Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Rene, welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you here today, Ari.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Good to be here.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: I am going to jump right in. You talk about it's not about them, and you were specifically talking about how companies kind of think that it's all about them. It's not about them, it's about their customers. Tell me more about that. Is this, this is good.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: You did your research.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: I love this. Thank you. I mean, it's such a fundamental point and it's something that I come across so much. What is the problem here that you're, that you're dealing with when you talk to entrepreneurs and companies?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Well, so I think one of the biggest issues that any sort of business or startup or anyone trying to get into entrepreneurship struggles with is that they start the business for themselves and they don't realize that all businesses are doing or all enterprises are doing is they're helping people. And as a byproduct, they're, they're making cash, they're making profit from it. Right. But typically that, that comes from wanting to help someone or do something for someone else. So I think the issue a lot of people run into, they start a business with selfish intent, they want to make a lot of money, right? They see entrepreneurship as something glamorous and they think if I start a business, I can make money. And they start it for them. And they do a product that they like. They don't focus on their customers or another person. So when I say stuff like that, I typically talk about the businesses, how the businesses that put their customers first, they're the ones that win. Right? And you see it with Amazon, Jeff Bezos says it best. He says we're a customer first business. And Amazon focuses a lot on customer service.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: You know, I hear this. I think every company that I've talked to, they say, oh, we're customer first.
Some of them I want to be like, is that true? So let's dive into this together. From your perspective, what does it mean to be customer first?
[00:01:57] Speaker B: So a customer first business will typically follow feedback of what their customer wants. An example of this, right? When it comes to product, let's say you're selling a product that you might like, but the customer gives you feedback. Hey, I don't like how small the portions are. I don't like the size of the product. A non customer first business would reply with something like, well, that's the size. Get over it. Right? But a customer centric business that puts their customer first, they're going to go ahead and take that feedback into consideration. They're going to figure out how to make portions bigger, how they can adjust it to fit the customer's needs. Or from a customer service perspective, let's say there's a policy where customer, you reply every 24 hours. The customer doesn't like the response time. You change the policy according to the customers. Let's make it so we reply to customers every four hours or five hours or six hours, until eventually the customer says, hey, I was really happy with the customer service. So I think when it comes to specific examples, a lot of it is just taking feedback. It's listening to what your customers are telling you. And instead of thinking that you know everything and that, that you are, you, you understand the customer better than they know themselves, you adjust your product or your offering or your service based on the feedback that you receive.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: I would make an argument that, that there is something broken in customer success today to the level that we're kind of looking at it as a cost center. And really we're looking at it as this ping pong of like, oh, I, you know, they said something, I'm just going to, you know, you know, bounce it back by giving an answer. But the missed opportunity there is the curiosity to learn more about your customer. So instead of being like, oh, that's our policy or whatever, we'll take that into consideration. I mean, just asking why or asking like, oh, how do you, like, why is this important to you? Or how does this affect you? Or what do you, you know, where do you actually use our product and how do you use it? That can give you so much value and above and beyond, you'll build a relationship with that person who will now appreciate you more than just, you know, send it back to them. Which is such an undervalued point.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Yeah, well, if you look at some of these customer first businesses, there's jokes that go around with it. Me and my wife, we joke around about these very, like this new style of customer service with businesses. An example would be Uber Eats, your delivery service. Right. Uber Eats has this really funny policy where if someone orders food, but they don't receive the food or it comes in not as expected, they don't do any sort of back and forth. There's no ping pong. All they do is just refund the money. So me and my wife make a joke. It's like we say hi to Uber Eats and they say, we refunded your money immediately because the customer's super happy now. Even if they got a messed up order, they got their money back. But on top of that, Uber Eats will even say, hey, will give you an additional 10% in Uber Eats credit. So people that are using these services like Uber Eats or delivery, they know that they're going to always be happy with the food they get, or their money is going to come back to them without any sort of hassle. It's done in a minute or two. And then what's even better, right? They take it a step further. They don't just refund your money. They ask you, hey, how was this as a solution? Is there anything we could have done better? They then ask for feedback. So not only do they leave their customer happy, but they also get their customer to give them feedback, say, hey, this was great customer service. I'm very happy with this, thank you. Or if there's opportunity zones where they're unhappy, they'll also get feedback on that. But typically, most people I know, for me personally, when someone messes up my order on UberEats and I send it takes one or two messages and they solve it instantly, I feel over the moon. I'm like, this is great. I'm just gonna order again on UberEats.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: I. The same. I feel like Costco has that exact same policy, right? And I have made significant purchases from Costco that traditionally I would have made maybe from someone else just based on their return policy. So our question, and this is, it's to the level that it's ridiculous that my question with my wife is like, can we order this from Costco?
Maybe Let's. Like, so it's crazy that you as an individual would have a vendor quote, unquote, that you trust so much that they're going to be your first pick every time. I'll tell you, our carpets we did at Costco. This is. We've done our carpets three times. Like, what the hell is Costco going to do with carpets? Three times. Done our carpets with Costco. All of our appliances we boil, we buy from Costco. It's really just one thing. We trust them. We trust them that when things go wrong, they're going to handle it, they're going to fix it. Our washing machines, our dryer, like, everything. Like, we just. We're like my friend. Our friends joke with us. They say that, oh, when you guys come into Costco, do they open like a red carpet, like, hey, the blocks are coming? Because we just love that. But it's, it's so simple to the level that when we have a problem, they solve it with very simple companies.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Understand is when it comes to customers. A customer for life is better than a one time customer. They understand the lifetime value of their customers. Hold on.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: This is so important.
This is so important. I want to stop you and have you explain this. What is, why is there a difference between like, okay, it's a customer, it's a customer. They bought the service, they bought a service. What's the difference? Why is a lifetime customer more valuable than a one time customer?
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Well, the reason you want a lifetime customer is because they're going to spend 10 times, if not 100 times more. If you, how many times do you think you've been to Costco if you just had to think about, I know we made this example, you're going to give me some ridiculous number, but how many times do you think you've been to Costco?
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Well, it's a very easy calculation because it's once a week for the last 10 years. So take 52. So it's 520 times.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: At least 520 times. And this all could have started with, let's say you went to Costco one time and they gave you a bad experience. You never go to Costco ever again, right? So you may have gone to Costco one time. Let's say you're going to spend an average of, I don't know, 100 or $200 per trip to Costco. You go to Costco one time, you spend $200, they give you the worst customer service in the world and you're just completely unhappy with it. You never go back. They've missed out on 500 other visits in the future where you're going to spend 100, $200. Right? Now, once we do the math at scale there, what, 500 times 200, it's a lot of money.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: I'll tell you that. If somebody is spending 100 or $200 in Costco, then that's a miracle. Like that's, that's quite hard to do.
That means you came in and didn't buy much. I think the average spend in Costco is significantly higher than that. I mean, it's scary. It's scary math to think that I.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: A customer get getting 200 from a customer, they're getting 10,000 from a customer over five years. So that's the biggest differentiator. Like yes, they might lose 10% or 20% of their initial revenue because they're issuing a refund or they're having to take a loss on products. Right? But these, some businesses are short sighted where they see it as, oh I don't want to lose a 10 or 20% of my margin because I have to do refunds. But the businesses that survive long term, like Costco, these massive businesses, like Uber Eats, like Amazon, they understand that by sacrificing that 10, 20% upfront, right, initially or in general, they're going to get 100 to 200 times more out of their customers because they're going to keep them forever.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: They do have a trick, though. I mean, they do have a hack to this. And I think it would be unfair for us to have this discussion without mentioning that Costco make all their money. And when I talk about money, I talk about profits, right? Not revenue. They make all their profits on day one.
Now, this is something most people don't understand. So they're actually making most of their profits. Memberships on the membership. That's it. And actually, the way they work with their providers is that they're only putting a small percentage, very minimal percentage over their products. And it's pretty much not always true. There's some exclusions to this, but they're pretty much charging the bare minimum that they can. Now, yes, this is so incredibly interesting because what that means is that they don't actually lose a lot of money by doing a return.
Now, to me, that is brilliant because they're basically saying, we're going to look for the best products. We're going to take all of our money upfront in the membership, which is our profits, and then we're going to structure our relationships with our vendors to make sure that we have great products and that if we don't, we're going to fix it and we're going to create the incentive design. So the fact that if we don't have great products, we'll be incentivized to take them out, swap them, and it will be a bad situation both for us and for our vendors. So I think the beauty in that is, you know, okay, it's fine to say that we need to be customer centric, but this idea or concept of having your whole strategy harmonize with a customer first approach is actually not an easy thing to do.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: 100%, well, something beautiful Costco does. So go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you off.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: No, no, go ahead, go ahead.
It's an easy way to get me to not shut up by, you know, talking about Costco, which is probably a sad thing within itself.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Well, there's. They do a lot of things brilliant, like when, when you examine the economics of Costco, they do a lot of things. Brilliant. Because if you look at all of the food they have, they have loss leaders on their food as well. So, like, they're hot dogs. It's one of the chicken bakes. Those are amazing. By the way, I, where I am in Miami, we don't have chicken or we don't have a Costco nearby. It's like 40 minutes away. But I will drive 40 minutes for a Costco chicken bake.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: You want to hear, you want to hear something ridiculous? When we buy a house, we're like, how far is the Costco from. Like, this is sad. This is just sad. But that's one of the things we think about and it's almost a joke in the household. Like, how far is the Costco from this prospective house that we want to move into?
[00:12:04] Speaker B: I think this, this type of brand affinity is what every business needs. If they need to succeed, if they want to succeed. Costco has done it better than anyone else because of things like chicken bakes or hot dogs or their pizza, because of their prices, because of the way they're structured. Like you said, it's not easy to build a customer centric business, but when you do it, it is wildly successful.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: So this is so important because what you said at the beginning was the who, right? Who are you selling to? And actually that's incredibly important because Costco have basically came and done something that a lot of people feel uncomfortable and they've said, well, we're not going to sell to all these people.
That's not our target audience. So if you don't have a family of at least I would say two or three people, you're not a Costco customer. It makes absolutely no sense. So they've actually been taking the approach of, oh, we're going to have a narrower audience.
This is incredibly difficult to do, to say, well, we're going to sell to less people.
And that's a counterintuitive thing. People will like, oh, the more people that can be our customers, the better.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Sometimes smaller is bigger, if that makes sense. Why sometimes the more you.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: I think this is incredibly important. So explain that to us. Why can smaller be bigger?
[00:13:19] Speaker B: So when I say smaller is bigger, it's because you have a more focused niche or you have a more specific audience you can reach. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to have, trying to reach everyone, but when you do that, you kind of become vanilla. You. You go too wide and now you don't relate to anyone. Right. The reason that these businesses are able to build such a loyal audience is because they relate to their customers. Right. Their customers relate to them. Now when you try to reach everyone, you become too vanilla. It's like a song with the, with the cliche lyrics. It's like we're dancing in the club. It's like, okay, this is, we've heard this 100 times. This doesn't relate to me or anyone anymore. Right. It's too broad, it's too generic. And you and these artists that make this music have made the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone, which in reality you can't. You know, so some businesses, they do better when they try to appeal. They know who their audience is, they know who they want to attract, and they can appeal to these audiences. You see it all the time with, with car brands as well.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: Toyota is not trying to appeal to a BMW customer. They're not trying to take. Toyota is one of the most successful car brands in the world. They sell the most units globally, but they're not trying to steal BMW customers. They're not trying to take Lamborghini customers. They're not making these cars that, that are like super luxury. Here's a super luxury Toyota that, that it's better than a BMW. They never say that. They make these, these super reliable cars. They don't break down. They, they last hundreds of thousands of miles. And this is their market. They know where they fit. And the people that purchase their cars are the people that want this specific car, right?
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: So it works for them and vice versa for a BMW, they're not making super reliable cars that last 200,000 miles. They're making luxury cars.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: For people that have a bigger budget. And by narrowing that, by going a little bit smaller, it's actually bigger for them because they're playing in their lane and they're attracting their specific customers. So Costco's done that really well. But like I said, even with car brands, you get it all across the board.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I think what people miss is the frictions in the sales process. And that if you have to work with a hundred people and only convert 1%, it's way better for you to work with 20 people and convert 50%. And I think that's the key insight that people are missing. By reducing your frictions throughout the whole sales process, converting more, what you're doing is you're actually making a leaner, less expensive sales process marketing process, which just works much better, even though maybe you've narrowed your audience. So I think that's a key insight that people just miss.
The Japanese Car manufacturers, it's almost a personality, right? Like, I only buy Honda, which is also Japanese. The reason for that is I know I'm not going to need to go into the shop. I just know it's going to work. And I just know that I'm afraid of, you know, not having the car, having it break down, having issues. So I just want a reliable car. That's it. And they have that brand, right? Honda, Toyota, they have that brand that we're giving you a reliable product, full stop.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Exactly. So these brands, what they do is again, all the successful brands, they'll narrow down and they know who their target customer is. And like you said, the friction when it comes to the sales process, certain people like to be sold a certain way, right.
If you have a Honda customer, Toyota customer, they have a certain buyer profile, you understand what's gonna make them wanna buy your vehicle. And those are the features that you can add into your sales process or your advertising or your marketing. Whereas if you try to hit everyone, your message becomes too convoluted. There's too much going on there. There's no way that you're gonna get all this information across and it becomes too heavy of a lift.
As opposed to just targeting the people that, you know, you like. Keeping it simple.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: That is so important. I mean, there's also another, I think, undervalued point. And what you're really saying is that by having a narrower focus on your quote unquote Persona, that actually helps you in how you message in marketing, it helps you in how you sell. If it's on the floor or on the Internet or on zooms or whatever, it helps you with defining your product. What are the features that are important? So it's just across the board, supporting your company to make decisions. It's not just a fluffy thing that we do in, you know, brand. Right. It's not that it's all across the board. So I really appreciate your point. You, you, you said something which I, you know, it made me stop and be like, whoa, what the hell is Renee talking about here? You said networking is working on yourself.
I have never heard that before.
So you got to explain this.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So I love this. You really did your homework. I said this. I feel like I said this years ago when I say networking is working on yourself. This is kind of what I mean by that. Typically when you go to network, who are you trying to network with?
[00:18:40] Speaker A: So for me, it's probably a weird answer. I'm trying to connect to interesting people who have the best Stories to tell who can really helped me grow and learn in some way. So I'm looking for something that will surprise me, something that will, you know, somebody that I can maybe have an argument with and explore a topic with. So for me, it's all about. And which is. This is very. I don't think people say this, but I'm almost looking to have discord, right. And to try and change my worldviews through the interactions that I have.
And I'll throw out a bomb and say something, and then I just want to listen and see what are people going to say, how they think about things. And the people that I most enjoy are the ones that have, you know, great stories, great perspectives, and can really communicate those well. So that's my personal take.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Well, no. So this is great. So you said something that you said, I want to meet people that can change my perspectives or give me something. Right. So when I say networking is working on yourself, it's working on yourself through other people. So for example, we're networking now. I met you, you're giving me insights. And in turn, I'm working on myself through that insight. I'm becoming sharper as a person because I'm gaining insights from you in the same way. You said you want to meet interesting people. Or you can almost have discourse with.
You know how they say iron sharpens iron? That's almost what you're doing. You're mentally sharpening yourself. So when you network, you're essentially working on yourself through other people. It's iron sharpening iron. So I always tell people, like, when you go to network, it's to learn things, it's to build connections. You yourself are almost becoming sharper because of it. And I don't think people look at it like that. They don't. Look, networking, it's almost like a mental gym, right? In the same way you would go to the gym and you would exercise and you get in better shape. Networking, you're doing it for your mind.
Similar to reading a book, similar to consuming information. Network acts in the same way, but again, people look at it as kind of like socializing, I think. I think you're actually making yourself smarter in one way or another. If you're doing it correctly. Yes.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: By taking this mindset that you're describing, really, you have to be curious. If you're being curious, then you're listening. You're focusing on what the other person has to say. Now, what we know from, you know, our friend, how to make friends and influence people, which is one of the best books on sales that have ever been written, in my opinion.
We know that people feel good when they talk about themselves and that they will feel good about you. Because the social psychology teaches us then when people, if you make somebody feel good, they'll make feel good about you. So there's, there's so many second level, you know, things that happen when you take this approach to life of curiosity that is just awesome. It's a net, net, net win. So, so, you know, I think that I would, I would push our audience that not only that this philosophy makes sense, but it has so much value in it because it changes the way you behave, it changes the way people see you. It changes the relationship to the, to the level that it's actually building a relationship. So it's such a wonderful, wonderful. I've never heard this before. I'm so delighted. I love it. I absolutely love it.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Well, I think people are inherently selfish, right? And I don't mean this in a bad way. I don't mean that as a negative, but people like to talk about themselves. They like to feel heard. They like to feel like they belong somewhere. They like to feel seen, right?
So it's actually funny because I had friends that were all into this like, dating stuff and how to talk to women and do all this stuff. And these guys are single. I'm the only one that's married. These guys are all single and they're all into this, like, here's how you should talk to a woman. And I, I hear this stuff and I was kind of explaining to them. I think the ultimate way to talk to a woman is to say nothing because they're saying, well, you should say this or this or this. But I think personally, like, if you're on a date and again, I, I don't know, I've been married for a couple years.
The less you say the better, right? The more that the girl gets to, to say, the better. Because people just want to feel seen, they want to feel heard. The same applies for a sales call. The same applies for a business meeting.
The less you say, the better because it allows the other person to express themselves, feel heard, feel seen, feel like they belong somewhere, feel accepted. And I think essentially that's what it comes down to in marketing. People like the people that make them feel like they belong or they feel heard or they feel seen, they feel listened to. So not only can you learn something from it, but the other person feels better about it as well.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's. Look, I've been married for almost 20 years. We've been together for 20 years. So I can tell you that the, you know, as men, and I'm generalizing here, but as men, we want to solve problems. So that's what we do. Right. It's our easy go to. And one of the lessons that I learned and I come into a discussion with my wife and I, you know, I'm that stupid. I'm that stupid that I need to ask the question, are you looking for a solution?
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Are you looking, do you need me.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: To fix something because that's what I want to do, or, you know, do you want me to carefully listen to you? And here's the thing. Nine out of ten times she wants me to listen.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: So maybe I don't need to ask the question anymore.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: This is something I'm learning. Right. Like I said, I've been married for a couple years, but I think I'm slowly learning that it's not always about solving the problem. It's sometimes it's just about hearing what the problem is.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You know, I had this really interesting experience, and this is very, very counterintuitive.
I started off as a hardcore geek and engineer.
So I went into the. To talk to my lead engineer. He's an electrical engineer. And I would just talk through my problem. And he is my role model of, like, the best listener in the world. Here's the thing. He may be asked, like, in, like, in an hour's discussion, he maybe spent three minutes talking. And in those three minutes, what he spent his time on is asking a question.
That's it. Here's the thing.
I feel like it was every single time that I came in there. I spoke for an hour. He almost said nothing. By the time I left, I had the solution to my problem.
And I think that that art of asking questions and listening is such a powerful thing that is completely, completely undervalued. And if you think that, oh, I'm just going to listen and you're not giving value. No, you are. You are.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: A lot of the time, too.
Diagnosis comes from listening. You can't diagnose a problem or an issue or solve a problem if you don't know what the problem is. So a lot of the times it's literally just a gathering that information, listening, so that you can help determine a solution. Right. Like, similar. In my world, I currently own a consulting firm. We deal with a lot of advertising and business consulting. And a lot of people assume that, like, when clients come to us and they pay us to Help them with their business, that we go in there and we tell them what to do. It's never usually like that. Usually it's, we set up a meeting, they sit down, they spend about an hour telling us what, how their business operates, what their business does, some of the things they're running into. Because not only until maybe the last 10 minutes of that hour do we have enough information, have we listened enough to be able to then determine. Okay, so here is where some of the things are to explore. Right. So a lot of it comes from listening and being able to diagnose and collecting information instead of just, hey, you should do this or this or this. Listening is a very. It's an overlooked part of like every single business or process or trade or even relationship.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you just put those lenses on for a second, then suddenly, you know, all these interactions that we have where the salesperson, you know, maybe spends three minutes on listening to the customer, and then it just makes the whole next part seem like this incredible hubris and arrogance for you to tell me what I need after spending less than five minutes listening and get to know it. Just suddenly it seems totally weird the way that we're doing business today. So I think your perspective and point of view is very refreshing and very needed in today's world. And I think the problem is that we think we're doing these things, but we're not. And that's the hard part. Right. We think we're customer centric, but we're not. And kind of really being retrospective and introspective is difficult. And it's something that we need much more of in this world. Now, you talked about, you actually talked about diagnosing problems.
Not today, but also in general. You've mentioned this in the past. What is the techniques that you have built over your career to get really good at diagnosing a problem beyond listening? Like, how do you approach this? What are the pitfalls that people can make or the mistakes in the process of diagnosing a problem?
[00:27:52] Speaker B: That's a really good question. And there's. There's a two. Two part answer to that. And I want to see if I can explain it without boring you to death.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Look, this is. We. This show is not about the easy thing. So.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Yes. So typically, let's say we're diagnosing a business problem.
We look at. We look at two things. We look at, is it a, is it a mindset problem or is it a technical problem? Right. Or let's say it's an advertising solution. Is It a technical problem or is it a mindset problem? And when we diagnose these issues, we try to look at the numbers first, right? Because oftentimes I want to say 75% of the times, the numbers will tell you the answers. And you said you were an engineer. What kind of engineer were you?
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Software.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Software. So a lot of the times, if you have a software or if software is not working, you don't jump to like a, oh, it's because this is wrong. You look to try and find where the bug is at, right? You look for the syntax or the semantics of the code to see where the issue is at, why it's doing what it's doing. So 75% of the time, we look for the technical issues, we look for the mechanical issues.
And this applies in the business world as well, right? Is your advertising costing too much? Is your close rate too low?
What is the issue here is, are people clicking off of your website or leaving your website? Is your content not getting shared? We look at these specific mechanical things, these technical things, and that's where we'll do a diagnosis, right? And then the second part of it, this, the second half, it almost becomes like a mindset thing where, hey, why, like in this case, why is the software not built? Well, I only coded for an hour when I should have been coding for eight hours. So that's why it's not done yet. That's why it's going slower than it should be. Right. So. Or what, what. What kind of organizational structure do you have that you're only accomplishing so little in the, in the amount of time that you have? So typically, there's two things. It's technical, mechanical, or it's like almost mindset or organization, I would say. But when it comes to diagnosing, we've just had a lot of years of experience, so we can look at something, tell you if it's broken in the same way that you could probably look at code and see where people have errors. That's a. That's when it comes to diagnosing issues, it just comes from experience, expertise.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: I think what's interesting is that a lot of times we have these assumptions about our business.
This is the problem. This is where we have an issue. You know, this is not happening well. And we're being led astray by social psychology biases. And the numbers don't reflect the reality of what we think we know. So there's this incredibly surprising gap between our perceptions of reality and reality. And I would argue that where it becomes really interesting is when we compare the two, what are our assumptions?
What is the data that we have? And do they align now? If they align, yeah. Okay. But if they don't, I think that's where it gets interesting. It's like, well, why is this surprising to us? Why is this different than what we thought it was?
[00:31:11] Speaker B: So there's something we do now where we almost do a diagnosis or an analysis because we.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: I.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: This is one of my favorite quotes. Men lie, women lie, numbers don't. They'll always tell you the truth of what you need to know. So we'll do two separate analysis now, and we'll overlap them. We'll do one analysis with our team internally. We'll look at the numbers and say, hey, what do we think looking at these numbers? What do we think the issue is? Or what can get better? And then we'll also take all of those numbers, put them on a spreadsheet, upload them into Chat GPT, and we'll use AI to give us some insights. So we'll upload a spreadsheet with numbers onto Chat GPT and we'll say, hey, based on this spreadsheet, what can you tell us about this business or where it's going wrong or how it can increase its revenue or how it can lower its costs? And then once we have our insights from our team and the insights from AI ChatGPT, we'll then compare what we said and what ChatGPT said. And typically, wherever there's overlap, that tends to be the truth and that tends to be the correct solution to a business issue.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: There is something brilliant about what you're doing because you basically are using AI to play the devil's advocate. Yes. You're saying, look, this doesn't. You know what? ChatGPT doesn't have to necessarily be true. All we're doing is we're saying, let's create some discord within our team. Let's take a different approach. Let's avoid those of us who are familiar with social psychology groupthink. Let's avoid these biases that are kind of tying us down by taking a different perspective and then having that discourse.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Is this true?
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Is this not true? Pros and cons? That's absolutely delightful. And it almost doesn't matter if ChatGPT is right or wrong, because really, the process of that discord is almost more important than the, you know, the results themselves that you got, which is. It's delightful. I've never heard that before. That's. That's absolutely interesting. Yeah. Are There cases where, you know, ChatGPT has come up with things that your team wasn't even thinking about, and that turned out to be actually very interesting, 100%.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: There's been times where we're completely off base and we're wrong, and ChatGPT will give us a solution or a connection where we just didn't have the foresight to predict that. So one thing we did one time is we put in a client's advertising numbers. We took a look ourselves and we gave it to ChatGPT to look at. And we were thinking that we just needed to spread the money across different advertising channels. Again, I don't want to get super technical because it's a little bit boring, but this client was spending on TikTok for paid ads. They're spending on YouTube and Google. They were spending on Facebook. We thought we had to diversify it more. We plug it into ChatGPT and ChatGPT said, hey, stop spending your ad money on all these other platforms. Just use Facebook. And we're like, what the heck? And then it put together a direct correlation based on. Based on the numbers that it saw, and we actually ended up listening to ChatGPT and we got better results that way. So I think the, with the, with the development of AI and how it's growing, it's putting data scientists, it's giving data scientists a hard time to compete because now it can just. You can plug numbers in and have this AI that's running on a different level come up with insights that you normally would have missed.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: You must have been. I mean, I'm imagining that your team or other people called you batshit crazy when you first proposed this process that we're gonna, you know, we're gonna run our thinking through ChatGPT. How did that, how did that. I mean, clearly you're doing it today, but tell me about that first conversation where you're like, oh, let's do this.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Well, you know what it was. We, we have a lot of people that, that are creative, but we don't have any people. Anyone that's like a doc, that's a doctor in mathematics or has. Has any sort of a super advanced degree. We don't have a physics, like a physics. A rocket scientist on our team. Right. We don't have any data scientists. So we're a lot of guys that we understand business, we understand advertising, but when it comes to the nitty gritty of all of the numbers, we have a fundamental understanding that's carried us pretty quick, pretty far. But when it Comes to like the deep analysis of numbers. We know that's not our strength, right. And we want to use the tools that we have with us. So we look at this thing AI and say, what if we did what if we just took all of this information, ran it through AI, see what it says. We don't have to listen. I made it very clear, we don't have to listen to it. If it sounds stupid, we just scrap it. But let's just run it and see what happens. And funny enough, the first two or three times we did it, the AI came to the exact same conclusion as us. And we're thinking, okay, this is great. It gave us another layer of confirmation. Right? Something that's non biased. Right. Because human beings, we tend to be swayed one way or another. How we feel about a client might sway the way we diagnose their problems or their issues. Whereas AI, it can't be swayed. It's a neutral party. It's going based off of the data that's given. So we implemented it, we said, hey, we don't have to listen. Sure enough, the first two or three times it agreed with us. The fourth time it didn't. And then we started to, it started to give us another. It covered some of our blind spots. I think that's really important in business is covering your blind spots. Because human beings, we have this sense of hubris where we think we know it all. We want to feel like we, we are the best. But when you have something that's a neutral party that you know isn't trying to hurt you, it's not trying. Well, I don't know, Terminator movies would prove otherwise. But you have a neutral party that you know isn't trying to hurt you, that's just doing what it's told. Then it gives you a little bit of almost a dependable way to check your work.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Right? Right. And I love the fact that you can just tell it like, this is what I'm thinking, what am I missing? Like, what are other risks that, that could exist? What are other challenges that we might think about? And then you can just systematically go through the list and think, okay, is this real? Is it not? Let me run the numbers now. Let me look into this. So sometimes it's, it's. I don't know if this is really attributed to, to Rumsfeld, but it's the unknown unknowns, right? It's the things that you don't know that you don't know. Sometimes just illuminating your blind spots can just be a game changer.
And that's not an easy thing for us humans to always do. Like, what are the things that I don't know that I. Well, I don't know what I don't know.
But a computer can kind of do that nowadays with the technology. So I think that's a really healthy usage of ChatGPT. I heard horror stories, don't get me wrong. Like a person who took statistical numbers from ChatGPT, I'm like, no, never do that. Like, you need to look at a source, verify the source, make sure, because there are hallucinations. But the process that you're describing, of using it as a brainstorming partner to kind of show the devil's advocate and showcase the unknown unknowns, I think that's a very healthy process. I tremendously appreciate it. Rene. Believe it or not, we've been talking for quite a while now. We're out of time. And that's what happens when you're having fun. I have one last question to you, and this is the only scripted question we have to our guests. And it's a very personal question and it's a very difficult question. If you had to go back to 20 year old Rene, what would you advise him?
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Buy Bitcoin.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: That is the only answer. We don't allow no stock market hacking. Dig deeper, Renee.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Okay, okay. So if I had to go back to 20 year old Renee, what advice would I give him?
Funny enough, I think we did cover a lot of it today. I think 20 year old Renee was very, very headstrong and stubborn and I think a big. It led to me being successful because, because of that. But also, if I could go back and give myself some wisdom, it would just be to listen more because I could have gotten farther taking the advice of people that had done it before me instead of trying to pave my own way.
So realistically, if I go back, give 20 year old Renee some advice, it would just be to listen more to people that have done it and take less advice from people who haven't.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: That is incredibly, incredibly important. The discriminating between the experience and success of the people that you're talking about in order to value their advice.
That is a really, really important point. Just because you like the person doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. Renee, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: I appreciate you, Ari. This was a pleasure and I had a lot of fun. Thank you.
