Oscar Chavez is a sales, branding and marketing expert and founder of The Boardroom, a company that has done over $17 Billion in Mergers & Acquisitions and $1.2 Billion in sales. Oscar’s mission is to help bring truth to the anxieties people face when attempting to define their "one true purpose in life.” Through his BAHO method, people worldwide are attaining higher levels of success, wealth and happiness in their daily lives.
Read the full interview with Oscar below!
As a World-Class Keynote Speaker, a 1 Amazon Best Selling Author, and a High-Performance Expert, what is the secret behind the entrepreneurial successes that you have achieved so far?
I get asked this question a lot, and I’ve spent a lot of time really thinking about what my answer is to this, but it boils down to two things.
The first is, I had to make it my mission every day to get uncomfortable. Success isn’t just about defining what you’re really good at and putting a plan in motion to keep doing that one thing. It’s about doubling down on your weaknesses.
I had to take a good hard look at myself and ask — “what am I horrible at, and what do I hate doing?”. Only once I started to focus on those weaker parts of myself - my identity, my skills, my experience - that's when I really started to see my results sky-rocket.
The second is people always asked me, "What is it you do? What are you passionate about? What’s your purpose in life?" and I always found it difficult to respond with THE ONE THING. I know from speaking to many young people today that they’re in this constant battle of feeling the pressure to achieve something but not quite knowing which path to take.
Because of that tension, they feel inside their bodies, it creates indecision and inaction. I find that this is the case for many adults as well. They’ve spent their whole lives pursuing a predefined path of “success,” but who they were when they were 16 and in school is different from who they are now at 42, with a partner they realize they’re no longer in love with, a job they hate and a crippling mortgage living in a home they don’t enjoy.
So my message to these people is, it’s okay — it’s okay for the things you want in life to change. You must be true to yourself because going down the same path that is making you miserable will not bring you any closer to the levels of success and happiness that you now seek to find.
Right now, you’re building strategic partnerships with Australia's largest banks, and you’re a mentor to 650 promising start-ups. Can you share more about these projects?
The more and more I do, and the broader across countries and opportunities I venture into, I realize that one thing is apparent. Success is determined by the way we see the world. Let me give you an example. Most people see the world through their own eyes. They look at their experiences, their product, their service, and what they know about the world and/or industry.
But I see the world completely differently, I see the world through my customers' eyes. I work hard to understand exactly what they need and what they want. Oftentimes in very large strategic negotiations with broad stakeholders, I find that everyone wants different things, and unfortunately, we cannot satisfy everyone.
If Elon Musk actioned every piece of advice he was given, we wouldn't have reusable rockets.
In large deals or in growing your business, it's important to fall intimately in love and obsessive with your customers. You need to understand their world and you need to be able to provide services that solve a real problem for the customer. Usually, when I ask companies what problem they solve, they don't even know, or they mishmash problems together and try to go too broad. In order to find success quickly, you need to find one problem, and you need to solve it. You need to step into your customers' shoes and solve a real problem for them.
A lot of people call you "The Master of Influence” and say that you’re a true relationship builder with service in focus. Are these things important keys to become successful, and what are your three best tips on how to become a person with these qualities and skills?
As someone who has built his success upon a sales career, absolutely. Since the beginning of time and until the end of time, people do business with people they know, like, and trust.
If I trust you to get me the results I'm looking for and I like you, then we'll do business for a long time. If I like you, but can't trust you, then pretty soon I'll stop liking you.
Most people have an inability to step into their clients' shoes because they're so riddled with fear, inner conflicts, insecurities, and trying to think about what to say next so that people won't find out that you're an imposter. That's where imposter syndrome comes from, the feelings of inadequacy. If we can truly separate ourselves from that inner self-talk and fear, then we can truly be in a position to listen to the other person and find out more about their world.
People in sales are tarnished with the image of a sleazy used car salesman who uses his charm and wit to sell a lemon (essentially a defective car). But that’s not what a Master of Influence is about. It’s not about being deceptive or manipulative to gain business. It's about identifying how you can best offer value to someone.
My three tips on how to be a Master of Influence are:
Shut up. Most people in sales think you need to do all the talking to influence people, but you don’t. You need to listen to the needs and wants of the other person, their current challenges and frustrations, and get into their world to understand the pains they are experiencing. People will tell you what they want and how much they’re willing to invest in getting exactly what they want, but you have to be able to flesh that out, which brings me to Number 2.
Nobody cares. The truth is, nobody cares about you, your offer, your company - none of that matters. The only thing people care about is themselves. So when you're meeting with a prospect, start from a place of empathy and imagine your life in their shoes. What are their challenges and concerns? That's the starting place for a conversation. I don't try to figure out whether the product or service I offer is suitable. I focus on making myself relevant to the other person.
Outcomes and Results. CEOs don't buy features and benefits, they buy results. So you have to know the results you provide. You might have rehearsed an elevator pitch to quickly sell the idea of what you're doing at your company. But when it comes to you as an individual and your personal goals and achievements, you might not have a well-thought-out response up your sleeve. People are interested in people who are doing interesting things, so find a way to capture those things in conversation. If you find that you're coming up short, it means that you're not investing enough in your growth, so start addressing that gap now. Even though I was on The Voice Australia back in 2013, it still comes up in conversation today. People find it interesting that I've been on TV.
What would you say are the most common things people reach out to you and ask for help with?
“I need help growing and scaling my business.”
The thing about business is it's dynamic. What got a business owner to where they are today (for example, with a $7M business and 17 staff employed) doesn’t mean it’s what’s going to take them to the next level. Businesses that experience a high growth phase will find that growth will start to flatten, and unless they diversify what they’re doing — their marketing strategies, their products, or services they provide, their business is going to fail because they’re no longer going to be relevant to the market.
At the same time, there are some business owners that think that investing more resources into one area will save their company when in fact, it’s the thing that’s going to get them bankrupt real quick. I was working with someone who was going to invest in a whole new warehouse just to produce their healthy snack food line rather than continuing to outsource it to a third party who could produce a whole range of products for different companies. I told her that she didn’t need a whole warehouse purely for her business. She hadn’t developed a diverse enough product line to warrant her own operations. It was purely an ego thing that was fuelling her desire for her own warehouse. It wasn't a strategic financial decision.
We know your clients have said some great things about you. What are the results they have been getting from working with you?
One of the companies I worked with scaled from $2 Billion to $3 Billion. The Boardroom (one of my companies) has done $17 Billion in mergers and acquisitions and capital raising, so in a nutshell, we scale companies.
But on a much deeper level, I love the 8-figure CEOs I work with.
I helped one Advisor go from $20K a year to charging $120K per year - just by changing his offer. He actually called me recently and said he had 7 booked phone calls within 3 weeks of doing my course. So we helped increase his prices by $100K and we have helped him implement a done for you lead generation system that was bringing in booked appointments from LinkedIn.
The truth is, the results all vary so much because no two people are the same. I was group coaching the other day, and I was able to help one of the new mentees in just 5 mins by helping him identify that the one thing he was doing for his clients, he wasn't applying to his own business. This was the reason he wasn't getting any sales conversions. People often forget the basics when it comes to growing their business, so I like to think of myself as the one who helps business owners get laser-focused.
Also, the "problem" that people come to me with isn't often the real problem. One of the CEOs I work with said that she wanted to grow her company footprint across APAC, but she was struggling to find good salespeople. I asked her what criteria she measured this against, and she said she had no deals in the pipe.
She hired two salespeople and replaced both after three months and another two months in, she was ready to fire the two new salespeople she brought in to replace the others. I asked her what she was paying them and she said it was commission only. I told her that's where her problem was. She wasn't valuing the effort it takes to grow a new territory and she wasn't compensating her people accordingly.
To scale a business, you need to financially invest in its growth, and that means investing in the people you bring on to do that special job.
So, what’s the next big goal or project for Oscar Chavez? What do you have in front of you?
I've just launched my 8 Figure CEO Learning Management System (LMS) that teaches busy CEOs how they can close bigger, better deals from LinkedIn on Autopilot with zero ad spend. The best part is in the LMS, I give people the step-by-step process of how to automate their sales.
I'm excited when I can get results for my clients, but I can only work with a handful of people one-on-one, so this LMS is massive for me because I can reach more people and help them scale with my proven systems and blueprints.
Aside from that, to be honest, all I really care about is showing up every day as good as I can be and striving to get 1% better every single day of my life. Some days I grow, some days I don't. But it's not about how many times you get hit and knocked down. It's about how many times you get back up. So my message to everyone is to get back up, again and again. Get back up even if it kills you. Just get back up!
