Tell me about your vision.
Well, my vision is very simple, which is to address and find a new way to solve a very vexing problem that
every entrepreneur and business leader and CEO has, which is what do I do on Monday morning at 8 o'clock to grow my business?
And the reason I am focusing on growth is because that's the only way to create value.
If your business is not growing faster than your competition, then you're losing market share and you're on the path to become irrelevant.
And so you have to grow faster than your competition. That's the only way that I know of to create real sustainable value.
And then the question is, well, what do I do on Monday morning at 8 o'clock to grow my business?
Very simple question, but really hard to answer.
That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that.
Philippe, where did this vision and the question like, hey, what do I do on Monday morning to grow my business come from?
Well, I mean, it came from my experience being in Silicon Valley for 35 years.
I've been studying a few businesses, some of them very successful, some of them very didn't work out.
And I've been on 23 boards and I always watched the same movie, which is why isn't the business growing faster?
And I realized that there was no real scientific answer to that question.
It was all about, oh, we need to fire the sales guys and hire new salespeople.
Or we need to change our logo. We need to change our tagline.
Or we need to give discounts. And I'm like, well, why?
I mean, how do we know whether those techniques work?
And it turns out that most of them never really work.
And the reason is because they are not fundamentally addressing the core issue which is responsible for the lack of growth.
And that issue is always the same thing and can be summarized in one single word, which is alignment.
Is the business somewhere is misaligned with this target market?
That misalignment creates friction and slows down the business.
And the question then is, where is the misalignment coming from and how do we address it?
But it's not about hiring more salespeople, discounting more or doing a new cute advertising campaign.
Those, they don't work.
I am so glad that you mentioned because there are so many business owners that come on my show.
They got approached by some bro marketer, some marketing guy.
They said, hey, implement our LinkedIn strategy.
Implement our email marketing strategy. Implement our sales strategy.
And you'll see a growth and they don't.
Right.
They don't see it.
And if LeBron James implemented or Patrick Mahomes implemented those strategies,
it might work for them because they're LeBron James.
If Steve Jobs, if he was alive, if he implemented that sales strategy,
it might work for him because he's Steve Jobs.
Will it work for the mom and pop store on the corner?
I don't think so. Maybe not.
Maybe.
Most likely, no.
And I'm glad that you mentioned something like that because most people are looking for quick fix solutions
instead of looking at the whole picture and backing out that I'm building a brand when it comes to,
I need to be consistent. I need to be reliable. I need to be patient. I need to be loving.
I need to be persistent in my growth. I need to create a brand around that.
I need to have people inside my company build on core values.
There's so much more to it that people miss.
And I'm glad someone came on my show today that mentioned that.
You know, it makes me think of those marketing people you were talking about.
It makes me think of somebody coming to me and saying, oh, you want to learn French.
Why don't you learn those 150 words and you'll be fine.
And it's like, you don't learn French by learning or any language by learning 150 words.
It's a lot deeper than that, a lot more complicated.
And as you said, you have to commit to doing it in the long run.
And it's a lot of hard work and it takes patience and discipline.
It is. Going along your French story, I took French in high school.
So I parlié au français a little bit.
And I know more than 150 words, but I don't speak French.
Right. Right.
So, yeah, my god, I'm so glad you shared something like that.
So, Philippe, what would you say is your why?
I know 35 years that you studied all that and you found out the way
to help businesses grow, scale and much more.
But why do you do it?
I do it because growth is everything.
In fact, I was talking to Brock and Darrell, the CEO of Logitech.
He's no longer a Logitech, but when he was a few years ago, and he looked at me and he said,
look, you know, we either grow or we die.
And so growth is really the only way to create value, as I mentioned earlier.
And a business that's not growing cannot raise any money.
I don't know any. I was a VC for many years.
I would never put money in a company that says, you know what?
We're going to grow slower than the market.
Like, well, you're going to lose market share.
Why should I invest? You're not creating value.
I'd rather put my money in the one who's going to win market share.
So growth is essential.
In fact, if as an investor, I was allowed to ask for only one number to a CEO and I cannot ask for anything else.
And then I would never be able to do that.
I would never do anything else.
And then I would need to make an addition to invest or not based on that number.
Again, it's a hypothetical case.
I would never do that.
But that number would be how much what is the ratio between the growth rate of your business divided by the growth rate of the market you're in.
And if that ratio is much, much larger than one, then it means you're outpacing the market by a huge factor.
Then I'm interested in potentially investing.
If the ratio is less than one, I don't even want to talk to you.
I want to invest.
So growth is everything.
And that's why that's why we're doing it.
That's why we're obsessed about it.
That's why we really wanted to find a good way to solve that problem of how do I grow.
And it's again, as I said, it's a simple question, but really hard to answer.
Yep, it is.
Now let's get into the nitty gritty of that.
How did you get started?
So like, what was the first step you took in Silicon Valley deciding talking to people like, hey, this is this might be the right path out?
That's the early story I want to hear.
Well, I think the big insight was, and I got it from working at Apple and working directly for Steve Jobs, which is, by the way, how I lost my hair in case you ever wondered.
But I think the big insight was that I realized that growth can only happen when the business and its target market are perfectly aligned.
So I realized that the answer to the question of growth led in the fundamental notion of alignment.
And then I went to the next step, which is, OK, well, what does it mean to align my business with my target market?
And that's when I realized there are four universal axes of alignment between any business.
Doesn't matter what the business does and its target market.
And I can tell you very quickly what they are.
The first one is that the pain of the customer and the claim that the business makes to address that pain have to be aligned.
So, Harry, if you come to me with a headache and I show you a stomach ache pill, you're going to say, well, I have a headache, not a stomach ache.
Your pain and my claim are not aligned.
You will never buy my product and nor should you.
The second axis of alignment is between the perception and then the messaging.
And the messaging is how I express my claim, how I describe my claim to you.
And the perception is how you understand it.
So if I have the right pill for your headache and I describe it in Korean, I'm assuming you're not speaking Korean because I know you have good notion of French,
then you would never buy the pill because you're like, what the heck is this guy talking about, even though it would be the perfect pill for your headache.
That's the second axis.
The third one is the way customers want to buy the product and the way the product is sold in the marketplace have to be aligned.
So if I said, Harry, I've got I've got the exact pill for your headache.
It will cost 99 cents. You'll be gone in 20 minutes, but you have to fly to San Francisco Bay Area to get it.
You're like, well, wait a minute. I'm in Texas. I'm not too far from Austin or San Antonio.
Why can't I just walk to the pharmacy there and buy the pill?
So that's the frictionless process by which the product or the service is acquired.
Once I made the decision, I want to buy it. And what do I need to do to actually buy it?
And then the last axis of alignment, which is my favorite one called again, I sold it out of the Apple Playbook,
is that I realized being at Apple that there is only one business on this planet.
I realized that everybody is in the exact same unique business.
There's no dozens or hundreds of thousands of businesses.
There is only one. And that unique business is the manufacturing and delivery of Delight.
Your job, my job, everybody's job is to delight our customer.
And so the alignment has to be between what is expected, the expected delight,
and what is actually delivered to that customer. Those two things must be aligned.
So now imagine you take the pill and then after a while, you know, you get dizzy and you have a rash on your skin and your headache is still there.
Well, obviously, that's not what you expected. You expected it would be gone in 20 minutes.
So that's the last axis of alignment.
So if you align your business perfectly along those four axis, you will grow as much as you can within your target market.
And again, the four axis is that the claim that you're making and the pain of your customer is the same, that your message,
which is how you express your claim and the perception, which is how it's understood, have to be aligned.
And then your way to sell your product or services in the marketplace is aligned with the way your customers want to buy.
And then finally, that what you deliver to them is actually aligned with the expected delight.
And that was, you know, and those four axis of alignment are universal.
They apply to any business, regardless of its size, its location or what it does.
They are truly universal. Thank you for sharing that with us.
That was very, very impactful to me.
Pain perception, need of buy, way of buying and delight.
I took notes on that and I'm sure when I read your book, it'll be more I'll gain from it.
I want to shift gears a little bit on this and I want to go towards the other aspect of of a business is.
Not what you do, but who you are, and that's the leader part.
I'm sure you're working for Steve Jobs and other market leaders that you have come across.
You've learned or seen some things that most people probably lack.
So according to you, Philippe, what defines a great leader?
Well, I think it's the it's two things.
One is having a clear why, you know, as Simon Sinek says, a clear mission, a clear purpose.
Like I wake up in the morning because I'm going to do this and this is actually matters to me and it's impactful.
That's the number one. And then the number two thing is to make people do things that they think is almost impossible.
And the the question is, well, how far do you push that envelope?
And Steve was extremely good at figuring out.
A way to push it far, but not so far that it's truly impossible, like if I were to tell to you,
I would tell you, well, you're going to fly to the moon on Friday, but you can't.
All right, so I know that's physically impossible.
And but at the same time, when you tell them to do something, they think it's impossible, but at the same time it is it is doable.
And somehow Steve was very good at finding that limit, that edge.
And and that's why Apple was so innovative, because people thought there's no way we can do that.
And sure enough, somehow, some way, somebody finds a solution and actually does it.
And so to me, leadership is just two things.
One is having a vision and a why that you can clearly communicate.
And then some people will believe in it and subscribe and they should join the company and others won't.
And they shouldn't be in the company. And that's perfectly fine.
And then the second thing is, how do you make people do and act in a way that they thought they couldn't do it for the purpose and for the success of the company?
And I think to me, leadership is those two things.
Thank you for sharing that.
How I this is a very, very, very hard question, I think, and I've never asked this before to someone.
But how does someone improve in those areas?
You know, the short answer is, I don't know.
It's a bit like asking, how does somebody improve being a good parent?
There are so many styles and so many different ways of parenting.
And without judging which one is better, they are just different.
And I think it's the same with leadership.
I mean, if you look at Steve Jobs and compared to Bill Gates or Elon Musk or anybody else, they all have their own style, their own personality.
The way they engage, the way they motivate people is so different.
So I don't think there is an archetype, you know, kinds of leaders.
I think it's all about motivation and having this vision and this why, as I mentioned earlier.
Now, can you become a better leader?
Yes, I think you do.
And the first thing is to listen and then to have a point of view and then make people align behind that point of view.
And you can learn those skills.
But I don't think there's a school. I mean, it's like parenting.
I don't think there's a school you can go and you can have a diplomat that says, well, you know, you want to that school, you're a good leader.
That doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because there is no simple answer to that question.
So you're right. Your question is definitely a difficult question to answer.
And I don't know.
I think you answered it perfectly. You answered it like great leadership.
I don't know. I don't.
I mean, and if somebody knows, I would love to hear because I'm always interested in learning.
But I haven't seen it in my 35 years here in Silicon Valley.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.