Digital Game Plan: Game On!
Digital Game Plan for Profitable Growth
Digital Game Plan: Game On! dives into how a Digital Game Plan for profitable growth can help business owners identify their core strengths, uncover new opportunities, and eliminate costly distractions. Curt Anderson and Damon Pistulka explore the Digital Game Plan’s SO vs. SO WHAT exercise, starting with a simple question: What are you absolutely best at? They discuss why companies can get pulled away from their strengths by customer requests, how Blue Ocean opportunities can help manufacturers and B2B companies stand apart, and why businesses should “chase profits” instead of simply chasing sales. Curt and Damon also explore the “SO WHAT” side of the equation, including outdated products, unprofitable activities, confusing website content, and other time and energy drains that may no longer create value. Digital Game Plan: Game On! offers a practical approach to focusing on your superpowers, finding better opportunities, and creating a clearer path toward profitable business growth.
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Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:01
Hey Damon, how are you, man?
Damon Pistulka 00:03
I’m doing great, Curt. Ready for the day,
Curt Anderson 00:05
Chad? You look more handsome than ever. Let’s see the shirt. Come on, let’s see the shirt. What do you got? What do you got going today? Yeah, just a shirt. Oh my goodness gracious! Are you fired up for this or what? Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 00:14
yep, we’re ready to go.
Curt Anderson 00:15
Let’s rock and roll, brother. Okay, so we are talking about the digital game plan, and you know what are two young guys like us coming up with a software tool like what what didn’t your mom talk tell you that you’re not supposed to be doing this at our age like what do what what’s going on here?
Damon Pistulka 00:30
Your mom said do what you need to
Curt Anderson 00:32
do mom said do it I do that’s a great quote mom said do what you need to let’s dive in so all right we have come up with two young guys that we are. We’ve come up with this new software tool called the digital game plan. Damon, what is the digital game plan for our friends out there?
Damon Pistulka 00:49
It really is a way for you to develop your strategic digital plan.
Curt Anderson 00:57
Thank you. Drop the mic. Right?
Damon Pistulka 01:00
Yeah. It starts off simple, but it works works all the way through. You know, like we’re talking about today, your strengths and opportunities, and and things you might not want to focus on, and and works all the way through. How should be talking? How should we be talking to customers? What? Yeah, there’s tons of stuff.
Curt Anderson 01:17
Yep, exactly. So, all right. So, what we’re using a fun example here. So for we we you know hey, it’s college time, right? So we’re talking about Penn State, the Berkery, the Berkey Creamery, and so just a wonderful, incredible 1865. They were founded, Damon. 1865, just a wonderful look at this. And I’ve I’ve been down there, man. It’s just this place is just amazing, right? Put out all sorts of like wonderful treats, ice cream, and so what we want to do is we want to dive into how the digital game plan can work for a company like this manufacturer, right? They manufacture their own ice cream, and so what we want to dive into are their core strengths, opportunities, and then we’ve got this little tab here called the “So What. Now, yesterday we were talking about the core strengths. What are you absolutely best at? And we find this tool, this exercise, is so critical for the clients that we work with. You know, unfortunately, especially like you know, not you know, like whether it’s startups or you’ve been around for decades, right? Sometimes you get a little bit lost, or you just kind of get caught into your day to day. Damon, what do you find as far as like core strengths? Why is that so important to understand what you’re absolutely best at?
Damon Pistulka 02:33
Well, when you’re when you’re growing, you can easily get pulled off track by by you know a customer that wants you to do a little bit more this way, a little bit more this way, rather than what you really intended on doing as a business. And the next thing you know, you’re in an area where you really shouldn’t be. You’re not making the money like you want. You’re not giving them the results that you could. So that’s where when you stick around your core strengths and what you do for people, it it really helps everyone.
Curt Anderson 03:01
Yeah, we we have a number of clients that we that we work with have worked with in the past. Where it’s like you know we have a lot of sales. You know my my my father, God bless him, he’s still with us. He always said you know he always taught me when I was younger like don’t chase sales, chase profits. Don’t chase sales, chase profits. Yeah, and the thing is when we look at like different aspects, and we’ve had so many epiphany or aha moments with our clients when they’re diving into like, oh my goodness, like this particular product line isn’t really as profitable, or lo and behold, like we’re actually losing money. We didn’t we didn’t really dive into like the the shipping cost or the processes, or we didn’t you know really get the whole, you know, the complete picture of what that looks like. So that’s so important for you to look at your core strength. So now this company, the the ice cream company, you know, you look down here. We’ve got like you know, hey, distinctive flavor naming brands. You know, production scale supports credibility. Ship to home ice cream offer is explicit. So again, like, what are your superpowers? What are you absolutely best at? And how do you exploit those? And are they on your website? We had had a discovery call with a client last week, and they were saying they came right out and said, like, “Hey, on our website, like, where we are today is not what the website is is communicating whatsoever. And how do we get that you know forefront? Damon, you do a great job working with clients on updating content information. There, anything that you want to add from that perspective?
Damon Pistulka 04:31
Yeah, this is really an important point. Is if it’s not a strength, don’t have it on your website, right? You just get it off.
Curt Anderson 04:39
Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 04:39
Well, because we oftentimes, as as companies, confuse our customers by having too much on our website.
Curt Anderson 04:45
Right, right. Oh my goodness! I was looking at a different screen. My heart just warmed. How about this, Damon? Good morning, Diane Byer.
Damon Pistulka 04:54
Hey, Diane.
Curt Anderson 04:55
And she and guess what? Guess where her kids went to college. Penn State, right? So, hey, Diane, we’re talking about Penn State today. We’ve got this. This what she’s probably been there. She knows this place. Just it’s just what a legacy company this is. So, let’s dive in to the middle column here. We’re going to talk about the opportunities. Okay, you and I are huge fans of that that wonderful book came out about 20 years ago. Blue Ocean Strategies. How can you separate yourselves? Yesterday we used the example of like you know if you’re a baseball fan, Savannah Bananas. You know here’s another great example. Have you ever have you ever had liquid death? Have you ever heard of Liquid Death?
Damon Pistulka 05:36
Yes.
Curt Anderson 05:37
So what a absolute brilliant stroke of genius. This guy takes bottled water, and he was at like like you know like a head you know he was at a headbanger concert where like everybody was dehydrated, but nobody wanted to drink the bottled water, so he comes up with a can, and just like if I came to Damon and said, hey, we’re gonna start a business do canned water. What would you think?
Damon Pistulka 05:59
Yeah, not so much.
Curt Anderson 06:00
Not so much, right? So this, so taking the the example like Penn State, like turn creamery the creamery story into a buying advantage. Build content around the flavor discovery, you know. Make the store visit a destination story. So again, like, what’s your story? What is your separators? What are things like right here? You know, package seasonal flavors as limited drops, right? Create a little bit of scarcity. You know, the first-time shop shipper guide. You know, I don’t care, Damon. We, you know, if it’s a I cut metal, I bend steel, circuit board manufacturer, wire harness assembly, whatever it is, if even if you’re in a commodity market, there are separators to pull you into that blue ocean, get you out of that commodity, that blood, that red bloody ocean. What do you? What are your thoughts there?
Damon Pistulka 06:52
Yeah, I think this is one of the real fun pieces of the digital game plan is to you know just brainstorm ideas where you can find those blue ocean opportunities because it usually brings up a few that are that are cool and you may want to explore.
Curt Anderson 07:08
Right, exactly. So diving in here, this you know we’ve had a lot of times with plenty of times where our clients come in and like, oh my goodness, so that opportunity we hadn’t thought about that, or we’ve talked about that and we’ve never put that into play. So again, you know, diving into those core strengths, your opportunities, and then this last column we talk about the so what. Damon, why is having that so what? Like, hey, what’s when I say so what? What comes to your mind? What do you what do you what are you thinking about?
Damon Pistulka 07:40
It’s those are things that your customers probably really don’t care about,
Curt Anderson 07:46
and not only that, a lot of times internally those are those profit killers, those time wasters, those energy suckers. Where your internal teams, oh my goodness, if we if if we if the day would come that we just didn’t do that anymore, you know, or that this particular process, or you know, gosh, maybe even even if it’s a customer, you know, where I’m God demon, I remember years and years ago, I had a wholesale business. I was making, I was trying to really make that difficult transition into e-commerce, and unfortunately, you know, a lot of my customers became irrelevant. I guess. You know, like they weren’t part of the picture anymore, and it’s hard when you have that hard conversation of like, “Hey, gosh, like what we’re doing just isn’t a great fit. Could I refer you to somebody else? Man, you’re you’re actually doing yourself a favor, even if you’re referring them to a competitor, right?
Damon Pistulka 08:39
Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a client now that they dropped several product lines because they weren’t relevant in the market anymore.
Curt Anderson 08:45
It just and you know what? And it’s you know Diane always likes to say like you know things change and you know
Damon Pistulka 08:52
yep
Curt Anderson 08:52
things are constantly changing. People don’t like to change. How do we change with it? And and I’ll tell you, Di, you know focusing on this so what portion? We’re going to take this a little bit deeper, but what this tool does, it goes through your content and it starts identifying where are some of those eh, so what opportunities that maybe we could take a look at and maybe step back from. So we’re gonna we’re gonna hit on that more tomorrow. So we’re gonna come back, Damon. Closing thoughts, parting work. What do you think?
Damon Pistulka 09:23
Well, I’m excited to see. You know, now what do we do after this, right? So we’ve we’ve learned our strengths, our opportunities, and what we really might want to get rid of. What’s next?
Curt Anderson 09:32
Exactly. So hey, couple comments here. We’ve got Ahmed says hello, big hello to you. Happy Tuesday where you’re coming from. Diane says, “I have family that went to Penn State, purchases the ice cream ships across the country. I’m telling you, Damon, it is it is spectacular ice cream. Back to what our dads say: chase profits, start get rid of the so what. So and and I tell you, Diane’s father was a she has all sorts of wonderful stories.” About her dad, he was a brilliant businessman, and he dropped tons of wisdom on her. And I love when Diane shares stories about dad. So we’re going to wrap up on that. Damon, closing thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share. We’re going to we’re going to shut it down for today.
Damon Pistulka 10:15
Yeah, I just you know this is well worth your time to think about your strengths, opportunities, and things you might want to remove, and if you really want to check out the digital game plan, Curt’s going to have the link in the comments of this post.
Curt Anderson 10:29
Absolutely. So, guys, I will have a great, amazing, incredible, wonderful rest of your day, and we will catch you soon. See.