Bookworm Transcripts

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So what's going on in Mike's world?

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Just getting ready for the big email launch, which actually

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by the time if you do include this in the episode by the time this would, this

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would air, then I believe it will have been released.

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So nice.

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It's getting real.

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Yeah.

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Gotta love that.

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I hate the time between the moment that you finish a product and typically, and

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it sounds like you guys do this the same way.

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Typically, at least for me, I finish something and then it's like a couple

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weeks later that you'll actually release it.

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It's like I hate that two week period.

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Absolutely hate it.

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Because I start wondering, it's like, okay, did I get everything included?

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Did I get it all buttoned up the right way?

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What if it doesn't go out the way I want it to?

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I hate it.

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There's been stuff already since I finished it that things have changed and I've had

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to go back and fix because the app is no longer called the same thing or they

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updated their icon.

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Right.

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So it is what it is.

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I just want nothing else to change until we actually can launch it.

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Yeah.

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I am super excited about this launch.

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I've mentioned a little bit about the process, I think, in previous podcast

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episodes where we've been doing interviews and working closely with people to solve

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their specific pain points regarding email.

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Right.

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And we've gotten some amazing testimonials back from people who are like, oh my gosh,

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this has changed my life.

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It's like, we just helped you fix what you said was broken.

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We're glad we could help, but you did the work.

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Right.

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You did everything.

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Yeah.

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It feels really good to be able to help people in that way though.

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I was just saying, I used to have like 1,700 messages and I was spending literally

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my entire day dealing with email.

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Now everybody in my organization got all stressed out the other day when we had

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a day long meeting, but I was on top of everything and everybody was like, how

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do you do that?

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Yeah.

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She's like, well, I went through this course.

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Oh dude.

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Changed my life.

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And I'm like, well, awesome.

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That's always a good feeling.

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I get that a number of times with the working with the Omni Focus course and it's

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helpful to see.

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Obviously you get the haters that come out of that, but it's always exciting to see

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when people get really interested and it helps in a big way.

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It's like, yes, that's why I do this.

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This is one of the things I was trying to figure out.

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Why am I doing my online business?

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That right there.

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That's it.

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You got it.

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So as long as it's able to help people make a big change in some form in their life,

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awesome.

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That's exactly why I continue doing these things.

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You operate on the same pattern there.

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It's like, okay, I made this thing and I let people go see it.

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And now they're really excited about it and it made a big impact.

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Yes.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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Now I want to do more.

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Exactly.

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I mean, it's going to be probably a, the financial success is almost secondary at that point

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because it just feels so good to be able to help people solve their problems.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Especially regarding email.

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So transition, we got an email.

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Yes.

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Do you want to talk about this one?

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This email was awesome.

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Yeah.

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And I don't, I don't get a lot like most emails I get on the bookworm contact form.

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So just so everybody knows those go to me.

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I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's the way it is.

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Now that we're talking about email, but this one in particular stood out and it's from

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Amber and it's one that I don't just in my general online business and working world,

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I don't get emails of this length and of this detail very often.

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But when I do, they're always very interesting and I want to, I want to share them with the

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world, but Amber hasn't given me any permissions whatsoever on this.

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So if you're listening to this, Amber, thank you for sending this.

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I haven't replied to you yet.

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I'm sorry.

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We're going to talk about it now.

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So what this email is, is a lady by the name of Amber.

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She is a stay at home mom homeschooling with five kids and her husband introduced her to

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this podcast and they have been listening, their loyal listeners.

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And it sounds like they have created their own little book club within their family.

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And it's, it's kind of exciting to see how something that little old us put together,

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is to, you know, read books and talk about it is starting to inspire in this case a stay

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at home mom with her kids to begin reading books more often.

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So I think that's pretty exciting.

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I like that.

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Yeah, that's awesome.

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You go Amber.

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And that's exactly why we started this podcast.

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At least my, my motivation for starting it was that we were going to go through this.

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We were going to record these conversations, put them up on the internet and maybe other

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people could benefit from them.

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But at the very least, I was going to benefit from them.

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Yes.

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Because I'm synthesizing the information and I'm applying it to, to my life.

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So you know, we're able to help people do that.

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That's, that's awesome.

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But yeah, I really like, what I really like about that email is that Amber took the idea

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and she modified it slightly and made it fit for her, which is really the ideal way to

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approach anything.

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And that's the way that we approach every single one of these books, I think is like,

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we're going to take a look at this information.

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We're going to take a look, some of them have prescriptive formulas where you do this and

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you get this.

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But for the most part, it's like, what is the thing in here that I can really latch

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on to?

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I'm not going to try and change my entire life every single time I read one of these

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books, but I'm going to grab a few things that I can implement, small changes, which

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will produce compound results in the long run.

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And I really love that, because the thing that they've picked up on here is that you

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and I alternate picking books.

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So I love this.

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I mean, her husband picked their first book.

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It sounds like they picked essentialism as the first.

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And then they're alternating.

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Good choice.

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Good choice.

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I know.

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They're alternating who is picking which book comes next.

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So they're alternating and trading turns within the family as to who's is coming next.

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So I like it.

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I'm a big fan.

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I mentioned this to my wife and she's like, I don't see how people have the energy or

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the strength to do this as a family.

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I don't think I could do that.

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I was like, well, I get it.

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But at the same time, it sounded like they were planning on this taking multiple months

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per book if I read this correctly.

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So it doesn't have to be every two weeks like what we do.

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That's we're a bit crazy in that.

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That's why it's called Bookworm.

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It's, you know, we go through a lot of books.

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We are crazy.

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Arse is official.

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Yours is not.

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So I was a big fan.

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That's why I wanted to share it.

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It's one of those things that, like we were talking about earlier, you hear about these

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and it's the part that gets us pretty excited about what we're doing and has us continue

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keep doing it.

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So it's the motivating stuff, the feedback that we get from people.

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So it was exciting.

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That's why I wanted to bring it up.

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Yes, definitely.

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Thank you, Amber.

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We really appreciate it.

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And kind of piggybacking off of that.

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It's one of the things I had from last time that I wanted to do for this time around is

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making sure that I understand my personal why of my online business.

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Because I do a lot of things online.

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Like we were talking likely before, depending on where we cut this before the show started,

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I've been working on some custom WordPress theme for a client.

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So there's just a lot of code and things I'm doing there.

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Anyway, I understand why I build websites for people.

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But I don't always have the why behind why I write for the blog or why I give away scripts

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or build working with OmniFocus.

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I don't always have a defined rationale for why I'm doing that.

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And I think what I've come to on this mic and all of the listeners out there is my ultimate

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purpose behind that is simply to help people get better at the productivity tools that exist

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out there.

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And that manifests itself through seeing how people are using the stuff that I've created

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or how they are implementing the little bits each day.

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So those are the things that get me really excited and that's why I continue doing that.

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So it's kind of self-serving I guess, but at the same time, it's a way to help a lot

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of people with very little into it, if that makes sense.

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Yep.

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My pastor told me one time that you need to do what brings you life.

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And I think that what you're saying is that what brings you life is seeing how people

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implement this stuff and the kind of results that they get from it.

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I think so, yeah.

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And this without going too deep down a deep work rabbit hole, this why is different than

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things that you like doing.

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It kind of comes back to the whole idea of passion, which Kel Newport talks about and

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how follow your passion is really bad advice because we'll see people think that's do what

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you really like to do.

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But really it's when you get done and you look at something, do you feel satisfied?

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Do you feel rewarded intrinsically just by the fact that you've done this thing?

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Because the word passion really what it means is to suffer.

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So what is it that you're willing to suffer through to see come about?

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What vision are you willing to suffer through in order to see it materialize?

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And so I kind of took that approach from my follow up item here, which you put, what

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is the why behind all the things?

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Well, that's how you explained it in the last show.

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I was like, well, I don't know how to write this down for follow up because you said you

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wanted to find the why behind all the things.

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I liked the way you said that.

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So I figured I would put it in exactly like that and see what you did with it.

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Yep.

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Well, I'll give you the too long didn't read version, I guess, without going into all

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the things.

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But really what I did is I took a look at all of my commitments and everything that

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I've said yes to kind of through the lens of if I hadn't already said yes to this thing,

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what I say yes to it right now.

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And any of the things that weren't a resounding yes are either gone or on the chopping block,

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because really what it forced me to do was to connect back to the why when I first agreed

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to do this specific thing, why did I say that I wanted to do this?

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So one of the things I'll just give you one of the things that came from this, I guess,

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looking back at my work with Asian efficiency and everything that I've been doing recently

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with this email video course in particular, I've really kind of zeroed in on my why in

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that aspect because I really feel like through developing these videos, I've kind of found

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my sweet spot in terms of product development, I mentioned that I really enjoy helping people

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really make the most of what they've been given, what their time, their talent, their

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ability, the tools that they have at their disposal, how to use them more effectively

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so that you can free up more time for the things that are really important.

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Like I really like seeing the results of that.

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And through the whole development process for this particular product where we're testing

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out these solutions that we're crafting with the people who had the problems in the first

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place, I'm really discovering that this particular video format really is something that I'm

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pretty good at.

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And it's not that I really enjoy doing it or even that it's really easy to do but I

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can see the big picture and I can see how these things come together.

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And so my why in terms of what I do with Asian efficiency is become a little bit more clear

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because I now have a specific format for how I best communicate these solutions if that

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does that make sense?

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It does to me.

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Yeah, because I've kind of made some of that same shift.

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I've done a lot of writing in the productivity space.

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And what I've just figured out Mike is I'm kind of like you in the video format.

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Like the screencasting type thing put together a keynote and record it.

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That type of scenario, at least for me, I feel like I can convey my ideas better that

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way.

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Exactly.

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Yep.

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Right.

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So I've kind of nailed down because my whole journey started when I wasn't a writer and

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then I started writing and then I wasn't a podcaster and I started podcasting.

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So I was not a video producer but really that is the thing where when I get done with something

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and other people have verified this is like, whoa, this is high quality.

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This is really good.

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This really helps me.

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And so I feel like I've got just a little bit more focus on what my direction, like

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what the end result is supposed to look like, if that makes sense.

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Yeah.

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And that's what ultimately leads your personal business along with the business of Asian

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efficiency to become better because you figure out how and why you do things.

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You know, that's what Simon Sennick was getting at is if you understand your why that eventually

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impacts your products and you end up better products in the end and your how and what

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of everything just adds up a lot better.

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So I think once you get the why and you understand your methods behind that why it can have a

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big impact on your overall business strategy, which is kind of what our book for today is

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about is how do you go about building that business and continue to grow it.

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And I think we both likely had some opposing views of the book within ourselves.

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At least I did.

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It's like I both loved it and hated it at the same time.

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Anyway, the innovators dilemma is what I'm talking about.

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And this was my choice.

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And this is by Clay Christensen.

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And the ultimate reason that I picked this is that one of the business type things that

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I do is what I it's kind of like a business garden is what some of us call it who work

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together on this.

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But ultimately some of the stuff that I do as a business is I hunt down new technologies

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and I turn it into a business in itself.

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And then we turn around and license or sell that to a larger corporation or something.

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And I knew that there's a lot of rationale on how you go about picking new technology

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to turn into a business.

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And I know the way I just described that it's very vague.

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It's very nebulous, hard to understand.

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It's very hard to explain until you sit down and talk through it in detail and in order

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for it to be successful.

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There's a lot of things I'm not going to say.

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So it's just the way it works.

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But I knew that the innovators dilemma talked a lot about how new technology can impact

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existing companies.

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And I was very curious as to what Clayton talked about in the rationale behind those two.

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And this book has been a bestseller for quite a while.

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And to me it seemed like one that would really change the way that I go about selecting new

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technology to turn into business.

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And that's partly why I wanted to pick it just because I was looking for a little bit

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of guidance and how that comes about.

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Not to have another philosophical rationale behind a book, Mike, but it's just kind of

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my thought process.

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So there it goes.

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Was this one on your list beforehand?

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Was this one I introduced to you?

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No, this is definitely one that you introduced to me.

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And actually this is one that I almost gave up on.

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I almost texted you like halfway through that first section.

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Yep.

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I was like, Joe, I just can't do this.

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Yep.

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I completely understand.

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And it starts off, well, first of all, I went and ordered it off of Amazon.

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And when I searched for it, it said there's a newer version available.

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So I click on the newer version.

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Yep.

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And I ordered the newer version from Amazon.

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Mm-hmm.

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Okay.

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So yours is the same way.

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I'm checking it to see which one I grabbed.

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I thought I had the newer one.

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Da-da-da-da.

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Yes, 2000.

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Okay.

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So my initial thought was maybe they sent me the older version.

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Mm-hmm.

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And because with updated examples, this is probably a totally different book.

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Yes.

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He starts off the very first chapter.

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And really the one where he's trying to lay out all of the groundwork for all of his

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arguments going forward is where he's talking about the disk drive industry.

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And it goes up until present day when he wrote it, which was 2000, which was over 15 years

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ago.

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So he's talking about in the future, flash storage is going to be maybe a disruptive

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technology.

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And I'm like, "Ugh, yes, yes, it is."

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Flash is old.

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Yeah.

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But if you can get past that first section, it's a very, it's a very, I don't want to say

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interesting read because when I read it, I felt like I was back in business school.

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Like this is read to me like a textbook.

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But what I found is that while a lot of his language and I didn't really relate to, there

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were definitely a lot of things that he said that jumped out at me.

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And so he would go for pages and pages about disk drives and then he would say one thing

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that really grabbed my attention and it would spur other thoughts kind of based off of the

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concepts that he was teaching.

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So I put some of them in the show notes, which we can talk about.

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But you want to start, I know the first thing you put down was the sustaining and disruptive

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technologies.

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Yeah.

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Before you go there, one, I looked it up.

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It's the first half of the book.

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It's literally half the book that he takes to go through the disk drive industry and then

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he also gets into excavators.

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So if you're familiar with dirt movers, I'm a farm boy.

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So I'm sitting here thinking, okay, so track hose bulldozers, that's the type of thing I

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immediately think of.

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But I understand that terminology doesn't make sense to a lot of people.

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Suffice it to say, machinery that moves dirt and he talks about these in way more detail,

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I think, than is necessary.

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And I'm one that I like to read about.

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Like I will read peer reviewed journal articles.

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Like I am weird in the fact that I like reading those.

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So I'm used to reading a lot of highly technical articles and text and this is a lot like that.

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But it's so in depth and so long and so continuous in a lot of that same topic that I'm just

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sitting here like, you got to be kidding me.

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Are you done with this yet?

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Can we go on to the next?

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And there was so much detail that he provided that I felt like was just completely unnecessary.

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And I understand he's trying to show every aspect of it so that you can get as much of

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a picture of this industry as you can.

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But I did not pick up history of disk drives.

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I picked up innovators dilemma.

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And I think I could explain to you every disk drive the year and the companies involved

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with it in way more detail than I ever need to be able to.

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So that part just about I'm with you at about killed me going through that first half.

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But to your point, there were a lot of areas where you'd go through some we're talking

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about Seagate and all the different drives that they came up with the five and a quarter

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inch like all these things that they're talking about that he's talking about.

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And then he would try to summarize what happened and it's like, okay, that summary I get is

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there a way to search and pull out all those summaries?

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Like I really just wanted those bits and they were only like a paragraph long and you'd

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have five or six pages explaining the industry and then a paragraph that summarized the part

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that you are actually interested in, it seemed like.

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At least that's my perspective on it.

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But I think that belaboring it at this point.

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Well I actually related more to some of the historical examples that he had because at

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least then it was kind of through the lens of this happened a long time ago and you probably

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aren't familiar with everything that happened and this is why things happened.

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But the whole disk drive discussion at the front was kind of like this is what's happening

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right now and this is what maybe is happening behind the scenes right now.

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And because it's a technological discussion, it just seems totally out of place.

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And that's why I kind of think that if there was a 2015 or 2016 version of this book,

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he used different examples, it would be much more engaging and I would have hooked onto

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it a lot sooner.

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But I got over that and if you look at the sources, I mean this thing is dense.

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A lot of the stuff that he included in the chapters, he's written long papers on that

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specific thing and that's why he's able to talk with such detail about any of these

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different industries.

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It was just hard for me to grasp onto the disk drive one in particular at the beginning.

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But the points that he made were really good and I really do like the whole idea behind

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why do some companies grab onto this disruptive technology and why do some not.

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And actually the disk drive, the main thing I got from that whole disk drive discussion

00:22:10

was that the firms that identified the disruptive technology were usually the ones who were

00:22:17

established.

00:22:18

But they were also the ones who didn't do anything with it.

00:22:23

I thought that was really interesting.

00:22:26

It's got six different steps that kind of goes through.

00:22:31

Step one, disruptive technologies are first developed within those established firms.

00:22:36

Step two, marketing personnel then sought reactions from their lead customers and that's

00:22:40

really where things start to fall apart because those lead customers, they are not looking

00:22:44

at it through a disruptive lens.

00:22:46

But then step three, establish firms, step up the pace of sustaining technological development.

00:22:52

Step four, new companies are formed.

00:22:54

Markets for those disruptive technologies were found through trial and error and that's

00:22:58

where looking at how the users are using the technology comes in.

00:23:03

Step five, the entrance then moved up market and then step six, established firms, belatedly

00:23:07

jumped on the bandwagon to defend their customer base.

00:23:10

This was really interesting.

00:23:12

And he talked about a couple different examples like the steel industry where companies entered

00:23:17

on the low end of the market and the established firms didn't even give them notice because

00:23:22

they're like, oh, you can have that part of the market.

00:23:24

It's so unprofitable.

00:23:25

We want nothing to do with that.

00:23:28

And then from there, they were able to move up and capture the rest of the higher end

00:23:33

market that those established firms were really coveting.

00:23:37

And then eventually a lot of those established firms disappear.

00:23:40

Yeah, I think if you if you try to define what the dilemma itself is and before we go

00:23:46

too far, I should probably define sustaining versus disruptive tech.

00:23:50

But the difference there is that a sustaining technology, if you think about it, let's just

00:23:56

use Apple as an example, most people who are going to listen to this, it seems like

00:23:59

understand Apple.

00:24:01

If you take like the iPhone, they every year come out with a new version of it.

00:24:06

Well, that would be a sustaining technology.

00:24:08

They're constantly iterating on an existing product.

00:24:11

But if you take something like a disruptive technology, that would be say the iPhone when

00:24:16

it was first introduced because touch screens and handheld phones and internet communications

00:24:22

device.

00:24:23

And then there are different types of things didn't exist.

00:24:27

Like it wasn't possible for you to walk around with that.

00:24:28

So in that particular case, the same iPhone was a disruptive technology.

00:24:33

And that's part of what he's getting at here is when a new tech comes into a market, people

00:24:39

don't always understand what its use is and like the market may not exist for it.

00:24:43

I think of like the iPad when it first came out, you know, how many people said it's an

00:24:48

iPhone on steroids?

00:24:49

You know, I said that.

00:24:50

It's like, okay, it's just a big iPhone.

00:24:53

Well, that's partly because no one understood how to use it.

00:24:57

And the market for it was tiny in comparison to what it could be as we look at it today.

00:25:02

And this is I think what we're getting at with if this was a newer book, you'd see some

00:25:05

of those types of examples as opposed to, you know, a 14 inch drive versus an eight inch

00:25:10

drive.

00:25:11

I don't, okay.

00:25:13

Why are we talking about mainframes?

00:25:14

I don't get it.

00:25:15

So, you know, that it just makes it a bit of a challenge.

00:25:18

But if you get the difference there between the sustaining, you know, the iteration style

00:25:24

changes and innovations versus a disruptive innovation that doesn't have a market, but

00:25:30

that market builds over time.

00:25:32

And the problem and the dilemma here is that an existing company tends to focus on building

00:25:37

out sustaining technology because that's their current customer base.

00:25:42

They know the market for it and they're trying to meet that market and consistently make that

00:25:45

market better.

00:25:47

When you have a disruptive tech come along, the market is so small for it or non-existent

00:25:52

or you don't even know what it is that there's no way a current company wants to try at

00:25:58

that simply because there's no way it's going to meet their current customer and their current

00:26:04

market because it takes a lot more revenue to continue to help them grow.

00:26:09

You know, one of the things he brings up is that if you have, say, a $10 billion company

00:26:14

in order for them to have a 10% growth, they need to come up with a billion dollars in

00:26:19

new sales.

00:26:20

Whereas if you have a, like, it takes a $10 million business, well, their 10% growth is

00:26:26

a million dollars in new business.

00:26:29

Well, the difference between those two, you know, the size of market and the size of customer

00:26:34

that you're shooting for is drastically different and the size of a new product is drastically

00:26:39

different between those two.

00:26:40

A bigger existing $10 billion company has zero interest in a million dollar technology.

00:26:46

They're looking for something way bigger than that.

00:26:48

I'm rambling.

00:26:49

Does this all make sense?

00:26:50

It makes perfect sense.

00:26:52

And you brought up Apple, so let me extrapolate on that a little bit because one of the things

00:26:59

that I thought of a more recent technology-based example based off of current events as of when

00:27:05

we are recording this.

00:27:07

I think it was maybe a week or two ago that Blackberry officially announced that they

00:27:13

are no longer making hardware.

00:27:15

Yeah.

00:27:16

Which basically is the death of research in motion as a company.

00:27:22

So I dug this up.

00:27:26

This is a, and I'll post this in the chat here so you can put it in the show notes.

00:27:32

This is a blog post from 2010 from research and emotion responding to Apple's distortion

00:27:38

field.

00:27:39

And this is a quote from the co-CEO.

00:27:43

He says, "For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that

00:27:47

seven inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market.

00:27:49

And we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience.

00:27:55

We also know that while Apple's attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed

00:27:58

platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully

00:28:02

access the overwhelming majority of websites that use Flash.

00:28:07

And it goes on to cite that research in motion sold.

00:28:13

They have record shipments for five consecutive quarters recently shared guidance of 13.8

00:28:18

to 14.4 million Blackberry smartphones for the current quarter.

00:28:21

Then they bash Apple for shipping 8.4 million devices in the prior quarter.

00:28:25

And they say that was probably padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demanded channel orders.

00:28:30

And then it's the last sentence as usual whether the subject is antennas, flash or shipments.

00:28:34

There is more to the story and sooner or later even people inside the distortion field will

00:28:37

begin to resent being told half a story.

00:28:41

And I thought this was interesting because there was a quote in the book that triggered

00:28:45

this thought pattern for me.

00:28:47

He said, "Firms failed when a technological change destroyed the value of competencies

00:28:52

previously cultivated and succeeded when new technologies enhanced them."

00:28:57

And Blackberry had a very established market and they kind of built their whole business

00:29:05

model on the fact that we have enterprise users who traditionally pay more for the technology

00:29:11

and they need a physical keyboard.

00:29:16

And Apple basically said, "No, you don't need a physical keyboard.

00:29:19

There's a better way to do that."

00:29:20

And they had all of the data to support their position.

00:29:25

This is a classic example of what I think Clayton Christians is talking about in the

00:29:29

innovators dilemma where they tested it with their users.

00:29:32

Their users all said, "Oh no, we hate this.

00:29:34

We need to be able to feel the keys."

00:29:36

Well, that's great.

00:29:37

But enterprise users aren't going to be the global smartphone market in the future.

00:29:42

And Apple really, I mean, it's undeniable that they hit the nail on the head with the

00:29:46

iPhone.

00:29:47

They're a successful product in the company history and the company, I think, was recently

00:29:51

named the most valuable company in the world.

00:29:54

So whether you like Apple or not, you cannot dispute the fact that they embraced a disruptive

00:29:59

technology.

00:30:00

What is interesting to me, though, is what Apple does from here because there are a lot

00:30:04

of people who are looking at this through the classic management lens.

00:30:08

They're saying, "Oh, well, the Apple Watch is a failure.

00:30:10

They only sold so many units."

00:30:12

But in their last keynote, they shared a statistic that said they are the number two in the list

00:30:18

of most profitable watchmakers in the entire world behind only Rolex, I believe.

00:30:25

So from a disruptive technology perspective, they are successful.

00:30:30

And that is the spin that they are putting on it.

00:30:31

Now, whether they actually believe that internally, it kind of remains to be seen.

00:30:37

But I think that's one of the things that Apple's been very good at is even though they've grown

00:30:40

as a company, they have maintained the ability to embrace these disruptive technologies.

00:30:48

And it's interesting to see very recently how research and motion was not able to do

00:30:54

that.

00:30:55

There's another article here which I'll share via Skype.

00:30:59

This is John Gruber's take on the BlackBerry article.

00:31:03

Oh, yeah.

00:31:04

I think I saw this.

00:31:05

It was what 2008 that he shared with this.

00:31:07

Yeah, exactly.

00:31:08

Right.

00:31:09

But then he linked to this recently with this quote right here.

00:31:14

He said, "Blackberry was good at making computer-like gadgets.

00:31:17

The iPhone was a gadget-like computer.

00:31:19

If you could see that difference and had a sense for just how difficult it would be for

00:31:23

BlackBerry to gain expertise in computing hardware and software, in particular creating

00:31:28

a platform for apps, you could see just how much trouble they were in even though they

00:31:32

had a handful of GoGo sales years ahead of them."

00:31:36

Very, very interesting, very, very recent technological example.

00:31:40

That's the, I guess, the 2016 version of the disk drive analysis.

00:31:44

I think BlackBerry is one that follows a very common pattern though in this case because

00:31:50

I don't know how many businesses I've either consulted with or worked for and whenever

00:31:54

they want to come up with something new and something revolutionary, they pull their customers.

00:31:59

And let's figure out what do our customers want and we'll take all the data from them

00:32:03

and we'll make the perfect thing.

00:32:06

The perfect widget of some kind.

00:32:08

This is a classic case.

00:32:09

So BlackBerry went through and they pulled all of their customers and they figured out

00:32:14

everybody loves physical keyboards.

00:32:17

Well, here's my question.

00:32:19

In that particular case, that particular scenario, how on earth is a group of business phone

00:32:27

users, how are they supposed to know that a touchscreen, you can learn how to use it

00:32:32

and it does just as well?

00:32:34

How are they even able to comprehend that?

00:32:37

And I think that's where Apple stepped in and said, "This is a better experience from

00:32:42

a human user interface type scenario.

00:32:47

This is a better experience.

00:32:49

You've never used it before.

00:32:51

It'll be painful at first, but you'll understand it in the long run."

00:32:53

You know, think, look at the iPhone 7 with them getting rid of the headphone jack.

00:32:58

How many people are throwing a fit over that?

00:33:01

Well, honestly, I don't get it.

00:33:04

I mean, so many of us use Bluetooth headphones anymore.

00:33:07

I think a lot of us, if you're on the cutting edge of things like that, if you stop and

00:33:12

look at how many times you actually use that jack, it's pretty rare.

00:33:17

I had to plug in.

00:33:18

Here's an example.

00:33:19

So I'm still on a success currently.

00:33:21

So I do not have a 7, but I still, I plugged in a set of headphones to make a phone call.

00:33:28

This is about a week ago and I kept getting static from it.

00:33:32

It just wasn't working out.

00:33:33

So I eventually just pulled out the headphones and used it as a headset as a handheld in

00:33:38

that case.

00:33:39

And afterwards, I got to look at it as like, "Man, that's really weird."

00:33:43

I had so much lint and stuff built up in that jack because it's never used that there's

00:33:50

no way anything would work.

00:33:52

So it was just a case of, "Huh, well, I guess I don't actually use that even though

00:33:57

I have it.

00:33:58

I just don't use it as much as you would think."

00:34:00

And I think whenever Apple does things like that, like they get rid of the headphone

00:34:05

jack, it makes a lot of people angry up front.

00:34:08

But Apple is in the business of disruptive technology.

00:34:12

That's what they do.

00:34:13

They understand that if you just get caught and consistently making one thing a little

00:34:17

bit better each time, that's not where things land in the long run.

00:34:21

And if you look at that particular case, yes, it's disruptive to get rid of that jack.

00:34:26

Is it technically a disruptive technology?

00:34:29

Probably not.

00:34:30

It probably falls into a sustaining world.

00:34:33

But what might be disruptive is the secondary thing of that wireless chip that they put

00:34:37

in it because that could change the way that we have wireless devices to overcome the Bluetooth

00:34:44

process.

00:34:45

So that might be maybe not in the realm of an iPhone, but in the realm of wireless connectivity.

00:34:53

That wireless chip might be the thing that finally topples the Bluetooth world because

00:34:58

Bluetooth's been around for how long now?

00:35:00

But that might be where that goes.

00:35:03

And this is the thing that Apple's good at is they're okay taking the risks and dealing

00:35:07

with a little bit of heartache up front because they know that they can introduce something

00:35:11

and then let it grow over time.

00:35:12

And they're okay with that.

00:35:14

And this is a case where Blackberry says, "No, flash is going to be a big thing."

00:35:18

And everybody wants an actual keyboard.

00:35:20

It's like, "Well, that's fine, but your days are numbered because the rest of the world

00:35:25

thinks differently, but they couldn't see it at the time because they were so focused

00:35:30

on meeting their current customers.

00:35:31

And that will almost always bite you if you're trying to do something revolutionary in your

00:35:35

own industry."

00:35:36

Right.

00:35:37

You are limited to, your perspective is limited by your value network.

00:35:42

And Clayton Christensen defines value network as the context within which a firm identifies

00:35:47

in response to customers needs, solves problems, procures input, reacts to competitors and

00:35:52

strives for profit.

00:35:53

And that's the interesting thing to me about Apple is not that they are currently the big

00:36:00

kid on the block, but how have they been able to maintain that?

00:36:06

Everything Clayton Christensen talks about inside the book, the problems with the large

00:36:10

organizations.

00:36:13

Apple has to deal with those, but somehow they're still able to embrace those disruptive

00:36:18

technologies, and I think it's probably a little bit too early to say that the Apple

00:36:22

Watch or any particular product has really been a success or a failure since the iPhone,

00:36:29

which really completely changed the company's trajectory historically.

00:36:34

But it seems to me that they've somehow been able to navigate this where a lot of other

00:36:40

firms have not.

00:36:41

And there's example after example after example in this particular book.

00:36:48

And it's because those established firms, they didn't fail to see the technology, but

00:36:53

they failed to recognize its importance.

00:36:55

I don't know what the secret is to always being able to correctly identify whether something

00:37:03

is important.

00:37:05

But I think that part of it is probably instead of asking your current customers what their

00:37:11

thoughts are on a particular technology, being able to see the larger picture, the larger

00:37:18

market from the very low end to the very high end of all the potential users of this technology

00:37:25

really being able to identify from those people whether this meets a specific need that they

00:37:31

have.

00:37:32

Well, here's how I think about Apple.

00:37:35

They don't build, they do build specific products.

00:37:39

You can't deny that.

00:37:41

However, that's not their main goal.

00:37:44

At least to me it doesn't seem to be that their ultimate goal is to build an ecosystem.

00:37:48

So you have a Mac or you have an iPhone, you have an iPad, everything works together and

00:37:52

they all integrate with each other.

00:37:54

That's what they're trying to do.

00:37:57

Your Apple Watch talks directly to your iPhone.

00:38:00

I'm assuming I don't have one.

00:38:01

So from what I know, I'm going to say yes, they connect.

00:38:05

They build this cohesive technological world and they build things to allow other things

00:38:13

to connect to it.

00:38:15

And every time they enter a new, what we're calling a disruptive technology, whenever they're

00:38:21

doing that, it's not to them, it's not any different than what they have done in the past.

00:38:25

It's still an integrated technology that builds on their current infrastructure.

00:38:30

It's just a different way and a different sector of integrating with that central hub.

00:38:37

To me, that's how I tend to look at it.

00:38:39

So yes, we can say that Apple somehow navigates disruptive technology, but their business is

00:38:46

disruptive technology.

00:38:47

So their entire supply chain and their entire product line is designed around a consistent

00:38:55

world that is disruptive, but it's not disruptive within their own realm.

00:39:01

It's only disruptive to the realm that they decide to interact with.

00:39:05

The rumors about an Apple car.

00:39:07

There's a good chance that the way that they tend to do things, that they're thinking about

00:39:11

it outside the normal realm, like what Tesla did.

00:39:15

Let's think about autonomous cars in a way that people haven't really thought about before.

00:39:19

And that's how they come at it.

00:39:20

I would assume Apple is going to do something similar where they decide to enter a new realm

00:39:26

and it's disruptive to that realm, but it's not disruptive to them.

00:39:31

To me, it seems like if you're going to have something that's disruptive to them, it has

00:39:34

to come outside of them.

00:39:36

Was it yesterday that made by Google deal as we're recording this?

00:39:41

There were some things in that that may challenge Apple, in my view, and potentially disrupt

00:39:47

them.

00:39:48

I think it's difficult.

00:39:52

It's hard to get your head around it because Apple has this own weird way of making their

00:39:57

entire business nothing but disruptive technology.

00:40:00

Then once they introduce one that's disruptive, then they build off of it.

00:40:04

It's only disruptive to the outside sector, not to themselves.

00:40:08

Does that make any sense?

00:40:09

Is that completely off my rocker?

00:40:12

No, I think it makes sense.

00:40:14

What's interesting to me is what does Google do when the services or the ecosystem that

00:40:21

they're building is not the next big thing anymore.

00:40:27

Tim Cook recently made a comment about how virtual reality is interesting, but he doesn't

00:40:34

think that it's really that important.

00:40:37

Augmented reality is much more in line.

00:40:40

I forget exactly how he phrased it, but he said augmented reality was more in line with

00:40:45

what Apple wanted to do in the future.

00:40:48

There's an opportunity, I guess, if virtual reality really did become the next big thing

00:40:52

where Apple could miss it.

00:40:53

The car thing is another example, but I think that based off of the rumors that are floating

00:41:00

around, it's interesting to see how Apple's navigating that as well.

00:41:08

In the book, he actually talks about the last chapter is the electric cars case study, but

00:41:12

he talks about how it's really not going to be any time in the near future because they

00:41:16

can't meet the basic needs of the consumer.

00:41:20

That's obviously changed a lot in the last 15 years.

00:41:24

We can see that now Tesla is meeting those specific needs and there is actually demand

00:41:29

for some of these things.

00:41:30

It's going to be really interesting to see where that goes in the next couple of years.

00:41:34

He also says that the very attributes that make disruptive technologies uncompetitive

00:41:38

in mainstream markets actually count as positive attributes in their emerging value network.

00:41:46

As this applies to an Apple car, I think this is really interesting because there's been

00:41:49

a lot of rumors recently about how they've kind of refocused the whole car initiative.

00:41:59

Depending on who you listen to in terms of the rumors, they've pivoted again, all rumors,

00:42:04

completely speculative.

00:42:05

Please don't take this with a grain of salt.

00:42:08

The rumor has it that they were focusing on building an electric car and now they are

00:42:13

more interested in a service, kind of like an Uber type service.

00:42:17

Maybe they're developing the cars that a service like Uber would typically use.

00:42:21

I could see being a really interesting example of how we were looking at this through our

00:42:25

old value network, we're building this ecosystem for an individual who buys all of our products

00:42:30

and in that particular instance, a really, really expensive Apple car because Apple stuff

00:42:34

is always really, really expensive.

00:42:37

Maybe fails because it doesn't provide enough value over the traditional gasoline cars or

00:42:42

even Tesla.

00:42:43

I have no idea what price point Apple could make an electric car available at.

00:42:49

When you think about it through this emerging value network, whether it's Apple or whether

00:42:55

it's Tesla, whoever it is, there's been a lot of rumors about how different services,

00:43:01

different companies are doing research on this whole automated fleet.

00:43:07

I think there is definitely a place in our future where you call a car, a driverless

00:43:13

car picks you up, takes you where you want to go and then drives away.

00:43:17

Then it's just on call until the next person calls it.

00:43:20

If that car is an electric car, how much more sustainable is that sort of company?

00:43:26

Yes, but at the same time, I really, really like an old 72 Chevy with 350 big block in

00:43:36

it.

00:43:37

Come on.

00:43:38

Right.

00:43:39

But this really comes back to the buying hierarchy that he outlines where you start off functionality.

00:43:48

Does this electric car, does this service provide the same functionality that your 72

00:43:53

Chevy does?

00:43:55

Then does it provide the same in terms of reliability?

00:43:59

Does it provide the same in terms of convenience?

00:44:01

If you are the same on all of those levels, then what's left is to differentiate based

00:44:07

on price.

00:44:09

I think it's too early in that particular market to say that these are functionally equivalent.

00:44:15

Who knows how close we are to being functionally equivalent there?

00:44:20

I think there's probably a lot of work that needs to be done.

00:44:23

There's also a lot of public, what's the word?

00:44:28

There's a lot of public image about the danger of a driverless car, especially when stuff

00:44:33

like the, I mean, I would never do this.

00:44:37

But there was a news story about the guy who was watching Harry Potter on his iPad and

00:44:40

his Tesla drove underneath a semi and obviously he died.

00:44:44

Well, I mean, idiots like that, where you like to completely take your eyes off the road

00:44:49

when you know that this technology is new, that is going to leave a very negative, very

00:44:57

bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.

00:44:59

That's going to definitely influence public opinion in this particular area.

00:45:03

It's going to be hard for automated, I don't know what the term is.

00:45:09

I'm talking about stuff I don't really understand.

00:45:11

The driverless cars, it's going to be hard for them to overcome that public opinion.

00:45:17

The autonomous cars, that's what you're trying to say.

00:45:20

Sure, yeah, that sounds better.

00:45:21

But see, at the same time, okay, so I come from agriculture and we have had in agriculture,

00:45:27

we have had self-driving tractors for well over a decade at this point.

00:45:34

They're not, they are far from driverless, but you can sit down on a tractor today and

00:45:40

you've been able to do this for a long time and turn on the computer and set what we call

00:45:45

an AB line, go set a point on one side of the field, drive to the other side, set another

00:45:50

point and then hit go and it will drive you back and forth and it will follow that line.

00:45:55

And it can get way more sophisticated than that.

00:45:58

But I can tell you that driving those, running a planner, running whatever, if you run those

00:46:05

for an hour, so not long.

00:46:08

In the scheme of running a planner, because you can run it 16 hours a day or in some cases,

00:46:12

18 hours a day every day for four or five weeks in a row, you do that enough and you

00:46:18

just don't pay attention.

00:46:19

You wait for the alarm to go off when you get to the other end of the field, you pick

00:46:22

up the planner, you spin it around and you go back and you do it again.

00:46:25

And I know some guys who take naps while they're planting.

00:46:29

The fields are long enough, they go around, they hit their button and then they take a

00:46:32

nap until they get to the other end of the field and it sets off the alarm and they do

00:46:35

it again.

00:46:36

Well, what happens if that thing loses a signal?

00:46:39

Any more, it'll set off an alarm, but they didn't use to.

00:46:44

If you want to have an interesting bout on Google or even on YouTube, just type in "autoste"

00:46:50

or "gone wrong".

00:46:53

You will see when these things have either shut off or wouldn't turn off, there are all

00:46:58

kinds of scenarios when this stuff happens.

00:47:01

That stuff only really happens when you get so comfortable with it that you just stop

00:47:08

paying attention.

00:47:09

And I think it's something like a Tesla or an autonomous car.

00:47:13

Part of the issue and part of the public opinion and issues that they're going to have to

00:47:17

overcome with that is that in today's world, if you have an accident, it's somebody's fault.

00:47:23

Somebody made a mistake.

00:47:24

It's an error in judgment in some form.

00:47:28

With an autonomous car, if everybody's in an autonomous car and there's an accident, that's

00:47:36

a hardware or software issue.

00:47:39

That's not a person's mistake.

00:47:42

That is a, in this case, a robot's mistake.

00:47:45

So who do you get upset about?

00:47:49

If there's an accident, you get upset at the person who caused it.

00:47:51

If a robot wrecks a car and kills somebody, what do you do about it?

00:47:58

What are the ramifications of that?

00:48:00

Now we're going down a rabbit trail here, but-

00:48:01

Who do you blame?

00:48:03

Yeah, yeah.

00:48:04

We like to blame people.

00:48:06

Look at how easy it is to have people get offended right now.

00:48:09

We like to blame people and say it's someone else's fault.

00:48:13

If you have something like a driverless car that an accident is going to happen within,

00:48:20

who do you blame for it?

00:48:21

What do you do about it?

00:48:22

And that's some of the public opinion that's going to be challenged through that.

00:48:26

That's a lot of the outcry that's come from that Tesla accident.

00:48:29

Even though, if you look at miles driven versus accidents that happen, the Tesla car is within

00:48:36

what I'll call it auto steer.

00:48:38

There's a name for it.

00:48:39

I can't tell you what it is.

00:48:41

But if you're in a car and it's, if you're in a Tesla and it's driving on its own, it's

00:48:49

actually safer than if you were driving on, you know, if you were using your own judgment

00:48:53

to drive that car.

00:48:54

It is safer and it's tough to argue that.

00:48:57

Well, what do you do when it makes a mistake?

00:49:01

It's not going to be perfect.

00:49:03

Right.

00:49:05

And that's where obviously what the customer wants comes into play.

00:49:13

And that was a really interesting section of the book where he talked about discoveries

00:49:18

come from watching people use your product.

00:49:21

He had an example in there with the Hondo motorbikes.

00:49:24

I forget what the name of it was.

00:49:26

Super Cub.

00:49:27

Yeah.

00:49:28

Yeah.

00:49:29

Where they brought these over to the US.

00:49:31

I'm a red naked heart.

00:49:34

They brought these over and they were trying to sell them against Harley's basically and

00:49:39

nobody would buy them.

00:49:41

Well, it wasn't the super cub that they brought over.

00:49:43

It was they had, I forget what it was, but they had an actual, it was a bigger bike design

00:49:48

to compete with them.

00:49:49

Correct.

00:49:50

Yeah.

00:49:51

And then the customers didn't want or didn't trust the Hondo bikes though.

00:49:57

And so the frustrated, you know, three people who came over and were living in California

00:50:01

brought their super cubs up to the mountains, I think, and were driving around people like,

00:50:05

hey, that's pretty cool.

00:50:07

Where can I get one of those?

00:50:08

Because it was a recreational thing.

00:50:10

It wasn't a transportation vehicle so much.

00:50:16

It was more entertainment or fun and they created a market there which they never could have

00:50:25

guessed.

00:50:27

And I think that that's a really important distinction.

00:50:30

He talks about plans to learn versus plans to execute.

00:50:35

Big firms, at least in the book from what he was saying, they have a plan to execute

00:50:41

based on meeting the needs of their specific customers.

00:50:44

And he used example after example of that, the steel industry was another example where

00:50:49

he talked about how people didn't want this lower quality steel.

00:50:53

There were some customers who were okay with the real low, real thin sheet metal.

00:50:58

And I don't remember these specific terms that he was using there, but there was basically

00:51:03

really thin sheet metal that only a few specific use cases for it were existed.

00:51:11

But the entrance into the market were okay making this type of metal because it was

00:51:18

okay if it had a bunch of impurities in it.

00:51:20

So you're talking about rebar?

00:51:22

Yes.

00:51:23

The rebar is it.

00:51:26

So farm kid, I researched this stuff.

00:51:28

Okay, so anyway, rebar is at the bottom of the market because no one cares what's in

00:51:31

it.

00:51:32

Top level of steel industry is going to be sheet metal because it has to be extremely

00:51:37

smooth and pure.

00:51:39

And then you've got all this stuff in between.

00:51:40

So the entrance we're interested in the rebar world.

00:51:43

Correct, yeah.

00:51:44

And so they entered in the rebar world.

00:51:48

And then from there they improved their process as they saw other adjacent market segments

00:51:54

I guess.

00:51:56

Other places where they could sell what they had.

00:52:01

And that led to them refining the process, refining the process, refining the process

00:52:05

until eventually they had a product that competed with the really, really pure sheet metal that

00:52:10

the premium firms were so focused on.

00:52:15

And then at that point a lot of those firms went out of business because at that point

00:52:20

where the firms that entered at the rebar part of that market they had learned the ability

00:52:27

to produce this higher quality metal but they could do it it they could do it cheaper.

00:52:33

And so I think that there's a lot of markets that can be discovered that way where you

00:52:38

enter in almost below the market that currently exists and then you just kind of try some

00:52:44

things, figure some things out.

00:52:45

Maybe you've only got like one or two places where this really is a fit.

00:52:49

But then from there you can find a much wider market kind of through trial and error.

00:52:55

This comes back to the general premise of fail fast.

00:52:59

Yup.

00:53:00

How many times do we hear about the best way to build a great business is to iterate and

00:53:05

get through your failures quicker.

00:53:07

And this is one of the things that Clayton brings up a few times with managers at bigger

00:53:13

corporations because they just don't want to take the risk they don't want to risk having

00:53:17

a failure on their record because it's going to hurt their career.

00:53:21

You know I've seen that.

00:53:22

Exactly.

00:53:23

Like I don't want to take a chance on something because there's a good chance it's going to

00:53:25

hurt me from only it's going to keep me from getting a promotion that I'm after.

00:53:29

So I don't want that ding on my record.

00:53:32

And if you're in a company like that and you want to take a risk on something you're

00:53:36

not going to do it because there's a chance it's going to drop off and then you've got

00:53:41

more issues on your hands.

00:53:43

So you have to be okay with failure.

00:53:45

The nice thing is that you know between you with Asian efficiency and a lot of what I do

00:53:49

like if I pick up a new technology turn it into a business and it fails big whoop will

00:53:54

scrap it and go on to the next one like that's just the way we do things and it's kind of

00:54:00

the same with a lot of clients even with websites you know sometimes I'd have to build two or

00:54:04

three different versions of a website before we can get the right one.

00:54:08

Now granted it's expensive for them to do that but it's the process of okay let's get

00:54:14

the things out there that we think might be a good idea.

00:54:18

We're not real sure but we're going to give it a try and see how it pans out.

00:54:21

So I think there's a lot of value you know you see this all over the place fail fast

00:54:25

if you get through your failures quicker than the sooner you get to your successes.

00:54:29

You have to be okay with that in order to hit on one of these disruptive technologies

00:54:33

and a lot of people aren't willing to do that so it's a challenge.

00:54:39

One of the cool strategies for doing that which I really liked in the book was the HP

00:54:45

model where I said that the HP had developed laser printers which from a technological

00:54:51

standpoint laser printers are way way way better than inkjet printers.

00:54:57

They can print faster they can print more precise or at least when he wrote the book

00:55:01

anyways.

00:55:03

I got admit I haven't followed the printer industry.

00:55:05

I have no idea I don't even know under printer.

00:55:08

But he said that HP created a separate company to develop the inkjet printers and they've

00:55:15

competed against the company that developed the laser printers.

00:55:19

What they found was that while the inkjet printers were not as good as the laser printers

00:55:24

they could create them much more efficiently much more cost effectively and so there

00:55:30

was a large demand in a consumer market that didn't really care that it wasn't as good

00:55:36

as the laser printers because it was good enough.

00:55:39

And he has a quote there which I really really liked.

00:55:41

He said two models for how to make money cannot peacefully coexist within a single organization.

00:55:50

I completely understand that in the family business that I was involved in for quite a

00:55:57

while there was we went through a transition where we transitioned from software that you

00:56:03

would install on a network to an online HTML5 CSS model built on Ruby on Rails.

00:56:12

So very technical basically all you need to know is that we made a leap when all this

00:56:16

stuff about flash was going on Steve Jobs wrote the letter about how we're never going

00:56:19

to allow flash on our iPads like while we were in the middle of this development project.

00:56:24

And I was a big advocate for what we had we can't do flash we have to do HTML5 CSS Ruby

00:56:31

on Rails because this is this is the future everything is going to support this not everything

00:56:35

is going to support flash.

00:56:38

And we guessed right but at the time we were in a precarious spot because we were investing

00:56:45

a lot into research and development but we also had to keep the lights on.

00:56:50

So we were selling software at the same time and then for a while we had the software still

00:56:55

available we had a lot of customers in the education industry in particular that are

00:56:59

not early adopters who wanted the old software but we knew that the online stuff was going

00:57:07

to be the future.

00:57:08

So it was an awkward position for a while because it's like well we know this is the

00:57:12

future but we got to support both of these and usually when you went into a sales presentation

00:57:19

saying you can pick either one of these you didn't get that sale.

00:57:25

And as a company as an organization I feel personally that if we had gone all in on the

00:57:36

the online technology the moment that it was available to the public we could have established

00:57:42

a much stronger market position as an industry leader in this new technology which obviously

00:57:50

now everything is web based.

00:57:54

So I kind of look at it as somewhat of a missed opportunity I mean we did all right

00:57:59

we navigated it fine but still that question in the back of my head you know what if.

00:58:05

Yep I run into the question of do I build a website or do I build an app.

00:58:10

I get that question because I can do both I'm one of those utility developers and I run

00:58:17

across a lot of cases where we're going to build a website together awesome.

00:58:22

Can we build an app too.

00:58:23

Well if you want to yeah absolutely I have no idea what it's going to get you outside

00:58:29

of it's cool but the only thing that it really seems to give people in this particular case

00:58:37

is push notifications.

00:58:38

Like that's really the one thing that an app is going to get you that a website won't

00:58:42

like that's just how I have those conversations and the cost to build an app versus the cost

00:58:49

to build a website is drastically different.

00:58:51

So most of the time I think every time except one I've had people just stick to the website

00:58:58

because it's so much easier to develop for all applications as opposed to trying to

00:59:04

do native stuff.

00:59:06

So I get it.

00:59:07

Correct.

00:59:08

If you think about I mean that's a great example because that's also kind of recent history

00:59:12

you know when the iPhone first launched Steve Jobs said you don't need apps you can install

00:59:19

web apps basically and obviously Apple's made a ton of money off of the app store that's

00:59:24

one of the things that they've done well so they've had to pivot there.

00:59:27

Facebook also when the app craze was just starting for I don't even know how long it

00:59:33

was I think it was like two years they did not have a mobile application they said just

00:59:38

use the mobile web page it's fine and technically they were right but that's not the experience

00:59:44

that the customer was looking for and again it's colored through the lens that you present

00:59:51

it I mean they could have done surveys with people they came to Facebook they watched

00:59:56

them use the the the web view after they had loaded it on the mobile device for them already

01:00:01

and they they could see that they could navigate everything cleanly didn't have any issues and

01:00:07

so they look at that data and they say oh well we don't need a mobile application but

01:00:11

again you know they've pivoted and now Facebook is kind of famously done very very well on

01:00:18

mobile as they've embraced that platform and also at the same time because they've put

01:00:25

an increased emphasis on it kind of figured out the formula for monetizing mobile I think

01:00:32

if you were to do a case study on mobile applications and monetization Facebook's got to be one

01:00:37

of those companies that you study because they've done done pretty well at it whether

01:00:41

you like their methods or not right right but you also have to keep in mind that they

01:00:45

stepped into the app world whenever notifications started to be a thing so that's true they because

01:00:52

of push notifications that's what made their app so much more applicable than just the

01:00:58

website because the website doesn't let you push things to the phone but the app will

01:01:03

so almost every case you're stepping into my wheelhouse here Mike so almost every single

01:01:09

time there are very few exceptions but the only times that I've run across that are successful

01:01:14

where the app has the ability to trump what the website does are cases when you need to

01:01:22

collect information and you're not going to be on a data connection you're going to be

01:01:27

somewhere off of offline so you have to be able to interact with things that are sitting on the

01:01:32

phone that's one case scenario the other is when you're pushing things to the phone from an external

01:01:37

cloud service of some kind if you're not doing one of those two things the chances of an app being

01:01:44

worthwhile are pretty slim like it just doesn't seem to give you a whole lot if it's a thing where

01:01:49

you're going to go check it to see the new stuff and you don't have a need to push things to the

01:01:53

phone or you're always going to have a data connection to me websites are the way to go

01:02:00

they're a lot easier to develop and it has a lot more flexibility and a lot so anyway you're

01:02:06

gonna get me on a little soapbox here but anyway so let's step into action items here I have one

01:02:15

and it's not it's not anything major it's just kind of a this is good to know but I have a lot of

01:02:23

criteria that I go through when I evaluate new technologies that I'm looking for to turn into

01:02:28

businesses and whenever I do that I can see we're understanding what can qualify as a disruptive

01:02:36

tech because ultimately that's what I want to find you know if I'm looking at the railroad industry

01:02:40

and I run across something that I feel like is going to completely change the way that there are

01:02:44

trains communicate with the railroad crossings if I run across something like that then I know

01:02:50

that I've got something that's a great opportunity as a business there but to me this has given me

01:02:56

a lot of criteria to help find these things to find whatever the new stuff is and to help

01:03:02

figure out what's the best one to turn into a new business so I don't think I'm going to be able

01:03:06

to say this went really well it's just another thing that adds to my way of understanding what to

01:03:13

look for so you can ask me how it went next time but I'm probably not going to have much

01:03:18

of an answer right well I mean this this does read like a textbook yeah it does

01:03:25

I don't know I feel like having recorded the episode this is your final exam so now it's just

01:03:32

try to retain yeah as much of this stuff as as you can when it's applicable I think the the stories

01:03:38

and the examples are really what stood out to me the action items that I wrote down and again like

01:03:44

we're just finishing up the development for the email course so like I could definitely see the

01:03:50

positive benefits of listening to your users and not just your users but the people who are connected

01:03:58

to your potential or your your current customer because the next big thing may not fit into the

01:04:07

box that you have created to serve your current customers so really just listening to what people

01:04:13

in general are saying and then also to keep learning to keep looking for the next new thing and to keep

01:04:19

it comes back to listening but in looking at what you're hearing and then figuring out where the

01:04:26

trends are so one of the things that I think is key to apple being able to navigate this stuff

01:04:31

successfully in the recent past and then we'll see how well they do in the near future is one of the

01:04:38

things that Steve Jobs said was stay hungry stay foolish and actually as we record this today I

01:04:46

believe is the is it the five-year anniversary of his death I think it was yes was it the small yeah I

01:04:51

think it was today yeah as we're recording this so I heard on one of the podcasts that I subscribe

01:04:57

to at the end they replayed his address to Stanford University where he talks about these got three

01:05:04

different lessons that he tells him it's and it's really good if you haven't listened to it you

01:05:08

should definitely check it out because at that point he had successfully dealt with one round of

01:05:15

cancer and then obviously we know that he eventually died from it but at the end of that speech

01:05:23

he kind of talks about how it's kind of somber and not really morbid but he really just instills

01:05:31

remember this is a college graduation he's like remember that you're going to die someday

01:05:34

and he talks about how like if you view every day through that lens and you ask yourself

01:05:40

if I do I do I want to do what I am about to do today and if you say no too many days in a row

01:05:46

like go find something else but really he talks about his story his journey like how he was able to

01:05:53

drop out of college and attend a calligraphy class and how that influenced the font design on the

01:05:59

original Macintosh like he did a really good job of having a an open learning mindset that's the

01:06:07

thing I really want to take away is I think the people who can successfully navigate innovations

01:06:12

and disruptive technologies are the people who are constantly learning they're constantly looking

01:06:18

to make not just a better product but a better version of themselves so it's coming back to the

01:06:24

why that we talked about at the very beginning like their why is I want to do the right thing

01:06:31

not just the thing that has met the needs of my customers up until this point but constantly

01:06:36

looking for a better way to do things and so I want to embrace that that mindset not just

01:06:42

professionally but also personally which is where Bookworm comes in because we read a ton exactly

01:06:47

so it's one thing that and I tell people you know I have another course I did working with ideas and

01:06:53

in that course we talk about how do you go about continually bringing in new information into your

01:06:58

mind so that you can come up with new ideas how can you come up with this disruptive technology

01:07:03

how can you develop that process in your mind and the number one way is continually bring in new

01:07:08

information into your mind always be learning so there you go you know if you continue bringing

01:07:14

in that new information the more chances you have to come up with a new innovative and disruptive

01:07:18

idea now author style this was tough this is a hard read and this was this outside of maybe

01:07:29

some high-level executives I don't think I'll ever recommend this book like this is just one that

01:07:35

I think it's interesting to have read but it's very technical and difficult for I would say it's

01:07:43

very difficult for most people to just pick up and stick with it especially since he starts off

01:07:47

with the hard part you know he starts off with that disk drive piece so it's if you don't have an

01:07:53

interest in disk drives or the history of the technical components that are inside of mainframes

01:07:58

and many computers if you don't have an interest in that this is going to be a challenge so it's a

01:08:04

big ding on it in my opinion so it's a tough one you can tell that if you can make it through the

01:08:11

disk drive part yeah you can tell that Clayton Christensen is a very brilliant business thinker

01:08:17

but all you need to know is you look at the cover and you see that it is published by Harvard a

01:08:21

business review press so if that excites you read the book if it does not excite you it's stay away

01:08:28

because it definitely did feel like I was back in business school like I said I almost gave up

01:08:34

before we left the disk drive section I was really concerned because I mean confession I did this

01:08:40

in college too the classes that did not the professors that did not engage me I found myself

01:08:46

reading the material and just going through the pages and not getting anything from it nothing

01:08:51

was clicking right that's how this book started for me and I was really worried that we were going

01:08:57

to get on on the mic and talk for an hour about stuff that just went in one year and out the other

01:09:02

but that's not how it ended up okay so I actually did get quite a bit out of this book I am glad

01:09:08

that I read it but it would definitely be hard for me to to recommend this one to the general

01:09:14

public like you said but if you really like Harvard business review I know several people

01:09:20

that do subscribe to that like I think it's definitely a good book and Clayton Christensen's

01:09:25

a brilliant guy so how would you rate this taking all that into account I was hoping you would go

01:09:32

first I can go first if you want I'm gonna give it a 3.5 I think like I said there's definitely a

01:09:41

lot of really good content in here but for the average bookworm listener I don't think that this

01:09:51

is going to be appropriate where if you're gonna pick a book to read there are other books on our

01:09:59

list that I would read first but for the right person at the right time this book could be amazing

01:10:07

so yeah I'm gonna say 3.5 I was gonna give it a 3.0 so I enjoyed understanding the concepts it was

01:10:17

helpful to see the difference and differentiate between sustaining tech and disruptive tech but

01:10:24

the methods through which we got there extremely painful in my opinion okay so I I'll put it at 3

01:10:34

because the concepts are extremely helpful I that's probably the only thing keeping me off of a

01:10:39

2 or 2 5 is because the concepts are so helpful but it's just yeah it's very heady I would say you

01:10:47

really have to think and this is not one some of these books that we read and you know there's one

01:10:54

that's on our upcoming list here shortly that you know they're pretty short they're pretty easy to

01:10:58

read they're very easy going and I can sit down or read them you know at night before bed and I'm

01:11:03

fine this thing I had to do at first thing in the morning when my mind was on full

01:11:09

full alert because there was no way I was gonna pull off reading this right before bed I'd be

01:11:15

great bedtime material to help me fall asleep but it was it was a challenge so I'm gonna put it at a

01:11:22

3 I actually did fall asleep at one point awesome I made that mistake at the beginning because that's

01:11:29

usually when I read read books is at night before I go to bed and that first chapter started reading

01:11:35

was about 9 30 and fell asleep on the couch awesome so amber and team when you guys are

01:11:42

picking books for your family to read skip this one right but if you are in business school and

01:11:49

this stuff really floats your boat then check it out yeah I would say if you're in business school

01:11:54

it's probably a must read which is there I don't know very many people that really thoroughly enjoy

01:12:02

the deeper level stuff within business school though I just don't most people just try to understand

01:12:07

the the high level concepts of it but the deeper stuff tends to just be forgotten just my opinion

01:12:15

now you're probably right I definitely am a little bit of an oddball in that that respect

01:12:23

I guess that some of this stuff I really really do get get excited about there were definitely

01:12:30

parts in this book where he's talking about the different examples like the HP example and I was

01:12:35

like oh that is awesome that's a great idea you know but they were kind of few and far between

01:12:41

for the the average the average reader I would say yeah the HP thing was like a five page

01:12:47

excerpt out of 260 so there you go so innovators dilemma was my choice would you pick for after that

01:12:56

the productivity project by Chris Bailey which I've started on this one and it's way different

01:13:04

you know there's still one so this will be a fun one okay and then I have a short one

01:13:11

for following that so I picked this one for a couple reasons and I'll go into it again when

01:13:16

we get there but it's managing oneself by Peter Drucker so we go through all these books in two

01:13:21

weeks and for a lot of people it's tough to get through it in two weeks because a lot of them are

01:13:28

around 200 pages and this one I just grabbed it is 56 55 so this one's 55 pages very small pages

01:13:39

very large print you will sit down and read this one in one sitting easy I think so if you're wanting

01:13:45

to get into the bookworm cycle this would be a good one to jump in on so that one would be

01:13:50

following the productivity project so if you're wanting to get started on following along with

01:13:53

this this would be a good one to do it with sweet yeah and if you want to recommend a book

01:14:00

you can actually do that on the bookworm website which is bookworm.fm and on the right hand side

01:14:08

there's a sidebar where there's a button you can recommend a book and if you click on that there's

01:14:13

a there's a form but there is a list of the upcoming books on here also there's a book list

01:14:19

so if you want to see what we have done or and also what is what is planned and what other people

01:14:24

have recommended you go to bookworm.fm/list cool and as we have mentioned just about every

01:14:33

episode now if you wouldn't mind leave us an iTunes review it I think it's interesting to see

01:14:37

what people you know we were talking about this at the very beginning like what do you think about

01:14:41

the show and like Amber did she sent us an email to let us know her opinion and how it's affected

01:14:47

her but another way great way to do that is with an iTunes review because then you can give that

01:14:50

feedback but it also serves a secondary role in helping other people find us and we're always

01:14:58

looking to have a bigger impact so if you if you wouldn't mind go over to iTunes I'll drop a link

01:15:03

in the show notes for you and just go over there and leave us a review. Yeah that would be that

01:15:09

would be awesome we really do enjoy hearing from people who are getting a lot out of the show and

01:15:15

leaving iTunes reviews definitely a way that other people can can find the show so iTunes is a funky

01:15:21

algorithm that they use to feature different podcasts and one of the things they look at is

01:15:26

the number of reviews and then also how recent the reviews are so if you could do that that would be

01:15:31

great and really appreciate everybody listening we'll catch you next time.