so a warm welcome Keith Cunningham - the Nordic Business Forum it is an absolute pleasure and honor to have you here it is our honor to be here we we've had the opportunity to travel all over the world and speak and I will say that the job that the Nordic Business Forum did not only in terms of promoting this event how they've treated me as their guest how they've treated and the education that they provided to the 5,500 people who were here and this is truly first class it is the best I've ever seen and I've been doing this for 20 years thank you for that very very nicely done and I also know from having you know tons sound bytes with audiences and and attendees they're all you know flabbergasted that there is so many world-class leaders on stage and we're talking about you know high-profile businesspeople CEOs and entrepreneurs and that's also the whole incentive of the business for I'm having people like yourself sharing your knowledge and experience and I mean you had your speech on stage with strategy growth and the drivers of performance which was empowering and engaging and in that speech you talked a lot about intention and passion they what is your case summary on the word success and what are the key components to actually building a sustainable than successful business well you just asked me about seven questions now in there look on the idea of what does it take to be successful I think there's four questions that all business owners need ask the four questions are who to out who do I want who's my target who do I want to target as a possible customer you look at who's that the Nordic Business Forum conference it's not everybody and the Scandinavia countries in fact the bulk of the people in Scandinavia weren't even aware that this conference is happening instead Hans Peter and the and the team said we want to target people who are either in business or who want to be in business who are committed to our growth who are committed to learning because there's lots of business owners who are not committed to learning they're committed to doing what they've always done which means in a very short period of time those business owners will be obsolete so I think question number one is who do I want is a customer question number two is what's got to happen to cause them to buy I think question number three is what's got to happen to keep them coming back and that was really the bulk of what I talked about today was I think business owners make the mistake of chasing the new customer instead of allocating some amount of resources to keeping the customer they got you can do both but I think if you ignore the customer you have they're gonna leave you and so I don't know how to optimize the growth of a business without doing both keeping the customer you got and let's look for a new one so question number three is what has to happen to keep them coming back and I think the fourth question that needs to be asked in order to create a successful business is what could happen to cause customers not to buy and and I think we rarely ask that question I think one of the keys to business success is to make fewer assumptions about what you think you you know that I see I actually I've made the mistake repeat I'm still making this mistake of confusing the narrative with the facts I create a story around something and that story then becomes the truth to me and the reality is it's not the truth it's a story and so I happen to believe that one of the keys to being successful in business is getting clarity with what is right and we talked about that today it's I call it the is line what is reality and most of us don't do that good a job of being truthful about reality and then what is it that I want and that difference between where I am and what I want there's some sort of obstacle or problem that's in the way so the key to me to success is figuring out what's the obstacle is preventing me from getting from here to there and if I can figure out the true obstacle that's preventing me from getting from here to there and then I build a machine that allows me to get from here to there I'll get there I think there's a big difference between success and fulfillment those are two different things I think success is getting what you want and full fulfillment is giving what you got and a huge part of the teaching that I'm doing is the giving part so we own businesses and and those those businesses and I've been in business for over 40 years and I and I'm still in business the businesses that we have provides success the teaching that I do is what provides fulfillment that's really to me where passion comes from passion rarely comes from success I think the mother of passion is too things it is growth and its contribution and every time we're growing and every time we are contributing we tend to be passionate and every time we're in a maintenance mode over in decline we tend to lose our passion so you can think of things right now that you used to be passionate about but you're no longer passionate about those things chances are those things have been ejected from your life because that whatever those things were were things that either went into maintenance or they went into decline and so I happen to think that this idea of passion is a very important topic but I happen to think that my my likelihood of creating passion goes up if I'm in a mode of pursuing mastery and the real subject to me is mastery how do i how do i how do I go about being the best that I can be I had a teacher about 25 years ago said probably the most important thing that's ever been said to me and I think about it every day every day I think about this and what what the teacher said to me is this Keith's hell on earth would be to meet the man you could have been I think that's an exceptionally powerful and profound statement who is it that I'm capable of becoming and that's what causes passion that's what causes contribution who is what am i capable of I want to be able to meet the man I could have been looked at again the eyeball and say I know that's interesting because I know that you work with Tony Robbins and I've been to a few of his seminars and it sort of brings me back to the memory of when you meet your inner child that's also the inner child that you want to feel secure and you want to grow and have a growth strategy for it and find your best potential so it sort of intertwines that thought but but I'm so glad that also this conference and all of you speakers you really touch a lot upon the factor of contribution empathy being a passionate leader and sort of the conversion of success not just being money and power and the transition to that how do you find that the business landscape has changed during let's say the last decade oh my gosh I think I think outwardly I think you know with with just technology things have changed dramatically and I will tell you not always for the better I think a lot of a lot of businesses are relying on technology to be a substitute for interaction for communication for engagement not only engagement with customers but probably more importantly engagement with employees I think one of the biggest mistakes that leaders can make is not understanding the importance of having an a team in an a culture and a team a players a players have a high internal emotional need to succeed they don't need to be motivated they show up and they're excited and it would they want to do the right thing at the right time and deliver the right outcomes and then they're in the appropriate culture and I think and idli I think I think you can make a lot of money in today's environment by emphasizing the culture of an organization by emphasizing the importance of engagement with not only your customers but also your employees that most business are vulnerable to competitive threat and the competitive threat that will underline undermine your competition is not a better faster cheaper stronger product that's not it I think it is providing a level of engagement with the customer and with employees that causes people to feel important that causes people to feel significant that they causes them to feel like they get their money's worth it's it's that level of engagement that I think is the the biggest competitive advantage that most of us could have it's interesting that you say that I know one of the other speakers simon Sinek talked about you know you have high performance leaders but if they have low trust among their employees game over exactly game over and and candidly most businesses fail because they're very reason check this out disinterested employees deliver this interested service I happen to think that that it's impossible to deliver exceptional performance without exceptions exceptions are required for exceptional customer service but when I want exceptional customer service I look for people to make exceptions to accommodate me I don't want to have to accommodate that the company that's selling me the product it's my money I want them to accommodate me I want the the people that I buy products and services from I want them to do something for me that nobody else can do and and one of the things that I think is a huge competitive advantage is when we as business owners and leaders emphasize the importance of the culture and emphasize the importance of how we how we treat our our customer so you asked the question of men to go now how have things changed in the last 10 years I think dramatically not always for the better and I think what it's done is opened a huge chasm in which a business can become astronomically successful this chasm that's been created is a result of the emphasis on technology instead of relationship it's it is what is missing is a level of engagement and relationship with customers and I think businesses that want to grow if they would amp the level of engagement what they'll see is their sales and profits soar and my next question just came to mind and you sort of answered it but if we have up-and-coming and rising entrepreneurs looking at this and would you what advice would you give them to sort of take in mind when they look at becoming a business leader when they're thinking about when they're when people think about being in business I think the key is to find the gap between what the competition is doing and where customers are frustrated if you can find a group of frustrated customers you can do very very well I'll say that a different way I think it's a three-part formula for success I think success is about finding out what they want find out what they want go and get it give it to him that's how hard it is unfortunately we start with number two as business owners we're standing in the shower we have an entrepreneurial seizure we have this great idea we jump out of the shower we go tell our friends and family about how our great idea and everybody looks at us and says Oh Keith we love you you're so smart and that's the amount of social proof that we need we think that's all the social proof we need in order to go start a business when in reality what my friends and family think about my my good idea has nothing to do with whether or not that good idea will get traction I think what's required is find out what the customers want find out where their in pain and our job as business owners is to become pain relievers let me help you get out of pain let me solve your frustration let me help you find a game that you're wanting to get and if I can do that then I have a possibility for building a successful business but then I gotta somehow describe to you why you should choose me and not the other guy what's the difference that makes the difference and and if you can't describe the difference it makes the difference it makes it very difficult for people to discriminate in your favor at the end of the day that's what marketing is marketing is giving giving a customer a reason to discriminate in my favor and if I do my marketing effectively I'll wind up with more customers none of that addressed what I heard at the very end of your question a minute ago which was around leadership and I think that's a very interesting distinction I think that you can create a business that's attractive a solution that's attractive to customers and be ineffective as a leader and go broke I think you can have an average product but if you have great leadership around that product I think you can do very very well financially I look at businesses that go broke and more often than not I see ineffective leaders I also see leaders that don't have all of the requisite skills and tools that are required to win a gold medal in business but I also find people that are more interested in success than they are in serving you know the businesses that ice need to do very very well have mastered the art of serving their customers it's not about me it's about them it's not about me is in my bank account it's about the customer how do I help you and if I can sort that out that's really what leadership is if I can sort out how I can help you now I have an opportunity to be successful and I have one more question with regards to personal growth because it or a growth strategy more instant as opposed to personal growth well with all your experience and knowledge and so many years in the business how do you work on your own sort of growth strategy you know I I am a big reader I have for a long long time over 25 or 30 years read you know a book or two a week I have thinking time thinking time as as one or two times a week that I carve out an hour to sit quietly with a couple of good questions and think on paper you know the human mind was designed to create not retained so I think if I'm gonna think I need to think on paper I happen to have some personal growth rituals that I used in my own life in order to support me and the growth that I know that I need to have so that I can achieve the results that I want I happen to think that that I think it was John Maxwell who said and I he's exactly right that unless I'm willing to personally commit to growth I I will always be an ineffective leader I think I'm no no no better leader that I wear I am personally with my growth it goes to what I said earlier about Hell on Earth would be to meet the person you could have been and I think really it's it's let it's probably more about mastery to me than it is anything else what where are the opportunities for me to create mastery in my life where I have conscious competence and I know how to teach what I know you know that the fastest path to mastery is to teach with you what you learn and it is remarkable to me how much I've learned since I've started teaching you know I continue to get insights and so candidly one of my rituals for personal growth is the opportunity to teach others about what I know the hardest work I do by far is getting getting clarity on how do I simplify and explain what it is that I know and so that's a personal growth ritual as well well thank you so much for sharing your personal growth rituals because I think it's very important for being a role model for others to sort of see that role models also have their own personal growth strategy even when they're you know the forefront and being successful that there also is you know the the EQ the emotional intelligence that comes through and thank you so much for being the inspiration that you are and for spreading your knowledge I think all of us business leaders entrepreneurs and CEOs and for taking the time to come to the Nordic very it was my pleasure thank you thank