← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
Innovate Smarter: Company Culture That Drives Customer Loyalty with Jim Bramlett
00:55:18
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- [00:00]
A
I ask people tell me what your value proposition is and 9 times out of 10 it's a feature proposition. Well, no, the value is what made a buyer. And so I say, okay, your value should talk about your convenience, cost savings. You're giving me a better user experience. And I tell them this. Buyers are only mildly interested in what you do. They're all about themselves and what they need.
- [00:33]
B
Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. I'm your host, Ryan Hogan. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and challenges of the system in action. Let's jump in, let's get into some.
- [00:48]
C
Good stuff because you've got a really interesting story, you've got a ton of experience and you've been writing books and doing other things to share this knowledge and experience and expertise that you've accumulated. So where, where does this, you know, today you're an amazing Vistage chair. Where does this story begin?
- [01:07]
A
Oh, golly. South central Missouri. Probably lower middle class family. My both my parents worked. My dad was a navy guy, became chief of police just working stiffs and I grew up the right way and I learned, I worked from the time I was 13 and I just knew if you work hard, good things happen. That, that's kind of my upbringing, you know. You know you get formed as a kid, all your beliefs are formed at an early age and thank God my parents were hard workers because I believed in work ethic and I think that paved the way for a lot of what happened with me.
- [01:50]
C
Do you think that that like you, you keyed in on work ethic. There was, there was like an obvious next questionnaire which would have been okay, well tell me that one trait or that one thing was that it was it, was it the, the early understanding of, of work ethic that's really kind of carried through your entire career.
- [02:09]
A
Work work ethic and do the right thing, if that makes sense. My dad, this I it burned in my memory. My dad owned the gas station and it had a drive thru car wash and I only had to kind of watch it, you know, I didn't do anything. And a lady came through washed, she came out, I'm not happy, I want my money back. And I'm a teenager and I'm going, but ma', am, the car wash did what it was supposed to do and I finally went to my dad and my dad said no, if the customer isn't happy, give her our money back. We always take care of the customer. And that made a huge impression on me because I didn't do anything wrong. But that was his the way he believed. And that that today still makes a huge impression. Me, I believe that customers at the center of the universe for any and everything you do.
- [03:05]
C
Yeah, I agree. I was actually. I was just having conversations around this morning. Our. I realize we shouldn't number our core values, but our number one core value just so happens to sit at the top amongst the five. But it's this go givers and we actually just base it on the book because it's very simple for us to say go giver people first. Like we give without any sort of expectation of receiving. We just do the right thing. And it's easy when it's go giver because then we can just hand new teammates a book and say like, this is how we believe. And there's a whole couple hundred pages on it.
- [03:42]
A
You know, I'm vestige in leading a bunch of CEOs. It's so important. Vulture and I reflect back in my career, the various jobs and even the companies I started. There wasn't an intentional vulture. We didn't have a common set of beliefs that translated to acceptable behaviors. It just happen. And to me that's not a culture. But. But that was my experience. So you mentioning that it strikes home. I think you've got to have an intentional culture, which is all about what is it you and we all believe and. And how does that translate into acceptable behaviors? And. And I've become a big believer. But that's very late in my career where that I understood that, you know, being a VISTA chair, I finally started understanding that.
- [04:35]
C
Yeah, I mean it's good. Like you can almost sit on the outside looking in now and looking at other companies and probably start to look at some of the behaviors and successes and fail and all these other things and tie that back. It's like. It's almost like you can see the matrix now that you're sitting in that position. You talked a little bit about intentionality and I love that word. And I'm all about intentional culture. A lot of people say that, like what does it actually mean? Because the idea of being able to identify the core values of the organization or the enterprise, like that's one thing.
- [05:13]
A
And then.
- [05:13]
C
And then we throw them on a wall and we do some other. We do some other rituals and then. And then you've got Enron, which like integrity was her number three and everybody was clear in house. So like what, what does it, what. What does intentionality mean, when you're building a culture.
- [05:28]
A
We had a speaker on this once, and our speaker's heritage came from the early days of Southwest Airlines. And of course, I love Southwest, and so I was really paying attention. And she's the one who really mentioned intentionality and having a culture committee. It's not the CEO, it's not the leaders, as this is Jim's beliefs, and this is Jim's behaviors we're going to tolerate. You put together a committee who determines as representatives of the enterprise. Here's. Here's what we believe, and here are the behaviors we accept, endorse, and here are the behaviors we will not. And part of that culture, in my opinion, culture has to have accountability. So if there is somebody and you always see. Not always, but a lot of times, you'll see this. Well, you know, he's the founder's son, and, you know, that's just the way it is, or, you know, he's been here for 25 years and just don't pay attention. And that defines your culture right there. It's in a culture of exceptions, and then it falls apart. So I like this idea of having a committee. I love it where it translates to behaviors, to policies, and. And then there is accountability. And I don't care who you are, you have to abide. Otherwise that culture falls apart. You know, that's what I'm learning.
- [07:03]
C
And I love the idea of. Of a culture committee, because who best or who better to see, like, the. The core behaviors that are driving the organization forward than, like, people picked throughout the organization that are seeing different perspectives? Because I think all too often when you're sitting at the. At the top or you're sitting on the senior leadership team like you, you may not be getting the full perspective. And so being able to have those different points of view, I think is important. Another thing that comes with that is like the buy in, like when. When I think about ways in which we've been able to get teammates, buy into change, because change is the hardest thing. And so bringing people along, when you're going through those types of moments, the best way to get people on board is to have them be a part of that decision, that conclusion, those actions. That's interesting. Culture committee.
- [07:53]
A
Yep. I agree. I. I'm a big believer when. When it comes to change. I'm also a big believer in tiger teams. You. You set up tiger teams that say, hey, we have this problem, and I need this team, which is representatives maybe of various departments. I need this team to figure out the depth of the problem and how are we going to solve it? And when that team can make the recommendation that then gets implemented, they got buy in, they got ownership and it's more likely to happen. And so again that's kind of a reflection on culture where hey, everybody has a purpose and everybody buys into what we're all about and you're involved and you know, you're in on things, you've.
- [08:41]
C
Got ownership and when you're looking back because it, you were, you worked for, let's start with that. So came out of college, where did you go? And then, and then how did that journey take you into entrepreneurship?
- [08:53]
A
Hey, great question. When I got out of college and I'm gonna, I tell people this all the time because it's, it's a sad, funny story. The only, the only one recruiting, I went to Southwest Missouri State, now known as Missouri State, a state college. The only one recruiting at that time was Walmart. And at the time Walmart had like 200 stores and I was a little bit familiar and I said I didn't get, I didn't go to school for four and a half years and you know, beat my brains out to sit behind the returns desk and take posters back from blue haired ladies. That's no, I'm, I'm, I'm better than that. I deserve more. I didn't even interview with them. Of course now I reflect back, go, holy cow. Had I been hired by Walmart, stuck it out, I'd be on a tropical island somewhere probably. But, but I'm, I was too dumb to do that. So I started in a sales position with Hunt Wesson Foods and in Southwest Missouri selling ketchup, Wesson oil, tomato sauce and really an order taker, you know, I was called the sales rep. I was an order taker. And ultimately a little over a year into that I determined I wasn't, I didn't want to, I didn't want to be an order taker. And I went back to the placement office at Southwest Missouri State and got an opportunity to go into transportation. I went into the LTL business as a management trainee for Roadway Express in Springfield, Missouri. And I stayed in that industry for 42 plus years and I loved it. It, you know, I found it very intriguing. I could look at a, a palletized shipment, go holy cow. Two days ago that was in California and guess what, two days from now it's going to be in Atlanta. And all the things that have to happen just, just was pretty exciting for me. And so that, that's what I did but I'm going to set the clock back just a little bit and I've, I've started in my career I've started eight companies and my first one was in college. I in Springfield, Missouri there is a dish called cashew chicken. And back in the day there was a cashew chicken place almost on every corner as many or more than McDonald's. And cashew chicken is simply just a bite sized piece of fried chicken with an oyster gravy and a few cashews sprinkled on it served over fried rice. But it's a great meal and a very popular. Well I grew up 100 miles up the road and they didn't have cashew chicken there and I thought hey let's, we got the recipe. My roommate and I said let's start a cashew chicken place in my hometown. We'll just hire a manager and we'll just collect checks.
- [12:10]
C
Sounds reasonable.
- [12:11]
A
Very easy. Yeah. Oh my God. That's how naive we both were. So you can imagine what happened. That lasted about six months and it shut down. And so that was my first experience being an entrepreneur. A couple years into when I left roadway I decided to start a trucking company. I now know trucking. I've been in it two years and because I know trucking I'm just going to start a trucking company. I had no clue about, well, is there a need for a trucking company? I didn't care. No, I just know it. And, and unfortunately I think that happens all too often that people follow their passion or their dream. Oh, I know how to cook. I love to cook. I'm going to start a restaurant, you know, kind of like I did and, and of course that didn't succeed because there wasn't a need. And and so finally after go after that shutting down and me going back into the LTL business and getting promoted up to the general office for Yellow Freight in Kansas City. When the dot com era hit and hysteria I started penciling out a business plan and I still recall this, this hit me right in the forehead on the Wall Street Journal back in I think it was spring of 99 a 23 year old MBA student started furniture.com and he was in Silicon Valley and they were bidding, the venture capitalists were bidding to invest. You know we want to be your investment partner. And I sat there and thought what does a 23 year old know about the furniture business? He can't know much. And I've been in the transportation business now for years. So I wrote this business plan and ultimately I got funded. It wasn't like the mba. I, I had to get traction, I had to get a customer. And in the Midwest works a little differently, more conservatively. But, but that launched my first real business. I raised capital, we hired employees. And it was an interesting experience because I had never really been a leader until that time. I was a visionary. Yeah, I was a class president of 12 students, but you can't count that. But now all of a sudden I have a board of directors. Okay. And I learned really quickly that you don't take issues to the board because they're going to go, we don't have the right person in the chair, we're going to have to go find them. So I didn't take issues to them. I just struggled with it. And I joke about that today. Being part of Vistage and running a peer group, I go, man, I wish I would have known about peer groups back then. But I didn't. And then I started companies for other enterprises. So I find that exciting. Creating, innovating. Um, it's just that, that's just what really turns me on. And, and so, but it started back in college when I started that restaurant. And, and I've dabbled all the way through, sometimes for myself, sometimes for others.
- [15:34]
C
What, what was the, what was the value proposition? Because like the, the second company was probably a, a crash course. You know, you had the experience and the expertise, but you hadn't actually run something. And your story resonates, by the way, because just like you opened up Wall street journal and sawfurniture.com I opened up immense health and saw warrior- and I knew how much a, an ad was Immense Health. I was like, oh, there's a real business here. So then I called a friend and I was like, let's start as, let's start an event, obstacle race event. So like your story resonates deeply. How, how did you start to figure out the value proposition and kind of all of those kind of key components?
- [16:14]
A
Back in the day, after the first two enterprises, I started figuring out competitive advantage. You need a competitive advantage. That's where the value proposition came out. I didn't put all this together until five or six years ago after my career. But my value proposition back then, I started a third party logistics company. It was an Internet centric, so I had a transportation management system that shippers could access through the Internet. Again, this is 99. Right. So it wasn't too long after the World Wide Web got started. And then I changed some rules. One of the practices in the LTL industry. When you ship something, you have to know your commodity classification. And it's an archaic arcane size of an old Sears catalog. You have to look up your product, figure it out. It's. It's nonsensical. And I changed that. I said, everybody else in the world, internationally uses density. And everybody can measure the size of their shipment and put it on a scale and calculate their density. It's so much easier than looking up, oh, I'm shipping, you know, laptops. What's that? Commodity classification. I made it a lot easier to do business with and ship. We actually, when we would get a new customer, I'd give them 30 days credit and they didn't even have to fill out a credit app. And it worked. I didn't get burned much, but was doing things differently. Online access, you know, changing the way you could rate shipments to be much easier. So that laid the groundwork for value propositions and understanding. Okay, really, it's all about that, about the customer. But I really didn't put it all together until I started studying Amazon. That was the lightning bolt that said, hey, here's what buyers are looking for, here's the formula, and if you can meet what they're looking for, you're going to minimize or eliminate their excuses for why they don't buy from you. And one of my favorite books is the Everything Store, the kind of the Jeff Bezos story. But he, you know, and I remember because Jeff Bezos was a thing back when I started my.com3pl and he was being roasted. He, he was burning through dollars not getting anywhere, and everybody thought he was a joke. And now look at him. But he, he was steadfast. It's all about the customer. We put him at the center of the universe and we engineer everything backward to that customer and their number one leadership principle. Because I've studied it, leaders will obsess about the customers and you'll do everything you can to please the customers. And I reflect back now of all the meetings I've ever gone to for the companies I've worked for and even the ones I started early in my days. We never had a meeting that started with, how many customers did we gain last month and why? And how many did we lose last month and why? It was always, well, what's our revenue, what's our budget, what's our expense? What are the IT projects? It's always me, me, me, we, we, we. And, and I just believe Amazon looked at it like, if we take care of the customer, we serve their needs, what they're really wanting. Everything else will fall in place. And, and that I believe is true.
- [20:18]
C
And I think you touched on this a little bit, that the leaders obsessing over the customer, like if you were to put that into practice, is that, is that, you know, one of the, and I don't know if this is a rumor or true, I'm sure since you've read the book, even though I lived in Seattle for the last six years, so maybe I should know a little bit more about Amazon. But supposedly in every leadership team meeting they had an empty chair and that supposedly represents the customer. What does that mean? Does that mean that, let's think about this through the lens of EOS and let's say we're sitting in a level 10 meeting and we're processing issues. Is that really about every time you're processing an issue? The question is really how does this impact the customer, make it better for them? Like, you know, what does that mean in theory and practice?
- [21:03]
A
I absolutely do. I absolutely think that. I believe, I believe we buyers, we customers, we consumers are looking for four things. We make our buying decisions on four criteria. And a lot of it is innate. Oh, listen, I'm going to stop and get a Coke or I'm going to buy a lottery ticket or I'm going to go get gasoline, whatever. We don't really think much about it. But the criteria by which we make a decision I believe is number one, convenience. I'm looking to save time, I'm looking to save effort. I want simple and I want easy. I don't want anything more complex, okay? I want a competitive and most importantly transparent pricing. I want to know what I'm spending before I dole out the money. I want a great user experience. I want to be treated as if I'm their only customer. I want to be able to talk to human. I want my questions answered. If it's a service, I want professionalism. If it's a merchandise, I want durability, style, efficiency. If I go into a building, I want it being well lit, clean, organized, that those are all crazy. And fourth is trust. Now when you can deliver on all four of those, we buyers don't have many excuses, say, well, why wouldn't I? Most companies don't have a conscious trade off. And you know, I use Walmart in an example. Walmart's trade off is user experience. They're fairly convenient and they're their price. Right? That's the price point. Rollback America everyday low prices. But Gee, I hope you like checking yourself out. And stores are laid out a little bit differently. I don't know if they're going to have the product I'm looking for. They're not always as clean and sparkly and well lit as say a Target is. So I have friends that go, I don't go to, I'm not shopping at Walmart. I wouldn't go in there. Okay. So I have to. An excuse. The opposite end of that is Nordstrom Personal Shopper. The merchandise is outstanding. Clean, well lit, you're treated extremely well. But you're going to pay a price for that. Jeffy Loop. You want convenience? Get your oil changed. 15 to 20 minutes without an appointment. But it's going to cost you twice what you get that done at Walmart. Aldi's. Wow. You want cheap groceries, all right, bring a porter, bring your own bags. And you're not going to talk to a butcher, you're not going to talk to a baker. So they're trading off the experience for so, so most companies have this trade off, which means now they've got to appeal to a certain segment of the buyer where I believe, Amazon, I believe they hit all four of the criteria. Netflix hits on all four and Uber, you know, that's how they put the cab industry pretty much out of business because they're hitting on all four. But it's really hard to do. So that's the secret to, I think dominating your space is figuring out or hitting what we buyers are looking for. Long winded answer.
- [24:26]
C
Just that. Well, I, I like it because now we're going to go deep on this because I, I have so many follow on questions. Just so I've got the three correct or, excuse me, four. I only have three. I, I had convenience, great user experience and trust. Which one am I missing?
- [24:40]
A
Price. I, I don't necessarily look for lowest price, but I do want competitive price and I want transparency. This is why we hate the airline. So my. Oh, I, I forgot to tell you about that fee or this fee. We don't like dealing with attorneys. Oh yeah, I'm 4.95 an hour. What? How many hours? I'll let you know. We don't hire people to paint our house and they say, yeah, I'm going to charge you $100 an hour. Okay, well, how many hours? I'll let you know. We wouldn't hire that painter. So this transparency on pricing is, is as important or more than the actual price itself. Because I want to know what I'm spending before I Write the check or give them my credit card. Back in the day when cell phones came out, there was a minute and there was a data download and I could figure out how many minutes I talked. But I don't know how much data I'm downloading. Even back in the landline, I'm dating myself. In the landline era, you always call grandma on Sunday nights because you knew the long distance charges were less, you didn't know how much, but your utility bills, your telephone bills were always a surprise. Well, now cell phone said, no, no, we're going to do flat rate unlimited texting and voice calls. Rental cars are just so much per day. Unlimited miles, they've simplified that and bundled because that's what we consumers like.
- [26:11]
C
All right, quick break, friends.
- [26:12]
B
Do you find it impossible to hire and retain top sales talent or worse, are you paying insane recruiter fees who are all using outdated hiring processes? Yeah, I was too at Hunt a Killer, we were spending hundreds of thousands on recruiter agency fees. And after I sold that company in 2025, I started Talent Harbor. And the whole vision here was to make sales recruiting accessible to small and medium sized businesses. Because the organizations that can hire and retain world class people are the ones that ultimately win. Most organizations rely on things like ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn and they get hundreds if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting. As a service, we do not charge commissions, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term engagements and we become an extension of your team as expert sales recruiters. If you're tired of the same old recruiters and want to actually grow your sales team, check us out@talent Harbor.com. that's Talent Harbor. T A L E N T H A R R B O R dot com. Let's get your next sales superstar hired.
- [27:34]
C
Everything you're saying like resonates so deeply. It's funny when you, when you just talked about the paying for minutes. I don't know why, but I was literally just having that thought two nights ago because there's people that like post things on social media and they're like, you know you're old when and I'll have like a cassette tape. And it was like if you used to record mixtapes. And I was, I was thinking of a meme and I was like a great meme. Would be a phone bill saying, like, you use 450 minutes on your 350 minute plan. Here's an extra hundred bucks. Like we don't even think about that anymore. And now it sounds crazy.
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A
It does sound. Absolutely does. You remember taking the old cab and on the side of the cab it would say something like $3 for your first quarter mile and then a $95 for every mile thereafter. And, and you dreaded watching the, the machine just keep ticking and ticking. Well, now, before I get in an Uber, I know what I'm spending. It's not a surprise. And I love that.
- [28:32]
C
I 100% agree. And as you were bringing up like all of those, and this might be just a shameless plug for, for us, but the, the thing here is like another category of that is recruiters. And like when you think about, you think about like lawyers, recruiters, who else would fall? Probably financial advisors because there's so much like hidden fees and you don't really know, there's no transparency. And what you just said makes so much sense. Like, we thought about this through flat rates. Like right now it's 30%. That model has been around since the 1950s. And like, what is 30%? What if I hire? Like, what if when they start coming through the door, like they start negotiating and does that include stock options and how do I value the stock? It's ridiculous. It just makes me feel good that when you talk about these things, like companies trying to do good and hit all of those wickets, it sounds like both in your experience and what you've researched, that's what leads to success. You talked about this idea of trade offs and you touched on this. So this is going to be a tricky rabbit hole to go down. As you were talking about these four things, it reminded me of those, like three telltale ideas, and that is costs and speed and quality. And it's like, choose two. You can never have all three. And you were talking about your four things and you were talking about this idea of trade offs. But then very interestingly, as I was going to get into, like, where do we take trade offs? You said there are a few companies that have mastered all four. How do you think they did that? Do, did they do that because the industry that they're actually playing in, there's the ability to have all four. Did they do it through customer obsession? Like, how do you get all four without any trade offs?
- [30:22]
A
Oh, I think it's extremely difficult. But there are a lot of people out there who, who logic well If I'm going to save you a bunch of time, you're going to have to pay for that, okay? If I'm going to give you this great experience, you're going to have to pay for that. Or on the other hand, if I'm going to save you a lot of money, the experience, you know, I'm not going to have the same staff. Our building's not going to be as clean and pretty. They have that logic and rationale as an excuse. And it's absolutely hard. I firmly believe, look, there's very few inventions in this world. There's tons of innovation. And, and my favorite story is, is Netflix? Okay, so we had a Blockbuster on every, you know, and, and we all have been there. If you were a Blockbuster customer, the Friday or Saturday night disappointment. Let's, hey, honey, you want to go, let's go get a movie. And this was back in the CD days, even before, you know, when you had the VHS tapes and you got the penalty for not rewinding or coming in a day late, right? So you, so you go down the new release aisle and it's barren. Well, honey, would you like to watch Jaws again? Because you're only there so you're going to rent something. And, and so along comes Blockbuster, then says, well, wait a minute, we're going to innovate and we're now going to be able to send you your CD to your house. You don't have to come down. And oh, by the way, we're going to change the pricing model versus per movie or show. It's a subscription model for, I don't know, 20 bucks a month or 15 bucks a month. Get all you like. And we have unlimited supply of each title you want. And oh, by the way, to return it, we giving you an envelope, just steal it, put it in your mailbox. So, so I'm saving you time and I'm saving you effort and I'm probably saving you money if you like to watch movies because of the subscription model. But then I call it Netflix 2.0. When streaming came out, they said, I've got even a better idea. You can now instantaneously, you don't have to pre plan for your Friday night and order on Thursday. We're going to stream it. We're going to save you time and effort by streaming. You can even watch more movies. And then what they did, in my opinion, is to keep Amazon at bay. They said, we're going to create our own content. Now that's a user experience. Nobody else can duplicate it's. Our content, we own it. And that's why they are still the number one streaming service in the world. But, but they blockbuster out of business because they made it more convenient, made it easier. And I maintain every company constantly has to be looking at those four. How do we make it more convenient? How can we cut cost out, how can we improve the user experience? Or how can we be more trustworthy? And you constantly have to be innovating because that's how startups come about. That's how you did. You said, wait a minute, these people are using this old archaic pricing model for recruiting. I'm going to innovate, I'm going to charge them differently and it makes more sense. And they go, yeah. So constant innovation is real key, I think, for any company because if not, you're going to have a startup coming into your neighborhood and saying, here's what we're doing now. It's going to save them time, effort, be simpler, easier, cost less, be more transparent, have a better user experience or be more trustworthy. That's what innovation is all about.
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C
What the. I, I love that. And, and the invention versus innovation. Like, not many people are creating. I mean, there's people inventing and creating new things. But like a lot of these big companies, like Netflix didn't invent the Internet. They didn't invent creating their own content. They did not probably invent streaming. Like, I'm sure that like things were. Bits were already moving. They just put all of these pieces together because they could see a better future. What? Now I'm just getting selfish with my questions because I just want to know how often do you recommend companies reevaluate this? Because you talk about a continuous loop now, there's only so many times a year small, medium, large companies get an entire group together to really think through and envision the future. How often do you recommend that companies are going through this kind of continuous loop process and evaluating all four?
- [35:09]
A
Not nearly enough, I think. I think they all live in a room of mirrors. And it's all, here's what we should do. And we, we, we. And they don't pay attention to the customer. Now, I have a radical thought. I believe every company should have an R and D function, research and development function, not department, but somebody should be in charge of R D. And, well, what should they be researching and what should they be developing? Okay, I'm going to go back to your opening statement. I'm going to use a football analogy. Even though it looked like it, Andy Reid doesn't Show up on Sunday and say, oh, by the way, who. Who are we playing? Oh, it's the Eagles. I wonder what they like to do. Do they like to run the ball? Do they like to pass the ball? You know, what about defense? How do they put that? That doesn't happen. They study their opponent, even though it didn't look like it. Oh, but they study. And, and so I believe research and development. If I'm a company, I'm going to research my competitors. I want to know, how convenient are they, okay, how much time does it take to buy from them? What does their product save me time? Does it save me effort? How easy? How simple? How are they priced? Is it transparent? What's their user experience? Hey, we should buy from our competitor and see what that user experience is like. Okay, and then how trustworthy are they offering warranties? Do they get free returns? Do they have guarantees? Do they have testimonials? And, and based off what your competitors are doing, that's where you need to innovate. Okay, so, so that's what I profess. If you got to study your competition. And I don't think most companies do that near enough, and all of a sudden they get surprised. And I was just talking the other day, I find this unbelievably fascinating. But in AI Deep Seek was released by the Chinese and they claim. And nobody has found any evidence otherwise, they, they created this reasoning model, not just a large language model, but a reasonable $6 million. Okay, so, so I, I say, okay, look, here's somebody who figured out how to produce something at a much lower cost, now is going to be able to price it at a much lower. And OpenAI and, and, and Google, they're all sitting there going, how did this happen? Well, same thing happens in any company. You can have somebody show up and say, I'm going to, I'm going to provide the same service you have for half the price or half the cost. You've got to constantly be. So that falls under research and then development lead the charge saying, I found our competitors are doing this, this and this. We need to figure that out. We got to constantly be innovating to be better and better to serve that buyer or consumer.
- [38:15]
C
What about the, the old Ford quote where he was like, if I asked, if I asked customers what they wanted, they, you know, they, they tell me a faster horse, like, how do you. And then there's a, there's another philosophy on the street where, like, if you look at your competitors too hard, then you're not looking at your customers. And now you're just doing what your competitors are doing. You're not focusing on the customers. How, how does one balance kind of all of those different things?
- [38:40]
A
I think, I think if you do focus on the customer, they're going to tell you, you know, boy, I wish, I wish when I bought from you, I had a little better user experience. I wish, you know, I wish I could get free returns or. I think the customers will absolutely tell you what they want, but I don't think we talk to them enough. The hardest thing, in my opinion, to do is I think, yeah, you can go talk to your customers, but how do you go talk to the people who didn't buy from you and why they didn't buy from you? And if you can figure that out, that's what you're really going to learn. You want to know, why didn't they use me? And in a, in certain organizations with a sales force, I believe that intel is more valuable than them selling a whole bunch of stuff. I want to know, you lost that sale. I want to know exactly why we lost that sale and don't make it up. I want to hear from that buyer. Oh, I didn't. Because of this, this, and this. Okay, we need to work on that. So I do believe that it needs to come from the, from the customers. And I love your analogy on Ford, but let's, let's talk about electric vehicles. Okay. I think it's an innovation, right? We had cars. This is just an innovation going. We're going to have a lot fewer moving parts. Your maintenance is going to cost you less. It's going to be. But, but the race now is all about range and charging times. And I haven't, I haven't gone there yet because I want, I want them to get that innovation on the battery where I can go 400 miles and I can get charged in five or 10 minutes, like I fill up my car and, and so that's the innovation we're waiting for to, to get to that tipping point. Because it's more convenient, less effort, and, and saves me time if I can go 4 or 500 miles on a, on a charge. So that if you, if you think about, and think about the other thing I like to tell people is if you really boil down technology, pretty much any application is doing something to make something easier, simpler, faster routing software, you name it. It's all about, you know, cost, convenience, user experience, or trust.
- [41:13]
C
You know, when you think about the R and D aspect, one of, one of the kind of the focuses that you, you're looking at here is really the focus on, on the competition. We talked a little bit about the focus on the customer. Like where, where do you believe are there? Are there three, five, ten different areas that like let's say someone listens to this podcast and they're like Jim said, go hire an R D person. I just brought an R D person on the team. Great, let's roll. Where should is it just competitors? Make me a list, tell me what they're doing. Here are some customers. Here's what they're saying. Like what are all those different areas for R D?
- [41:49]
A
Yeah, I think, and again, I think it's a function. And the natural place that I, that I would put that function is marketing. Okay. I want you to do marketing research is right r marketing research. And I do want you to study our competitors, but I do want you talking to our customers and figure out, figure out creative ways to talk to those prospects who did not buy and, and why. And let's figure that out. Let's meet about that. And again, I think you'll learn when you lose a customer. Why did we. Well, they went to our competitor. But why? Oh, it was a lower cost or it was a better user experience or. Well, let's dig into that. So I, I believe those are the sources because I think the, the, the worst thing that could happen to you is all of a sudden a startup shows up and they eat your lunch and you didn't see it coming.
- [42:53]
C
Is there. Yeah, it's true. Is there one of these that you. Do you look at these as four equals or do you see like one of these more important than the other?
- [43:06]
A
Great question. You know, everybody, you know when people lose a sale, oh, yes, it was our price, was our high and, and buyers will. Well, I didn't buy because of the price. And so all too often I think probably 50 or maybe more percent of the time that's what's going to get blamed. But here's what I like to tell people. I believe time is our most precious commodity. Hey, go look in your bank account. Talk to your financial planner. They'll tell you how much money you have, how much you need for retirement, blah, blah, BL. We don't know how much time we have. Nobody can tell you. Yep, Ryan, you're going to live another 15 years, 50 years or whatever. So I believe time is our most precious commodity. I make my buying decisions based on time because I think it's so valuable. Somebody saves me time. I'm going to make that purchase. But I think all too often people just automatically jump to, to price and I don't think that's true. I think convenience is pretty much equally important. And then user experience probably third and trustworthiness. Fourth. Trustworthiness really comes to play if you've never bought from that supplier or vendor before. How do I trust as a buyer? When we're betting to pull the trigger, we have a certain expectation in our head of what we're going to get. Sometimes that expectation is driven by the, by the brand promise but other times it's just what I expect. If I'm getting ready to drive through McDonald's, I'm not expecting a gourmet meal but I do want my burger and fries to be hot and I especially want my fries in the, in the combo meal. I don't want to drive off and go darn it, they don't give my friend. That's our expectation. And, and so when we have, I want to trust that they're delivering that. And once they do then I'm going to come back because I, I can, I can trust them. But that initial buy, what do you do? And I tell this on startups, if I'm a startup, you better have a solid guarantee, a warranty returns because, and then you got to leverage that kind of testimonials and then for, for the long running companies tell them how long you've been in business, have you won any awards, that's important. And, and that builds trust because guess what? I'm not going to believe your advertising. I'm going to believe my buddy Ryan. He told me he bought from, then had a great experience. Okay Ryan, I believe you. And, and I think that's one of the powers of Amazon. You know I go to Amazon and look at the, the, the reviews even if I'm not buying. So look at that reviews because I believe them.
- [46:05]
C
Yeah, it's, it's weird how much we're trained towards that. It's what's interesting. And now I'm thinking in the consumer space. So I, I had a company called Hunt a Killer. We sold it about a year ago, year and a year and a couple weeks ago. And we focused so hard in those early days on reviews and like it, it became an actual marketing strategy that had to be managed. So like we went, it was called trustpilot but we used trustpilot and like that's where we decided to land it had great SEO because what we realized is that when someone heard Hunt a Killer the first thing that they Would Google after going to the website is hunt a killer space reviews. And we needed to make sure that we owned that narrative and made sure that the message was being carried. So anyhow, yeah, I 100 agree. Like reviews and building that, that credibility and trust up front is important.
- [47:05]
A
Oh, it's, it's, it's everything. You know, you, you couldn't afford that 8 million dollar Super bowl ad and you know, who believes that anyway? It's, it's just kind of, you know, branding dollars versus real marketing dollars is what you did building those testimonials.
- [47:23]
C
And these are the things you talk about in your book, correct?
- [47:27]
A
Yes, absolutely. The first book I did was called the Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies about five years ago. And in that book I talked about, well, here's how Amazon zoomed right past Walmart. Here's how Uber literally put the cab business almost extinct and how Netflix did do that to Blockbuster. They followed that, that formula. Now in this book, I said, well, here's what any company should be doing. Pay attention. This is the four things we buyers want. And the more of those you can fulfill, the fewer excuses I have to buy from you. But what I also did was add. I call it a cultural piece. But the R and D product diversification. And I talk about the importance of messaging. And, and so many people get messaging wrong. They, we, I, I ask people tell me what your value proposition is and, and nine times out of ten it's a feature proposition. Well, no, value is what me, the buyer. And so I, I say, okay, your value should talk about your convenience, your, your cost savings. You're going to give me a better user experience. And, and I tell them this. Buyers are only mildly interested in what you do. They're all about themselves and what they need. And so, so I, I throw a lot of that in there. One of my, one of my chapters in this book is, it's, it's a chapter on product diversification. But I call it the Story of Cheese. And I say this. If you want the cheapest cheese you can buy, go into any store and probably look at the private label. But buy a block of cheese and that's going to cost you less per ounce than any other cheese. And with that cheese, you can slice it into sandwich slices, you can cube it into snacks, you can shred it for your tacos and, and your salad, or you can buy it that way because it's going to cost you a lot of time and effort to take that block and change its form when you can buy it pre made and it's going to cost you just a little bit more for that convenience. But the point is, if all you did was sell blocks of cheese, you're going to have a lot less sales. Give the customer choices because we all have our own personal value systems. And for Those who are 100% driven by price, we're going to look at that cost per ounce and go, I'm buying the block and I'll go ahead and do the rest of that stuff myself. And, and, and I say like when, when we went through Covid, there was a neighborhood restaurant who went into the meal kit business because nobody was coming to their restaurant, but they had buying power for ingredients. So they would put meal kits together and I just had to buy that and throw it in the oven just like I get on my doorstep. And it is an ingenious stay in the business. So knowing that we all have our own personal value system, mine again was time, you know, convenience. I have a, I have a sister in law who lives in a town with three grocery stores. Every week she goes to all three. She cuts coupons, takes her hours and she saves maybe 20 bucks. I'm not doing that right. My time is more value. My trade off is no, my, my time's more valuable. So we all have these personal value system system. So as much as you can diversify your offering to appeal to, to all.
- [51:16]
C
Of us, I feel like we could have. I knew this by the way, like you and I had that first conversation and you talked about these things and I was like, this is going to be an incredible conversation. And generally, especially with this podcast, I'm very selfish with it. Which means like this is, this is about my knowledge increase. And it's just, it's been fascinating to hear you talk about these four things because I don't know, like, not a lot of people look at it through that lens. Like we talked about it earlier, like cost, price and time and like pick two. You can't have all three. Well, essentially what you've done is you've added another one to there and you said like, actually you can. And here are like four examples off the top of my head that have done all four. It's possible. Challenge yourself, think about this and continue this iterative loop.
- [52:04]
A
It's not easy. It is not easier. Everybody would do it. And, and I've, I had a, I had a Vistage member once who was in a. He owned a sheet metal company and he was unionized and he was competing with non union and he goes, jim, I Believe what you're saying, but there is no way I can compete on price just because of my cost infrastructure compared to my competitors. And I said, I get it. Everybody can't compete with Walmart's buying power. Okay, so do the very best you can there. But then leverage the heck. Leverage the heck out of the other three and beat them on convenience, beat them on user experience and beat them on trustworthiness. Guarantee things that they don't guarantee. Right. And give them a much better user experience. Communicate more proactively. There are little bitty things that will make that experience better. And, and yeah, you can't compete on all four in some instances. So leverage the heck out of what you can.
- [53:12]
C
Love it. All right, Jim, this was an incredible conversation. Is there anything that that, is there anything that, that you want to put out and, and talk about? I, I realize you're a Vistage chair. Are there other things that you do where you're looking for clients? What's, what do you have?
- [53:30]
A
Oh, I, you know, Ryan, I'm trying to, I'm trying to spread this word more. So thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I love to do speaking to groups. I tell them this. I'm a big. If you remember the Marcus Lemonis, the show, the prophet, he always would go in and look at companies and he was looking at people, process and product. And I agree with that formula. However, I believe product is the most important. It's not an equal triangle. If, if, if you don't have the product right, being convenient, being, you know, cost competitive and transparent. Given a good user experience and trust. If you don't have the right product, it doesn't matter what kind of great team and great leader you are. It doesn't matter about your process. The start with the product. If you've got the right product, product by hitting the four criteria we all we buyers want, then you've got a great chance to grow organically and scale your company. So that's what I preach a lot.
- [54:36]
C
I love it. I don't think I've had, don't tell any of the other guests. I don't think I've had this, this amount of notes coming out of a call. So I appreciate it. I appreciate your time. Thank you for taking on a wet Thursday. I'm sure it's chilly where, where you're at and especially, you know, in the week of the loss of the Kansas City Chiefs. I'm sure it's not, not the happiest time. So I appreciate you taking, taking the opportunity to come on.
- [55:05]
A
Thanks for having me. And it never rains in Southern California. That's what I've always heard. Ryan.
- [55:09]
C
Thanks so much, Jim. Appreciate you coming on.