted to do when I actually was in school, I started in, in marketing and decided that I wanted to go into advertising.

And so I studied design, uh, went back to school, studied design, so took the two of them and I was thinking I was going to work in advertising. And what happened was I started at L'Oreal right out of school, so I never really had that, uh, that opportunity. Yeah. So there I was like 17 years later and I was thinking I was still had that itch for advertising.

And so I left the big corporate world to start a, an agency on my own. And, uh, together with a partner, created a firm, and did that for a few years and had a lot of fun, uh, discovered the joys and pains of entrepreneurship at at that point. And then had the opportunity to sell the agency and go back into the corporate world, which I did, and had the honor there and the privilege there to work in a completely different industry.

I was in pharma and then from there I worked in, in big food at, uh, Keurig, Dr. Pepper. And then afterwards I discovered a passion for sort of smaller founder led businesses and worked with a few companies that were more, not complete startups, but definitely at an earlier stage where it was really the founders were hands-on and got ignited by their passion that they had and a whole different level than the big multinational corporate feeling of, you know, you manage things, but it's very much.

More of a game, let's say, where you're working with, with money and resources to, to try to, to drive more. They're working with a lot more skin in the game and heart. Mm-hmm. And so I really fell in love with that founder journey and, and building smaller teams up. And so for the last five or six years, I decided to work with a whole bunch of different smaller founder led companies, uh, in the capacity as more of a coach.

And working with the leadership teams to, to help them scale with ease. To make it like, let's say easier to run a business, to get everything they want outta the business. Borrowing on all the best practices, but not losing what makes them unique, not losing their entrepreneurial spirit. And so that's what I've been doing for the last, uh, I guess about six years now as a coach on my own and with a team of other coaches that are using the same system.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. That's amazing. You know, it's funny, when I, I was talking with my fiance before I did this show today, and we were talking about, you know, your experience with L'Oreal and we are like, we were your target audience at that time. We were laughing, we're like probably the commercials that we were watching at that time, Ron was approving.

It was, uh, we were having a bit of a laugh about it because of course, growing up in Canada, every third commercial was a L'Oreal commercial. Right.

Ron Szekely: You were a lot. It was really a, a relatively simple game of, of TV ads back in the day. Yeah. Magazine ads and TV ads and uh, obviously, you know, the media landscape has become a lot more complex, uh, over the last few years.

But, uh, many years ago it was basically. Get on all the best TV shows with fresh creative and get on the inside front covers of magazines and it was a lot of fun. A lot of fun.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I bet it was. I bet it was. And you know, I had some questions regarding your time at, at Keurig Dr. Pepper, because we remember Ta Mo, and you guys absolutely destroyed Tao. And I wanna chat about that because there really was like, the coffee maker wars between Tao and Keurig. You would've been right in the middle of that 2014.

Ron Szekely: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Talk to me about that. How did you guys beat out Tao?

Ron Szekely: Great, uh, great question and definitely a great, uh, a great part of my career because it was, I was lucky enough to join KRG when they were exploding when the coffee wars.

We're at, uh, at full tilt. And so for everybody listening, imagine the coffee world, which was pretty much stagnant. You know, the average cup of coffee was about, let's say 7 cents, you know, to, uh, the cost of the beans and when you sell it to a consumer. And so if you were in any retail business, selling coffee, whether it was in a can or in a bag.

You could expect to make about 7 cents per cup on a cup of coffee. And that's not a market that changes, you know, consumption habits. Let's say people drink three cups a day, that doesn't change. And so

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Ron Szekely: the market grows with population and that's about it. All of a sudden, the arrival of single serve call it a tassimo pot or an espresso pot, or a, or a Keurig pod arrives, and the cost per cup of coffee goes from 7 cents to, let's say 70 cents.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: And so the, the size of the market is almost 10 times bigger overnight if people switch from, you know, selling it in a, in a bag or a can to selling it in a single serve format. And so all of the retailers, of course, are loving it because their coffee business is like exploding, doubling, tripling, quadrupling overnight.

And now all of the other coffee brands that have been selling their coffee in a bag or in a can for all these easier see the opportunity to sell their coffee for. So much more money. Yeah. And it's not, you know, it's not ripping the consumer off because the consumer's super happy because of the convenience of Yes.

Of the offering. So the consumer's happy, the retailer's super happy, and now all of these other brands of coffee are like, I want in on this. They see this part of the market is exploding and they want in and, and that's really what the battle became about is who can convince all of the other brands to sell their coffee in their system.

Yeah. And that's really the game I think that, that Keurig won at the time, which was to be the best business partner for all of these other coffee brands, great local coffee brands, whether it's at Van Hoot or at Timothy's or, or you name it, getting them to say, no, we wanna partner with Keurig to have our coffee.

Uh, in that system. And so to win the system game was to win the game because if you can get your machine in somebody's house, then all the coffee comes with it. It's, you know, like selling them a razor and then all the razor blades or a printer and all the ink cartridges.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes,

Ron Szekely: it's that same game. You gotta get your machine in their house.

And once your machine is in their house, then businesses, okay, now just pick which of the brands you wanna put in it. And since Keurig, you know, their business model, they would make money on whichever brand of coffee you chose that fit in the model there. They're making the sale. In some cases they would share it with their partner, and then they had some of their own brands as well.

But they, you know, they didn't treat their own brands any differently than all of the partner brands. And so it was really creating that ecosystem of, of partner brands coming in. And there was maybe 50 or 60 different brands from private label to the Starbucks of this world. Yeah. Going into that system.

And so it was, uh, it was a really interesting time for retailers, for the consumer, and for all of these partner brands.

Kelly Kennedy: As someone who uses a Keurig every single day, thank you for your hard work.

Ron Szekely: You're very welcome. So, I mean, their hard work was really on the well, I guess on both fronts it was the people that were negotiating the partnerships, but first and foremost, it was the people who made the machines that were able to bring a level of convenience to a cup of coffee that wasn't possible, uh, in the past.

And then that made the marketer's job quite easy because he had a great story to, to go out and tell.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. No, it's, you've had a couple pretty incredible stories. You know, like when you think about your time at L'Oreal, you think about your time at Keurig. Those were both really, really impactful times.

I saw too, you worked at what Rise Kombucha Temple Lifestyle. So you got into, you know, continued down the, the, the food services with kombucha. My, my fiance absolutely loves kombucha, so, we always have, you know, a bottle of something in our fridge, whether it be Rise or something else. Yeah. So it's, uh, yeah.

Yeah, man, it's cool. It's cool. So talk to me a little bit about the transition, because I think, you know, a lot of people are listening right now and they're thinking, man, you had it made, you were working at some of the biggest brands in Canada, long career in marketing and sales, and developing brands and these products.

Talk to me about what inspired you to essentially shift from multinational, large corporations to these small, nimble startup companies. You know, like thats a, that's a big jump and I imagine you left behind a pretty fat paycheck to do it.

Ron Szekely: Well, I left the comfort behind, that's for sure. But, uh, traded comfort for, let's say excitement and not that L'Oreal was super comfortable because they keep you out of your comfort zone by design.

So they're always, you know, they force you to take on more and more and change and grow with them. And so they, they, I guess right out of school taught me. To enjoy, enjoy learning, enjoy being out of my comfort zone, enjoy that whole process of let's say self discovery and, and becoming, becoming better, but maybe to a flaw because at one point it started to level off and that's where I kind of got the itch for something dramatically different.

And when I talk about my career, I wanna be careful to not paint the wrong picture saying that I chose to go from big to small because small is better. I think I as a person might have done the opposite as well. Like to go from small to big because I think big companies and small companies are both amazing.

But you learn completely different things and I really appreciate having the, had the opportunity to see different business models and particularly different. Sizes of businesses. And so the amazing things about working in a big company like L'Oreal is well, one, you have deep pockets. You have big budgets, you have great teams.

You have departments to do things for you. So if you wanna hire, uh, somebody, you've got like piling cvs that have already been vetted. And so you have like a real machine working around you. You have guardrails and proven processes that have been, you know, worked out in every country, across every brand.

And they share those with you. So you kind of have a playbook to, to get on board with. And you have all of the partners, so you know, you wanna be on the inside front cover of a magazine that's about to launch. They're gonna knock on your door first and say, are you know, are you interested?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: A new TV show is coming to town and they want you to place an ad on it.

You're gonna hear about it first. So all of these opportunities for advertising, partnership and sponsorship are there for you. You're surrounded by brilliant people who, who have. Wealth of experience from multiple countries and multiple brands and, um, it really teaches you a lot and El elevates your game.

That being said, what you don't have that smaller companies have is, that sort of passion of the entrepreneurial spirit, the big dream of I'm either gonna, you know, fail, which a lot of companies do, or I'm gonna make it big and somebody's gonna buy my business for millions and millions of dollars. And so that sort of entrepreneurial spirit is, uh, is really also quite, uh, quite different.

And then when you work in a small company, you're of course able to impact so much because there's a smaller team, there's less guardrails. And so everything from, you know, what products to the branding to their go to market and which countries do we conquer, and all of that, all of those decisions are, are much more within reach.

But it was probably more the, the emotional part of, I wanted to be part of that entrepreneurial dream phase that that you can't replicate in a big company because in a big company there's just too many people and too much stability. Yeah. Whereas when you're, you know, I've told this story before, but when I went to a food show, california, I don't know if you've ever been to Expo West where all of, there's maybe 4,000 different people have a booth where they're showing the latest, whether it's a kombucha or whether it's a snack bar. Yeah. Um, and the big companies are there as well. You know, the, the current Dr. Peppers of this world or, or Pepsi are there sharing their stuff.

But the big companies are gonna outsource that to an agency of people who look great but don't really know and don't really care about the product. Their job is to kind of look good while they give you a sample. Whereas the small founder led companies, it's literally the mom, they're, and pop behind the counter who not only give it to you with enthusiasm, they're watching you.

They wanna see, do you like how it tastes? Do you like the packaging? They have a million questions for you in this like real. And they wanna know because it's like, it's their masterpiece, but it's their future as well. It's like, if this person likes it, we have a chance that, you know, we're gonna get listed in this retailer, that we're gonna succeed, that we should keep going.

And so that, that passion for trying to create great things and get everything right and please the consumer and make money and build a team around them is much more profound in, in a smaller, smaller company. Um, yes. And so that's why I, it it's not because one is better than the other, it's just kind of, I checked a whole bunch of boxes of, of learning and then I wanted to apply it to people that had, uh, a real passion and skin in the game.

And, uh, definitely it's a privilege to have been able to be on both sides of, uh, those different dimensions, let's say.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that you touched on that. You know, I've had the pleasure of, of interviewing a few different product founders, whether it be, you know, RTA energy to you with Mitch Jacobson, or whether it be Nature Mary with Capel kra, people that literally just took an idea and turned it into a real product on a shelf.

You're absolutely right. The passion in that for them, they live and breathe it, and all they want to know is that you love what they built, you know? Right. Yeah. Um, I agree. I agree. There's something completely different when it's their baby and, and they took it from nothing.

Ron Szekely: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: To, you know, that product that you just put in your fridge last night, right.

It's really cool and, and I find their journeys inspiring and I love talking to 'em, so I can see why it would be super passionate for you. 'cause it's just so cool to be part of that experience and that journey, isn't it?

Ron Szekely: It is. And, and it's, it's very rewarding to be part of a journey where you can make a huge impact in the life of an entrepreneur.

Because we've all seen struggling entrepreneurs who, they can't get a, they can hardly put food on the table. You know, the business is crumbling, they're failing for bankruptcy, their family starts to fall apart. When it doesn't go well, it really doesn't go well. And, and they're so personally attached to their business.

It's almost like if my business doesn't go well, I'm a failure too.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: And equally smart people just get on the right path, doing a few systems properly, learning some of the best practices, and suddenly everything's working. People wanna buy from them, people wanna work with them. They're having fun, they now have renewed energy.

And it becomes this sort of virtuous cycle of, of positivity. And it's sometimes it's like the same. Uh, products, the same people, and then just a few wrong decisions can take you down one very dark path versus like a very sunny and optimistic, uh, future. And so to be able to help make a help influence a few decisions that completely change the outcome of, of somebody's entrepreneurial journey is, is very rewarding.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Yeah. Well, honestly, we haven't talked about a lot of systems on this show. I think we talked about EOS obviously it comes up all the time. It's the, the big daddy of of business systems. I think we had Jory Evans come on and talk about how it completely changed his business and now they, you know, 50 to a hundred million dollars a year with their trucking organization due to EOS.

And he really says it was due to the values that EOS instilled in their business that had so much power on it. You represent a system BOS360. How did you, with other systems existing, what drew you to BOS360.

Ron Szekely: And so EOS is a fantastic system, and I used to coach with that system, uh, still, still great for a lot of companies.

What was missing for me, and, uh, I have a business partner, uh, named Shelby, that both of us were actually coaching with EOS and there was a few things missing. It's a great system, but the, there's not a whole lot of flexibility in it. It had been invented quite a few years ago and we felt that there was some, some missing pieces.

And so, not gonna knock that system at all because I think it's great. And if you have no system, by all means, like adopt, uh, adopt that one or adopt any why We prefer the system that we use. It's recognizing the importance of really three. Things that the leadership team has to build that they sometimes don't realize.

They're kind of distinct and yet interconnected. And that is number one, you have to build a business, which is, there's lots of books written around, um, business and it's got all the financial metrics that allow you to know whether or not it's working. So are you making money, you know, revenue, cash flow, profitability?

Are you creating value and making money in a way that you can kind of sustain yourself? All of the sort of business dynamics, but in addition to building business, you're building two other things. So as a leadership team, you have to recognize, yeah, it's great to have a business, but there's two other things you have to build alongside it that will help you build a business.

And those two things are your brand and your team. And so your brand, how it's separate is. Um, you know, when we say brand, sometimes people think your brand is just your Nike Swoosh or something, but we're, we're talking even at a corporate level, this corporation that you're creating together with your leadership team, you have to decide who you are.

Like, why do you exist and why should anybody care? Sometimes the brand is exactly the same as the founder, but most of the time it's not like it's a piece of the founder and it's a piece of somebody else. And yeah, you sort of decide who do you wanna be in the world? Why does your corporation or your company exist?

And what expectation are you trying to create in the world? What kind of reputation are you trying to create? And so helping the leadership team recognize that the brand is not the job of marketing and it's not the job of an agency. It's really the leadership team that has to make those decisions about who are we, who, what do we wanna be known for?

How do we make sure that we're consistently showing up and creating this brand impression to everything that we do from the people we hire, the products that we launch, the way we go to market. Everything that we do has to build this brand that has its own. DNA. So you have a strong business, you have a strong brand.

And then the third pillar that they have to build is that of a team and the team of happy, high performing people. So the right people in the right seats you know, recruiting the right people, training the right people, rewarding, recognizing and shaping those people so that you have a team of people that can help you execute on your, your business and brand, uh, directives.

So it starts with that. It starts with these sort of three pillars and recognizing that they exist, business, brand and team. And then what we have in our system is, so how do you go about building these three things, you know, best practices on the three? But it's really about where those, if you imagine these as being three intersecting circles, it's where they intersect that we spend the time.

So where the business and the brand intersect. That's where we find your strategy. So where are you going? How are you gonna get there? Making sure that everybody's on exactly the same page with that vision. And so there's a whole piece around strategy, and then where the business and the team intersect is where we find your execution.

You know, how do you execute on that vision day in, day out? So it's, you know. Setting priorities and your processes and your meetings and your playbooks, all of the different things that go into to execution. And then finally, the third intersection is where your brand and your team intersect. And that's where we find your culture.

And so that unique culture that creates a foundation for everything else to work well within. So that culture being a reflection of your sort of brand identity, who you wanna be, and the team of people that you've brought into your organization to kind of lead those core values and, and create that nurturing environment that everything can thrive in.

So in a nutshell, it's helping them build a business, a brand, and a team through strategy, execution, and culture. And it's this kind of model that allows them to see how things are separate, yet interconnected. And then just basically bringing in best practices for each of those six, uh, six aspects.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing.

Yeah. This is the first time that anybody has ever brought up those specific pillars. Right? Like I've heard many people talk about values, right? Right. Everything about EOS was values, values, values. Make sure that everyone's on the same team fighting the same way. Don't hire and fire based on values, right?

Yeah. But those three pillars of business, brand and team. I wanna dive a little deeper into that because let's just say that you're going into a business, we have business owners listening right now who are thinking, how does this apply to my business? Can you go a little more in depth with each one of those three big pillars?

Ron Szekely: Perfect. Yeah. So business, um. This is basically your ability to generate cash. And so you have a successful business if people give you money to do something, uh, in such a way that you have some leftover so that you can keep some and you can invest some back into the, back into the company. And so all of your accounting metrics go into making sure that you've got a, a successful, thriving business.

And some people, that's the most important pillar. Like that's the only reason they wanna be an entrepreneur is 'cause they wanna make money and that's it. And that's fine, but they have to recognize that it's much easier to make money if you've got a brand that you can tap into. And if you've got a team of people that you can that you can count on for other people though.

Their biggest objective is to just have a great team of people. And the reason they wanna make money or the reason they wanna have a great brand is to thrive, you know, with, as a team, build this great team. So a team for them is their number one thing. And then there's other people, uh, their objective is just to create this amazing brand that everybody loves and raves about, and this corporation that is bigger than any one individual.

And they know that they need to have a thriving business in order to fuel that. And they know that they need to have a team in order to do that. But fundamentally, their starting point is, is the brand. So I guess the point is it doesn't matter which of those three is most important to you, and, and it's legitimate if any of those three are, but in every case, the other two are essential in order for you to, to make one of them work.

So business, to answer your question, that's really around I think people are probably most familiar with the role of the leadership team in shaping a strong and healthy business. For sure the finance team, that's the, you know, their meeting, uh, priority. But the finance team can't really affect a lot of the things that are gonna make the business successful.

And so they can kind of report on it, they can point out issues and they can direct, but the whole leadership team needs to recognize like they're the ones that are actually making the money, spending the money, making the decisions that are gonna affect whether or not they've got a profitable business.

So optimizing their portfolio, optimizing their spending, optimizing, you know, who they're going after. So a lot of strategic decisions made by that leadership team are actually shaping the profitability and viability of that business. And so, you know, don't count on finance to squeeze more money outta your corporation.

Think that this leadership team needs to be fully aware of like, where's all this cash coming from? How do we spend in the right spots and how do we do the things that drive the most amount of, of revenue and cash and profitability for the organization? So that's the business part. The team part also very well understood because there's so many books written around leadership and management and team building and, and all of those aspects.

But we, we do wanna isolate it as it's, as its own thing to recognize as a leadership team. It's not human resources job, it's the leadership team's job to decide like, what kind of people do we want in our organization. Yeah. Having to make sure that everybody is properly managing them, coaching them, lead, manage, coach.

Their team. So good processes in place around recruitment for sure, but mostly around how do you make sure that year after year after year people are becoming better and better versions of themselves, individually and collectively. And how do you create a, a culture where they, they share their expertise with each other, they give feedback, they teach each other that, so that they grow stronger together over time.

So that's, let's say the team part, I would say it's the branding part that most leadership teams haven't really thought about a lot. And so branding in many cases they think, oh, that's just something that you do afterwards. It's like you sprinkle on an advertising campaign or you sprinkling a go market that, whereas they need to see it at the very forefront who are we?

Mm-hmm. What impression are we trying to create? And there there's really three places. So you could think about branding. In three aspects. Um, number one, it's kind of, let's say at face value. So when somebody just sees something for the first time, what impression are they getting? Does it look luxurious?

Does it look expensive? Does it look performing? Like what, what codes are you, you creating just by the way you show up? Whether that's your business card or your logo, or your packaging, or, although the first, you know, the front value offerings, even some of the words you might use to describe yourself. So that's the, the first aspect.

The second aspect is what are people saying about you? So somebody who's used you, what is the feedback they're telling everybody? If they're referring you or recommending you, like a why, what are they saying? Yeah. And are you shaping that? Do you know what you want them to say about you? And are you equipping them to tell that story?

So being very intentional about that, and that can be at every step. Could be the customer service, it could be the product, it could be the performance, it, you know, basically what reputation are you crafting and making sure that people are are telling that story on your behalf. But probably the most important thing for branding is.

What are they experiencing? So when somebody uses their product, what do they think about you? Like what, what exactly experience are they? So like, are they going to come back and use you again? And if so, why? And being really intentional about what experience are you trying to create for that consumer?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: In every touch point. And so once you sort of map out like that reputation and expectation that you're trying to create, then we go through what are all the different touch points that people can experience it. And once you make a few decisions, it's so easy. The playbook is almost already written.

You know, if you pick your, your brand archetype, let's say there's only 12 brand archetypes when you pick yours, there's like a playbook already is written. How, how that kind of an archetype shows up in the marketplace in terms of product, in terms of events, in terms of partnerships, in terms of advertising.

And so we help them just make a few decisions that make everything else so much easier because they're now gonna be true to themselves and they don't have to ask themselves, should we do this or this? A brand like that always does this. Yeah. And, uh, so it's helping the leadership team streamline and, and own the brand. So, you know, it's not, so, it's not an afterthought, it's not something done by an agency. It's something for sure brought to life by an agency, but the foundational decisions that make your brand unique and authentic and consistent have to be the, uh, the leadership team that, uh, that, that gets it and, and owns it and polices it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I can already tell that there's guaranteed businesses listening. They're like, this sounds amazing, but it sounds really, really hard, Ron It, right. Like, especially if you've been, if you've been operating your business just as a business for the last, let's call it 10 years, because I think probably a lot of the companies coming to you are that, especially if they're in that, you know, between three and, you know, 50 mill range.

They've been at this for a little bit. Yeah. And so kind of, I think they, they hear this and they say, that sounds great. I can see how this might be beneficial, but like, how the hell do we even do something like this? Right. You know, talk to them because I know they're, I know I can hear it right now.

This sounds great. How the heck do we make a change this big in our organization?

Ron Szekely: Yeah. So you know what the, uh, it's a great question and the short answer is it's not so much about change. It's about kind of uncovering what's, what's already there. So in most cases they have a brand already, like they already are something.

It's probably not exactly the same in everybody's head, and it's probably not consistent at every touchpoint, but we're just basically helping them articulate like what is their shared belief of who they are and why they exist and how they wanna show up. And so whether you wanna be an inclusive brand or exclusive, whether you wanna be like a value brand or a premium brand, like there's a few decisions they just need to align on R we A or R we B, and sometimes.

It may not understand. And so it's like, okay, are you this car or are you that car? And then, you know, a couple of, and, and honestly like four or kind of answers to these kinds of polarizing questions and alignment around the team of like, okay, so this is, this is who we are. And then I just help them see what does that mean?

Like how does that kind of a brand show up at different touch points?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: And it becomes obvious to them afterwards. And so, you know, if you think about a company that might go to a trade show, they have to make decisions about like, what should we wear? What should our booth look like? And so they're already trying to think of like, what are we trying to convey, portray.

So it's not foreign completely to them, but they just never realize how simple it could be with just a few questions and letting them realize that they actually fit into a bit of a box from a archetype standpoint. And then we just add a little bit of uniqueness on top of an existing framework for luxury brands behave a certain way, and premium brands and value brands.

And then, you know, so we help make that easier and realize like, decisions and life and branding can be a lot simpler if they just kind of understood a little bit about, uh, where their heads are all at and put them all exactly on the same page.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. So let walk us through it because I, I can already hear people saying, yeah, this sounds awesome.

What does, uh, implementing a BOS360 system look like? You know what? Walk us through the process.

Ron Szekely: Perfect. And so step one is it always starts with a a discovery call with the executive team to make sure that we're a good fit for each other. So get an opportunity to hear from them what are, what are their pain points and opportunities?

Where are they at? Uh, what do they wish was better, bigger, easier? And for them to hear what the system is all about and how we plan to work together. And if there's a good fit. Most of the time there is, but we wanna make, you don't wanna take that for granted. So we start with the full executive team and say like, is this gonna work?

'cause we all have to be on board together. And, you know, it's, you can't have just the, uh, the president that's implementing this. It has to be, no, like this team, when we're gonna meet together, we're all gonna be on the same, the same level here. We're all equal around a table and we're going to be working on the business together.

So we wanna make sure we have the buy-in and the alignment upfront. So if that's a, if that's a go, then we start and we start with we call it momentum day. And it's really putting a lot of foundational executional type tools in place. So everything from their accountability chart to their setting, their priorities for the quarter meeting processes, a few sort of basic executional type elements, a scoreboard so that it allows them to.

Execute on their business in a simple way and, you know, make the most of their meetings and, uh, basically simplify their, their business as much as possible, have a really clear view. We share with them like a, we build their flywheel so that they can imagine how their business is working, uh, in a sort of very simple five or six key steps, uh, kind of way.

Yeah. So all these executional elements are put in place on day one. Full day meeting offsite with the full, uh, leadership team. Then we let them run with that for 30 days and make sure that they're executing on, uh, we have a new meeting process that we put in place and, and whatnot. We get back together then after 30 days, and it's day two.

So day two is vision, uh, vision day, where we build the vision together, including two parts of a two page strategic plan. So page one is really related to brand and it's your, it's your five W So your, your why, your what, your who, your where, your way. Uh, that's, we craft that together. And then page two is more time bound.

We call it your ten three one Q. So help them imagine 10 years from now, three years from now, one year from now, quarterly, so kind of more time bound, have the same path forward as each other. So that's basically creating a two page strategic plan together on day two. And it really solidifies their vision and their brand identity.

And then on day three, we come back together. We call that health day. And that's where we really focus more on, team culture creating happy, high performing teams. And we also revisit what we did on day one and day two to make sure everything is working flawlessly. And we set the priorities up for the next quarter when we're together.

And then after that we get into a quarterly rhythm where we just get back together once every, every 90 days. And in that time we look back to see like, did we do what we said we were gonna do? Conclude on that. Set the priorities for the next quarter. And then we use the rest of the time to tackle some specific topics or issues.

Together we introduce specific curated tools based on challenges they might have, either with their business or their brand or their team or their strategy or their institution of their culture. So depending where they have issues, we. We bring in specific tools to help them through some of those, uh, those aspects.

And it's just, we kind of keep going. So every quarter we get back together and, and realign strategy and, uh, make sure that we're set up for another flawless 90 days of execution.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. So really you're there holding their hand the whole way.

Ron Szekely: Holding their hand while we're together, but deliberately not making decisions for them.

Just sharing best practices. Working as a facilitator to help make the most of a day together, because if you take your full leadership team offsite for a day, like that's a big, that a financial investment, that's a big like time commitment. Yes. You wanna make sure that you're super productive.

And honestly, when we're together, we'll do. We get so much done in one day because I'm used to like pushing teams through it in a, in a, in an efficient way. And so we'll be able to do scoreboard and your accountability chart and set priorities and go through your flywheel and like, we'll do a whole bunch.

I'll, I'll like bang, bang, bang. Because we're you sort of facilitating the right, uh, the right conversation and challenging them to make sure that sometimes there's, you know, always one person that takes, uh, takes the lead in the room. We make sure that we kind of, we, we hear from everybody. We pull the mess in you, we build consensus.

We we change the dynamics a little bit so that we really can move quick and get out of our comfort zones and then tap into best practices.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Does this, uh, does this typically end up being, by the time you're doing your quarterly follow ups, like a multi-year process or does, is it typically done within a year?

Ron Szekely: No, it's always Mo so there's no commitment to stay on, but we kind of make the decision together every quarter. Do we keep going? And the answer has always been yes. And so most companies are. More than two years in. 'cause our, our material will evolve with them. And so

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Ron Szekely: we know what to start with. And once that's like you, you know, a hundred percent strong, we move on to the next element that we layer in.

And so we evolve with them. They don't have to stay on beyond two years or any amount of time really, but the best results are for sure you have to do those first three days in order to like get the full system.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: But then it takes a few years in order for you to get the full benefit of the system.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: But luckily after that then we have new tools and new depth that we, that we layer in that, uh, depending on how, how much you've progressed.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Ron Szekely: We bring in, then there's also the aspect of, 'cause this is just with the leadership team, so they now need to bring that throughout the whole organization.

So it takes them a year to master it. And then the second year is spent like, uh, ushering it into the, the next levels down within the organization usually.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Because you're basically changing, you're, you're creating and shaping a culture. Which is going to take a long time to essentially ingrain to be this is who we are.

It's not a snap the fingers, we just did it. Now we're different. Like it doesn't work like that. Right?

Ron Szekely: No, exactly. And you know, we're not coming in and doing stuff for them. We're sort of teaching them a new way of, of approaching their business and it, it makes it easier. And so they, they stay with it because they realize this is the easiest way to get everything right.

Yeah. It's still them, it's still their business. It still has all their uniqueness. It's just tapping into best practices and having somebody to facilitate effective ways of, of implementing that stuff and, and holding them accountable a little bit.

Kelly Kennedy: Like what I'm hearing what you're saying, I do imagine this does, like once you have everything firing on all cylinders, I imagine this does lead to a, a pretty great revenue increase for the organization.

Are there any statistics on that?

Ron Szekely: I don't have hard, I know that all of the businesses that I work with number one, they're all growing ambitiously. So ambitiously meaning over 20% a year. Wow. Uh, some much more. Yeah. And they're all exceeding their targets, and so they all kind of, we align on like, you know, and that, that's even just that as a simple question it seems, but the rate of growth, I'm always amazed to what extent the leadership team hasn't, is not on the same page at the onset of like, how big will you be 10 years from now?

How big will you be? Mm-hmm. Three years from now. And in some cases, some people are thinking we're gonna be about the same, same size three years from now.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah,

Ron Szekely: sure. Okay. Maybe we can be twice as big. And then when they start to think of like, what does that mean? If we're twice as big, will we have twice as many people will we like?

And so when just like imagining their growth and aligning on that, and then they almost manifest it. It's like, okay, if you wanna, and there's no right answer, right? Like, if you wanna be 20% bigger, we're gonna build a plan to be 20% bigger. If you can stomach, uh, doubling in the next year, then let's build a plan to do it.

And so it's picking that growth target, recognizing what's involved in order to make it happen, and then, uh, making sure that everybody has the same appetite for. That level of ambition because not everybody wants to grow at that pace. Yeah. Uh, but so to answer your question, the stats would be everybody's growing at, at least 20%.

And many, many of them are more. And everybody is, is, um, on target with whatever growth objectives we set together. When we come back and revisit, we hit those targets because we stay on them every year, every quarter, but then every week as well. Like, are we on track to do what we said we're gonna do?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And you really do have to look at it. All the time. I think that's kind of where a lot of companies fall off the cliff is that they're not actually reviewing their growth goals and they don't know if they're on track or not until that year end comes. They're like, no, we didn't hit it or we exceeded it.

Right, right. It's like, it's like a, A pleasant surprise or a bad surprise. Right.

Ron Szekely: Exactly. Or, or they haven't fought through the implications of it. Like how are you going to grow? Is it gonna be because more people are gonna use you? Are they gonna use your product more often? Are you gonna go into new markets?

Are you gonna have completely new product categories? Like, yeah, there's so many ways to grow, but you have to be clear, like what are your assumptions about where this growth is gonna come from, and then what do we have to do to make that true? And then it becomes easier when it's clearer.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I think you have a really unique view that many, many companies wouldn't, right?

Because you've sold products where you could just sell more of them, you know, at a higher level or get a better retailer or whatever else. You can come to this with a perspective that, let's just say a service industry or you know, a large scale manufacturer maybe has never even thought about it like.

You have a different perspective and that brings probably a lot to, to all the companies you work with.

Ron Szekely: That's a good point. I I am lucky that I've been able to work in different industries from CPG, like, beauty products to pharma Yeah. To service industries. And it's not something that I did at the beginning of my career.

So I was at L'Oreal for the first 14, uh, years, full-time, 17 years total. I had a bit of a kind of one way unique lens, a good one, but a unique one. And it wasn't until I had the opportunity to work in multiple different industries and now working with a ton of different industries and companies that I realized there's lots of different ways to, uh, to grow lots of different ways to plan.

Lots of commonality for sure, and lots of best practices that, you know, are completely shared. But it allows you to say, well, you know, if we could, take a coffee business and turn that into be, you know, doubling every year, then

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Ron Szekely: same could be true in, in another industry or. To, just to recognize that there's lots of different business models, lots of different ways to drive growth and to challenge them to, you know, not to come up with ideas for them necessarily, but to help them think of things from a different perspective.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: From a different industry. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the perspectives that you brought that I don't think has ever come up on this show was how do you get them to consume or utilize more of your product, right? Like, most people think, I just need to get my product into that house, or I need to get my service into that business.

But it's so much better if you can get a lot of your service into that house or into that business, right? But most companies don't think about it from that standpoint. They're thinking about, okay, I just need to get it in the one time, you know, because my one product or my one service. But what if you could do it five times a year for each customer or more than that, maybe five times a month?

Right. It's a, you know, you can have the same customers but essentially maximize your profits from them.

Ron Szekely: That's right. And the efficiencies, and there's lots of examples of that. I have, uh, one client today, it's a not-for-profit that I work with, that have kind of programs for teaching physical literacy in schools.

And they have four different programs. You can either do it in the kindergarten class, you can do it at recess after school or in phys ed. And they were in about a thousand schools. And each of a thousand schools had one of those four programs, but none of the schools had multiple programs. And so now we're like, well wait a second, we agree there's four day parts that you can impact kids and improve their physical literacy.

Why? Why are you not trying to create schools that have like, not just one, but all four of these programs? You've already got a champion in the school who can vouch for you and as an organization like Usher in the other three. And so now they're a hundred percent minded on let's take those thousand schools and.

And have like four opportunities within each. Uh, within each one, which seems, seems simple, but, um, sometimes you forget that, uh, there's, yeah, both you can penetrate more houses or you can, uh, increase the use cases within one house. And, uh. There's probably 10 different ways that you can drive growth, but Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, yeah, but it takes, here's the thing, it takes somebody who's seen it done that way, you can't, it's really hard to imagine something you've never seen or experienced for yourself. And I hate that because as an entrepreneur I always find myself Ron thinking, what do I not know right now? What is that thing?

It was funny. I was in a car ride with Shelby the other day and I just looked at her and I just said, there's something I'm missing and I don't know what it is, but that one thing is gonna completely change my business. And I think every one of us realizes there's that thing or that two things that we don't know that would completely change our business.

Yeah. Which is where I think, you know, a system, a system like you at BOS360 can really come in and just. Shine a big, bright light on that gaping hole that they've been looking at, but couldn't tell what it was.

Ron Szekely: Right? Yes. And then one thing I pride myself in is being able to ask questions that, uh, that allow the light to shine where it's supposed to shine.

Not, not to tell them, but let them have that aha moment. I'm going, aha, that's a good question. And then the answer is, is obvious to them when they think about it. Absolutely. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Know. And just speaking of that, what are some of the challenges that you seem to see over and over and over again when you are working with these startups?

Is there something that kind of comes to mind that you seem to be fixing every, every time you come into a business?

Ron Szekely: Well, it problems are often with scaling and so like, they kind of have a way that's working, but when they try to get to the next phase, they don't realize it, it's not as easy to, to kind of make these quantum steps.

Uh, you know, so for example, if, if they're a small team of let's say 20 people, and so the founder or president can kind of manage 20 people and be very involved in each of their lives, and they kind of get stuck at that level because the next level is, okay, I need to let go. I need to kind of empower the team to be accountable for different things.

And they often have. Trouble. They don't have trouble delegating responsibility, so telling people to do stuff, they have trouble often with letting go of the accountability saying like, no, you are going to be in charge of the results. Like, number one, tell me what results can I expect? And then, I trust that you're going to deliver those.

And so, until they do that, they feel like they're, they've gotta be in, in the kitchen all of the time. And so they're checking in on it all of the time. And so I, I would say that's the, the first thing is they, in order to grow, they need to recognize, okay, this next level of growth is gonna require a bit more trust and accountability of some key people.

Yeah. So that the, uh, and so it's being much clearer about who's accountable for what. It doesn't mean that they're gonna do everything, but you're gonna count on that person. So if they're in charge of sales and you say you wanna have like $10 million of sales next year. They're in charge of that. You know, let them tell you whether or not they're on on track.

And you can, you know, as a leadership team, you can challenge that person and say, are you sure? But, um, when everybody tries to do everybody's job, it gets really messy. So I, I would say number one is the accountability piece that allows. Uh, allows the, and let's say it's the president or the founder, to get out of the day-to-day operations of what they're hoping to hold their team accountable for.

Yeah. Um, getting good at predicting what you can actually get done in a quarter, a year, even a week. That's also one of the first things that they have to make a big improvement in because they always overestimate. Well, they underestimate what they can get done in a long period of time. Like 10 years.

Yes. But they overestimate what they can get done in, in a quarter. Yeah. And so that first realization of, no, like, this is what we can get done, and then that way you're not letting each other down. It's like, you know, you're picking exactly what you're gonna get done and you're making decisions accordingly.

So you get a lot more trust and confidence in yourself and in each other when you're, when you're better at predicting. So those things are, are, are clear the accountability chart of who does what very clearly removing the overlap, removing the redundancy who are you counting on to do each thing makes a big difference.

And then just a few metrics, a few metrics that allow them to know if everything's under control, that they don't need to talk in, in nuance and adjectives. It's like, gimme the number, like we need it to be this, is it this? And if not, do we need to talk about it? So those things make, uh, make a big difference.

I would say with the, the leadership helping them simplify is probably makes the biggest difference in, in the leadership team, the ability to realize that. Things will become increasingly complex over time as you add more people, whether it's communication, whether it's decision making and it's their job to really try to make things as simple as possible.

And so getting them to recognize what unnecessary complexity looks like and how to, how to root that out makes, uh, makes a big difference.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: But I would say that the biggest one is just like when you're really clear about your vision and your vision, 10 years, three years, one year, and exactly the next quarter.

Um, and you can just stay completely focused on that, then that probably makes the, the biggest, the biggest difference.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I know, I know. It's easy to get overwhelmed, right? Like the reality is I always bite off, I feel like more than I can chew. Yeah. And I, you know what I mean? We had, we had to reschedule this already, and thank you for that because I bit off more than I could chew surprise.

But I think many business owners find themselves there and start to eventually, you know, especially if you're, if you're good at what you do and you start to get lots of opportunities coming through, it's very easy to start to be like, okay, like, I'm excited about all this, but I'm also very overwhelmed.

You know, what advice do you give to listeners who are maybe feeling like overwhelmed in their business? Maybe they're feeling like, oh crap. Like, I'm getting exhausted, I'm getting overwhelmed. I don't know what to do or how to fix this situation. What advice do you give to, to overwhelmed founders?

Ron Szekely: A simple thing and something that I've only discovered in the last few years, I would say take yourself a little, uh, mental break journal. I dunno if you journal, but I I've started a few years ago and it's a complete game changer. So we have a, a nice process that we introduce about how to take a sort of moment by yourself and distill the noise down to something very clear.

Like what problem are you trying to solve? And like, how do you walk yourself through it in a very calm way, in a very actionable way where you kind of breathe and you get out of the day to day, you get out of the noise and it's just you and yourself and a pen in your paper and your journal, and you just think through like one issue at a time.

And you'd be amazed, like, uh, you probably already do it, but if people don't take the time to just like sit and think about a problem on their own, um, they can get easily overwhelmed. Where when you just. You take one issue that you might have, write it down, and then walk yourself through a couple of steps and you'll see, uh, you'll come to a, you'll come to a decision and then you just gotta do it.

The problem is when there's just too much noise at once.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: When you're trying to tackle too many things at once or you're not in the right. Mindset to tackle them. Like for me, that would be like a, you know, when you wake up at 3:00 AM and you've got all of these ideas bouncing in your head and you're not really, you're not gonna solve problems, then you're just gonna like drive yourself nuts.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: But when you're in the right frame of mind and you have to put yourself in that right frame of mind, you can tackle them one at a time. And when we tackle issues together with the teams, it's one at a time that we go deep. It's like,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Ron Szekely: what's the issue? Share all of our perspectives. Let's get to the root cause of that issue.

Like, really, why is that happening? Why is that happening? And then when you really understand it, then it, it almost solves itself results in an action. Somebody's gonna do something and then you move on to the next one. You kind of do one at a time. You never talk about problems and not solve them because then you just like wallow in your complexity.

It's like, okay, let's take them one at a time, starting with the most important.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: And then we, we get to the root cause. We make it go away. And people, when we start working together, uh, we kind of teach them a methodology for tackling all of these topics together. And at the beginning they solve a couple, but then over time, within let's say a 60 minute meeting, they can, they can solve 10, 15 issues.

Yeah. Because they're so good at getting to the root cause making a decision and move on. Like, um, and, and it's not wallowing in a bunch of issues. It's like, let's take them one at a time and, uh, and, and share our perspectives, get to the root cause of it, and then make them, uh, make them go away.

Kelly Kennedy: So I don't necessarily journal, but I have my daily notepad and whenever I get overwhelmed, Ron I do a list.

I like to call move the needle. So I write at the top, move the needle, okay. And I list out in, in, you know, numbered jot form, you know, the 10 things that I have to do to move the needle for my business. And I find for me, that pulls me back nice and very similar to what you were saying. Maybe not, like, maybe not writing about each one, but definitely listing them out so that I can give them a priority and, and get started on them.

And for me, it feels like order comes back into my life, right? If I can list them out, the things I need to do, prioritize them. Now I have a place to work from because I do think I do find myself, when I'm experiencing anxiety about my business. It's because I haven't done that. It's because I'm looking at everything and thinking, how in the world am I gonna do all of this?

Ron Szekely: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: But it's funny when you put it on paper how that, how it starts to really simplify the whole thing.

Ron Szekely: Yeah. I love that. Moving the needle. It, it's, uh, yeah. When you, when you're in the right frame of mind and you've got your pen to paper and you take a deep breath, somehow you can get a few things done.

And once you get a few, you realize, okay, I've got this. I'm, I'm kind of in control. The other piece I would say is just like when you make some decisions because the worst is when you aren't making decisions and you're juggling multiple paths at once. And so the analogy I use is, let's say you're planning to go on a vacation, so you tell your friends, okay, we're going away.

And so they're trying to pack their suitcase for this trip, but they don't know where they're going. And so in their suitcase, they have like everything from flip flops to rock climbing gear to, because they don't know whether they wanna go on vacation with and they trust you and know it's gonna be a good time, but they're packing their suitcase full of things.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: The moment you tell them, oh no, it's gonna be an all-inclusive and it's on the beach, it's like, you know, get rid of all of these other things and you've got a much better suitcase and you have everything that you need, including sunscreen for that specific trip. And it's, the problem a lot of entrepreneurs make is they keep a lot of, uh, potential opportunities open because just in case, like, there's all these,

Kelly Kennedy: just in case,

Ron Szekely: yeah, they're afraid to kind of let go of a good idea 'cause somebody else is gonna do it and they're gonna make money and I'm gonna be kicking myself.

But you have to pick a few things or one thing and just focus on it. And so if you can get rid of all of these, these other things, which sometimes cause a lot of noise and, um, and distraction for, for people.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So basically what you're saying is that a lot of times we are biting off more than we can chew because we're refusing to let go of, of the things that aren't important.

Ron Szekely: Yeah. And so I love that entrepreneurs bite off more than they can chew and chew anyways. Like I love that ambition and courageousness that entrepreneurs have to sort of think and dream big. I, I wouldn't wanna, you know, squash that in any way, but yeah. Get, take a few things out of your mouth that, that you don't need to be there so that you can do that big important thing.

Yeah. Because yeah, like that's, I think what sets entrepreneurs apart is they, they do have a little bit more courage and ambition than, than other people. Other people that would never think, oh yeah, that's not possible. The entrepreneur's like, I got this, I can do this.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ron Szekely: But they do need to let go of a few things in order to make it in order to make it happen.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. Well, I know we have some entrepreneurs listening right now, so, uh, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this. I know there's people interested in this. Ron, this is really cool. Great. Take us, you know, again, run us through BOS360 again and let people know where they can get ahold of you.

Ron Szekely: Perfect. So BOS360 is, is really a system of, uh, of proven tools to help you get everything that you want out of your business. And so it's, um. Allowing you to master building a strong business, which is, growing and profitable. A strong brand which is meaningful, relevant, reputation, expectations, and a strong team that's happy and high performing.

So a business brand and team, and we do it through strategy, execution, and culture. So strategy, meaning everybody being on the same page with your vision. Where are you going, how are you gonna get there? Execution, meaning the simplest, best way to execute on that vision, day in, day out. And then culture is just creating a, an environment where you're happy to be part of this team.

It's like a place that you can thrive in and everybody can thrive in. It's unique to you. It feels right and you shape it, uh, deliberately. And so a strong strategy, execution and culture in order to have a really strong business branded team. And we do that by working together full days at a time.

Full leadership team. We have a lot of fun and it turns into the most fun that you're gonna have running your business is the time that we spend together working on the business instead of in it. And to get started it starts with a phone call and then we take it from there.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. What is the website, uh, for BOS360.

And are you on LinkedIn?

Ron Szekely: I'm on LinkedIn. So Ron Zey, S-Z-E-K-E-L-Y. Um, you can find me there. BOS360 is BOS, so business operating system BOS 360. 'cause it's a comprehensive, uh, system. So BOS360.ca and uh, you can find the website there. You can find me there. And, um, starts with a phone call, then an introductory meeting.

And if all goes well, we go one day at a time.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Well, take it from me guys. Ron is awesome to chat with. Give him a call. Uh, I think you won't regret it. Ron, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today.

Ron Szekely: Likewise. Thank you for having me, Kelly, and, uh, hope to continue the conversations.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Until next time you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.