Big Little Breakthroughs with Josh Linkner

Foreign Takes me a minute to wake myself up. Get centered. We're talking today about the pressures of innovation, right? You feel it, you, you think you need, you know, you need to do something and you keep building to whatever. We're going to talk about how to transform that, make it easier, turn it around into everyday innovation. Listen in. So one of the biggest challenges that we all face in growing our business is finding the right tech partner. So if you're looking for a tech partner right now, we know that you want to look for proven tech expertise. You want to have a delivery model that's suited to a business like yours to have costs and balance between the process and the quality delivered. You want, of course, the best quality and you want to ramp that, team up overnight, deploy, develop your tech, deploy it and then maintain it over time. You want a really process driven thing that works and fits a company like yours. I get hit up by a lot of people like this all the time. But one of our own scaling up venture incubators based in India a long time, Scaling Up a client company has a great recipe for this for companies just like ours, tailored to small to medium size, the mid market. So the benefit is far outweighs their the competitors in the field. I think you should check them out and see if they are a fit for you and your business in developing your tech solutions, your tech offerings. Clarion Technologies is the company and we've got a link. We'll throw up right there and we'll put in the show notes. Bit ly bit ly. Clariantechnology will be your link so check them out. My name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show is all about how to grow and scale your business no matter what's happening in the economy or in your industry or the part of the world that you're from. And you can find hundreds and hundreds of episodes now. We put out three a week now with tips, ideas, stories from other CEOs, gurus, experts, that kind of thing along with all the downloads. Find them on all your major podcast platforms as well as our own website, scalingcoach.com, we've also got a free book book offer there. You can get a copy of Scaling up there for free. So listen in now as we talk with Josh Linkner. Josh is a returning guest of the show. It's been quite a few episodes now since we had him on and he's a started his career as a jazz guitarist. He's founder of five companies, a best selling new York Times best selling business author, five books, five companies. There's a pattern here, right? We got to go for six. And both now, right? Proven system to develop breakthrough creativity is disciplined dreaming. The road to reinvention is another one. We're talking today actually about big little breakthroughs. And so welcome show, Josh.

Thanks. Great to be back with you.

Thanks so much, Josh. I asked him in getting ready for the show. So, Josh, are you familiar with our show? He's like, dude, I've been on your show before. I'm like, oh my God. I was thinking we'd met at one of the summits or something. I'm such a, such a dope. Anyway, I'm so happy to have you back on. So talk. We talked before, but it's been, you know, a couple hundred episodes since then about your, your background. Give our listeners and viewers a little, a bit like, a little more color than the highlights that I gave about how you come to writing this book. You know, what was wrong with your upbringing that got you in this place?

Well, I grew up in the city of Detroit. I was born in the city, not the suburbs. And it had to be kind of scrappy, you know. So I ended up starting my career as a jazz musician. I put myself through college playing music. I've played gigs in all over the world and really strange, dark, smoky rooms. But what happened at age 20 is I started a business and I didn't know what I was doing other than being able to play jazz. But I ended up getting very involved in technology. And over the next 30 years, I started, built and sold five companies, then started a venture capital fund and investing in early stage tech companies here in Detroit, helping to rebuild our city. And I just, through all this work, became really passionate about this notion of helping people become more creative. I really believe that the answers that we seek for the biggest challenges and the biggest opportunities in our lives is already within us. And if we can build the skill of human creativity, we can solve just about anything. And so that's what led me to write this new book, Big Little Breakthroughs. How Small Everyday Innovations Drive Oversized results.

Yes, Big little. It sounds like a kid's term, right? Big little. What size do you want? I want big little, dad.

Having four kids myself, I know the feeling there. But. So the notion of the book is that it basically flips the principle the way we think of innovation upside down. You know, most of us think of it as the giant product breakthroughs and change the world initiatives, but in that context, it's out of reach. For most of us, certainly many in scaling companies. And so the idea here is cultivating instead of these wildly risky moonshots, cultivating small everyday innovations, think of them as micro innovations. And those little baby ideas, first of all, they add up to big things. They are way less risky, they're more accessible to all of us and they're building critical skills at the same time. So I think of it as a much more pragmatic approach to driving creativity into a business in order to drive meaningful outcomes.

Yeah, I think that's really great and we're going to get into some of the examples and principles of the story. But I loved looking at kind of the call outs for it, which I think we'll loop back on because I think they're really essential for companies to think out again and again. There are moments where you have really big breakthroughs, but then there are a thousand or a million other moments where you create little incremental changes that add up to something substantial over time.

You know, Harvard came out with a study and they, because you know, what do we normally think of? We think of Elon Musk and the problem is again, most of us can't make a billion dollar bet. But really. So Harvard study shows that 77% of the US gross domestic product comes not from those big sexy, attention grabbing innovations, but from the little baby ones like the meat and potatoes everyday innovations. So let's not fool ourselves that there's some minimum threshold under which creativity doesn't count. We can be creative in the way we run our Monday morning meeting. We can be innovative in the way that we land a new customer or better serve an exist. So there's room for all of us to be creative one little baby step.

At a time, you know, so there's a whole bunch of different themes we could touch on there. But let's start with the Elon Musk one because I am reminded of an interview with Elon's ex wife and she was talking about being a billionaire and she said listen, the world isn't organized to make. I'm paraphrasing, right, it's not her exactly, but she said basically the world isn't organized, isn't interested in making you a billionaire. The world will reward you tackling massive problems and perhaps turn you into a billionaire. And I think that's one of the things that's really cool about Elon's story is he's just gone after really, really meaty problems. And whether you're trying to turn us into a multi planetary species or End run our energy issues and climate impacts in something that we all touch every day, which is the energy cycle, you know, he's tackling those kinds of things. And that's not just how can I make a buck?

Well, I totally agree in that money follows, it doesn't lead. And so if we're doing important work and being, you know, pursuing things that with nobility, that money comes as a byproduct. I will say though that we don't only have to swing for the fences. So again, awesome that he's doing that. No, no criticisms of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or whatever. But for we normal folk, for we mortals, you know, it doesn't have to be like that. You know, if I said to you, hey Bill, like let's just solve racial injustice with one idea and we've got five minutes to come up with the idea, both of us would freeze because it's like this giant intractable problem a little bit big. Right? But if I said to you, hey, like in the next five minutes, do you think either of us could come up with one small idea that might help the problem for sure we would. So my only point is that we don't have to put the pressure on ourselves to come up with some elegant silver bullet, change the world concept. Those are great when you find them, but that's not the only thing that counts. Those little baby steps are important too.

Yeah. But the fixation on any problem, whether it be a large or small problem and I think is interesting. Right. And, and you talk about that as well, that, that constraint and, and the focus on the thing rather than your mouse trap is let's look at the, your mouse problem.

You're so right. And in fact, so in the book I, what I really did. So I spent a thousand hours researching for the book and doing interviews. I interviewed CEOs, billionaires, celebrity entrepreneurs, Grammy Award winning musicians, and also lots of everyday people doing really creative stuff. And I tried to unpack the habits, tactics and mindsets of the most innovative leaders on the planet. And one of. So I end up listing out sort of eight core mindsets of everyday innovators. And most of these are counterintuitive. They're the opposite of what we've been told. And you hit one right on the head, which is one of the principles is called fall in love with the problem. And so the notion is we're all solution oriented and when we see a challenge like we all right, what's the fastest way we can solve it all at once and then Once we come up with a idea, not necessarily the idea, we become fixated on it and we're like tunnel vision. We're overly committed to a particular solution, the mousetrap. As opposed to saying, let's understand why we have a mouse problem in the first place, let's study it from every angle, let's look at it with different lenses, and let's stay committed to solving the problem by the best possible means necessary, even if we have to change the manner in which we're doing so, as opposed to falling in love with a particular solution. So you're exactly right on that. Whether big or small, let's start by falling in love with the problem.

So why not to make it interesting, why don't you tell us some of the stories of the people you interviewed, the companies, the cases that you heard about, and, and we'll get some of the principles from that.

Yeah. So in the book, I don't tell the story of Netflix or Apple because we already know that that's like, who cares? That's lazy. So I scoured the world looking for those untold stories. And one of my favorites was a gentleman that I interviewed in London named Trewin Rest. So Trewin is not a billionaire, he's not a celebrity. He wears 10 year old loafers and wrinkly khaki pants. But he was focused on a problem. And the problem was that in central London, where he lived, cigarette butt litter is the biggest environmental challenge they face. And every year cities like London spent a bunch of money and don't take a. Don't really have any results. So he uses his creativity as an everyday guy. He invents something called the ballot bin. So the ballot bin is. Imagine you and I walked out of a London pub and we see like this bright yellow metal box mounted on a pole with a glass front. As we get closer, there's a two part question at the top, like, which is your favorite food? Pizza or hamburgers? And there's little receptacles encouraging smokers to vote with their butts. There's a divider so you can see when the butts fall down. It's almost like two bar charts right next to one another. And here's the thing, it was low tech and simple and it didn't require government approval, but it worked. And these ballot bins reduce cigarette litter by up to 80%. And now Trewin is in the middle of scaling up. He's in 50. He's got 57 employees, he's in 27 countries around the world. So I love telling stories like this. Again, he fell in love with the problem. He used his creativity. He was scrappy. One of the principles I talk about is using every drop of toothpaste, which is essentially making do with what you got. And being scrappy. He did a lot of experimentation. One of the principles I talk about in the book is the notion of opening a test kitchen, which is around rapid experimentation. So he tried a whole bunch of stuff that didn't work that ultimately led him to this solution. So here's a guy that is doing amazing things in the world using everyday innovation. And to me, a really inspiring story.

You know, Chip Conley told me something very similar to that. And there's an underlying thing there about a redirection of something. And I think what's great is that the ballot bin didn't say, you know, hey, dirty litterer, scummy, you know, didn't try to guilt you into filling it. It like just poses a question and, and throws it out there and lets you kind of play with it. It makes it playful. It kind of gamifies the whole thing, which is something that we talk about a great deal. Anyway, Chip Connelly story was they, they, they did these in joie de vie. They built these hotel chains and they repurposed properties that weren't doing so well and they brought some theming and fun and playful branding to them. And at the, at this, the hotel next to UC Berkeley, they put the opposing team's logo or mascot in the urinal to get people to pee right the. The local Cal fans alum to pee right on the. The. The their rival's logo on a regular basis. Like really great to get people, men to do what they need to do to keep the bathroom a little cleaner.

So funny. Well, you know, it's funny. One of the principles in the book is called Reach for Weird. And the notion is that many of us, we gravitate toward the tried and true. You know, we say based on historical reference, what would everybody else do? What's conventional thinking? And maybe I should do that. So Reach for Weird is challenging us to find that oddball, unexpected idea that could make all the difference in the world, even if it's a bit bizarre. And so, you know, a couple examples of that. There's a town in Iceland and they were facing a problem where traffic incidents involving pedestrians were, were up 41% over the last decade. And it's not good if people are getting hit by cars. So what are the obvious things to do? You know, install traffic lights, hire more Police officers issue more fines here. Instead, they painted the crosswalk like a 3D optical illusion. So as you drive your car up to this. This crosswalk, it looks like these slabs of concrete are floating like three feet in the air, and there's no way you're going to barrel through the intersection. So there's the little. Little things like that, to me, are so encouraging because it doesn't require money. It requires ingenuity. One other quick one that was one of my favorites is there's a company in Korea, I guess we're bouncing all over the country today. But so you ever go to the grocery store and you're faced with that problem, do you buy the yellow bananas or the green ones? So the yellow bananas are. They're ripe today. Four days later, they're all mushy. You buy the green bananas. You have to wait, like a month for a decent banana. So anyway, this company in Korea, instead of just throwing up their arms in defeat saying, hey, nothing I can do, being in the banana business, they package their bananas, and in a little package, and it's clear on top, and they're organized by ripeness. So you have one that's like bright yellow, one that's a little less light yellow, leading to green. It's like a spectrum. So each day that you wake up, the next banana is perfectly ripe just for that day. And so keep in mind, like, same bananas, weird approach to market. And the results, they're crushing the competition in terms of sales volume, and they're charging three times per ounce of banana compared to the competitive set. So I think when we. When we see a challenge, that we're like, oh, man, I can't do anything about it. Let's double down on our creativity. Let's reach for weird.

I like that idea of reaching for weird. And we can think of lots of examples where somebody did something a little bit out of the norm. Don't keep doing what your industry does in the offering, the business model, the pricing, like, whatever. Do something a little different, a little weird. See what happens, play with it, right? And we see that again and again with so many of our breakthroughs, whether it's Chip Conley, whether it's the bananas, whether it's the sidewalk, right? Whether it's Costco back in the day, right. Decided they were going to charge a fee to shop in their store. And that was radical and weird and different. Today, it's commonplace, but it provides two thirds of their operating profit for the company, and cash flows each. The building of each new store and they're 108 billion plus retailer. Right. All based on a small weird innovation that's now global in scale.

You know, we talked about several mindsets like reach for weird and use every drop of toothpaste. There's some other fun ones. Fall seven times, stand eight. Don't forget the dinner mint is a fun one. But, but the other thing we took took a look at is the tactics. So most of us rely on brainstorming when we want to generate ideas, which is sort of this outdated by the way, was invented in 1958. Like we need an upgrade. Anyway, one, one simple tactic which, you know, back to the, the Costco example, I call it the judo flip. So basically here's the way it works. Let's say you're trying to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. Getting very tactical for a minute. Start by making a list. What does everybody else do? What does the conventional wisdom suggest? What are the traditions in our industry? And then draw a simple line down the page and next to every entry. Just ask yourself a question. What would it look like if I judo flipped it? So if everybody shops for free and the retailer earns their profit on per sale, the judo flip would be pay to shop and we'll sell you the stuff it cost. So the point is that when we look at traditions by blindly following the innovations of others, that's no recipe for growth and scaling. On the other hand, when we judo flip, when we look at the opposite of what others are doing, that really starts to unlock fresh possibility.

Yeah. And I think one of the challenges in that judo flip is even noticing the norms in your industry. Right. And for that, that's where a coach, a consultant, a good friend, a spouse, an investor can come in outside your industry and say, why do you do things that way? Like, you don't have to do it that way. There's other ways to do it. They do it like this in another industry and that's where like that outside voice who doesn't know anything. We think about so many of our entrepreneurs that have grown their company, they look back and they're like, well, I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn't know, like. And they made beginners mistakes that actually turned out to be kind of inspired, random differences that were useful.

Well, it's very true that, you know, when you look at, by the way, many of the most successful new changes in an industry, they came from a beginner. Like back to Elon Musk. He wasn't in the auto industry historically, he was a beginner in that industry. And you see that very often where someone from the outside is coming in with a beginner's mind, and they're not bound to tradition, and they're able to discover fresh possibility. But by the way, I think you're so right about having a coach or others provide input, because, you know, sometimes we get into our own echo chambers and we don't see. We lose sight of things. And it is nice to have somebody to point out, hey, you're about to step into a pothole. How about you take, like, one step to the left and you can avoid that tragedy. So I couldn't agree more. There's no pride in slugging through the marsh by yourself. You're better off getting someone to help you through it.

Well, you look at the rocket industry and you're like, you know, certainly one of the expensive things is we throw it away after a reuse. What would it be like if we drove to the market and after each trip to the market, we threw the car away and got a new car? Kind of crazy. You go, how can we make them reusable? Certainly in sci fi, they're reusable, right? They go up and down all the time, but in our reality, they just get disposed of. So that's a fundamental shift. You know, speaking of which, you talk about constraints and the power of that. I've talked about that a lot. Why don't you share a little bit about or some examples of the value of. Of not having abundant resource or unlimited.

You know, I had the privilege of speaking with leaders of organizations around the world, and very often the first thing I hear is, I would love to be more innovative. I wish my team was more innovative. But I'm like, all right, wait for it, wait for it. But I'm missing. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough bandwidth. I don't have enough people. I don't have enough raw materials. And I always playfully respond that, you know, if the amount of external resources that you had equaled your level of creativity, the federal government would be the most creative organization on the planet, and startups would be the least. And of course, you know, the exact opposite is true. So, you know, what I've learned through experience is that sometimes unlimited resources doesn't drive creativity. It's quite the opposite. So as mentioned, I played guitar. I still play jazz guitar. I put myself to college playing music. I had a professor that would force me to remove strings from my guitar. So I would have to take off one, two, sometimes three strings from the instrument. So you figure, okay, if your resources are cut in half, your creativity is going to be all messed up. But what it did is it forced me to discover different ways to solve musical problems. I couldn't rely on the patterns that I knew. And actually, as a result, when I had fewer strings, fewer resources, my creativity skyrocketed. So when we find ourselves in that inevitable situation because there's never enough unlimited resources, instead of that being an intractable burden, that can be a real opportunity.

You know, I love. I love that. I've never heard that as a thing before in. In the musical realm, but in anything, like, take something away and you'll see somebody get creative in the moment. Not like, I'll go away and I'll think about something, but right now, in the moment, I've got to solve a problem. I've got to deal with something. And I. I've often said that, listen, if you want somebody to invent the lever, you don't just give them a bunch of things and talk about how to lift things. You throw them in a cave with a stick and you say, great, dig your way out and. And they'll figure out how to use that stick in a new way.

Yeah. And just back to being creative. I just think that, you know, in today's environment, when we have, you know, complex complexity through the roof, fierce competition, and especially coming out of COVID with many of the, you know, sort of patterns of the past being broken, I think it's incumbent on us to all, as leaders, if we really want to grow to drive creativity. Because, you know, let's face it, today, many of the advantages of the past have become commoditized and outsourced and automated. And I'll just share a personal example. I built a business as I scaled up from zero to 500 people, grew to $100 million before I sold it. So I was trying to win a big account at one point, and we made it to the finals. There was a single buyer that was going to consolidate all their purchases of our type of. We did digital promotions and give a boatload of business to one supplier. So I bumped into this guy and his wife in an industry conference, and he was, like, kind of obnoxious and dismissive, and I was trying to close the deal. Nothing worked. Anyway, I go to the airport. Turns out this guy and his wife were on the same outbound flight that I was. And here's what happens next. Can't even make this up. So the guy Gets an upgrade to first class. Being the gentleman that he is, the guy takes the seat for himself, sends his wife back to coach. And by the way, like, if I did that with my wife, game over. Like, that's not happening. Anyway, next thing that happens, I get an upgrade too. And I not making this up, I got the seat next to him. So here's like, the biggest sales opportunity I've ever had. I'm sitting next to this guy for two and a half hours. You'd think going for the kill, but I judo flipped it. I said, hey, man, I got the seat next to you. He's like, oh, yeah, cool, we could chat. I said, you know, I'd love that, but I plan to catch up on a bunch of work on this flight. And I noticed that your wife is sitting in back. How about we switch seats? So, you know, you might say, well, that was a pretty stupid move. Like, why, why would you blow an opportunity like that? Flight takes off. I didn't think about it that much until we landed. And the first thing I do, I looked at my mobile device and it says, Josh was email from my office, deal signed. So here's what happened. And true story. The guy said, look, I, I, I was down to some finalists. I was waiting for someone to break the tie. And when you demonstrated a willingness to be innovative in the moment, he said, that's who I knew I needed. And so before that flight took off, he texted into his headquarters, his legal team signed the deal, and it was a $30 million deal happened because I gave the seat to his wife on an airplane. So, you know, let's challenge ourselves to say, hey, you know what? I know what the obvious thing is. We all know what the obvious thing is, but let's maybe do the less obvious thing, because that's what can drive results.

Yeah, be creative, play with something. Look for something. I think there's also something like that is there that was obvious to you, and there's a human side of it that is connected to something a little bit bigger and broader that probably occurred to you more naturally than he's like, all in this. Sit in first class because I've got work to do or something like that.

Right? Well, you know, he said to me after he said, you know, because you express some humanity instead of only chasing the bottom line, you know, that said he meant a lot to him. And so, you know, you're right. And back to your point about, you know, putting, putting the problem first and the money follows. I think the same thing. If you put Humanity first. If you lead with compassion instead of brutality, you know, like the, the results come as a byproduct of being a good human being and making the world a better place. And again, I think that the core of that is us cultivating our skills.

Around creativity, you know, just to plug another one of our things. You can go get the recording now@scalingup.com but we had or Growth Institute, I think we had Hubert Jolie on recently who did the turnaround of Best Buy. And he said, listen, way too many people are focused on the financial numbers, the profit, the cash. He said, all of that is a byproduct of doing a good job. Focus on delivering value, focus on your team, and the money will follow. That's an indicator of something. It's a lagging. Right. And of course he's right, it's obvious. But he's like, way too much attention is put on how can we get more profit instead of how can we deliver more value? How could we take care of people? How could we engage our people more?

100% agree. And in my experience interviewing people all over the world, that's a consistent theme, is that, you know, those who chase money seldom find it. Those who chase greatness, the money comes. So I couldn't agree more.

Yeah, you, a couple of the others, you breezed through the Mint, the dinner mint, right. And I, there's something there that I've applied a couple times. Talk about some of your examples in the, in the dinner mint concept.

So the principle is called don't forget the dinner Mint. And I'm sure we've all been to a nice restaurant and at the end of the meal, the server comes up and says, hey, here's a little something special from the chef. And if you ordered it, it would be fine. But because you didn't, because it was surprise and delight, it was above your expectations, it transformed the meal, and cost wise, that was a teeny little fraction of the overall expense, but it made a difference. So the dinner mint that I talk about, don't forget the dinner mint is the principle of any type of work product, whether it's internal or external, big or small. You say to yourself, okay, I delivered on expectations. But competence is not a competitive advantage. Just executing on expectations. Those are table stakes. And so the question you have to ask yourself is, can I plus it up with 1 or 2 or 3%, just a little fraction of extra effort, of extra creativity to make whatever you're doing stand out. And one of my favorite examples in the book is a Hotel in Orlando called the Magic Castle, unaffiliated with the Disney Corporation. And it's like this little teeny, kind of dumpy hotel. It's not a high end hotel. It looks just like dozens of other ones. Same location, same price point. Everything is the same except one thing. By their pool, you walk up and there's a bright red phone mounted on a wall. And you pick up the phone and there's not even a dial on the other end. You just hear someone say, what flavor? And you might say, grape. And within minutes someone runs over with a silver platter and presents you with a grape popsicle. So in other words, it's a free popsicle hotline. Now that dinner mint didn't cost them, you know, compared to their rent and their labor costs and their real estate. It didn't cost them anything. But like that made all the difference in the world. And this hotel is consistently booked when the other hotels are not. And so by the way, we're using food, but it doesn't have to be food. If you're asked to show up with five ideas, show up with seven. If you're asked to deliver on a Tuesday afternoon, deliver on a Monday morning. So it's just the over delivery, ideally with a little extra creative twist that can yield disproportionately large set of results.

Yeah, we've seen company after company employ this to great effect by stopping to think about the touch points. Oh, we ship our product into the shipping department and why don't we put something in for the shipping department so that they look for notice our boxes first, open them, process them with a little more joy, with a little more. So they, we they then and I heard about this and started doing it as well, started putting things into our box, little surprises for the shipping people who would open them just for them. Right. Not related to the product that was being shipped in. But anybody who was going to open it was going to have a little bit of delight. Now in the whole process, big companies are doing this now, right? With you know, elaborate packaging and all kinds of things like that. Companies put a lot of attention on that experience of the unboxing and that kind of thing. But you could add small, little touches too. No matter what size company yours, you could throw a few chocolate kisses in. If it's going to ship through warm places, maybe don't use chocolate kisses because they'll melt. But you know, what is it that you could add to it? If it's a service, how could you add something delightful on the back end you know, when, when our clients have successes, we like to send them little surprises. Certainly sometimes they're bigger successes than others. But we're like, hey, congrats, here's something like, we love seeing you win. You know, not when they do something for us, but when they win for themselves to help them bring more celebration to it.

That's exactly right. But it doesn't even have to be a cost of anything earlier. You know, by the way, here's. Here's a very inexpensive device that we all have that we can use at any time and underused. It's our mobile phone. All of our phones have a video. So, like, in my business, we just closed the deal today. You know what I did? It cost me $0 and it took one minute. Hey, Mr. Client, thank you so much. I just want to personally reach out and say thank you. What a privilege to work with you. I'm grateful. Can't wait to dive in. So that was a dinner. Most people send nothing. Maybe they send an email, thank you. I sent a video. It took two seconds. And so by using our creativity, it doesn't have to be using our checkbook. A little extra creativity, even in a simple way like that can make a real impact for our clients.

Well, a little touch. I noticed some people send me handwritten cards, right? Little thank you cards for something, a connection or a favor or whatever. Like, like, wow, they took the time to write that and send that off, right? And if you're bad at it, right, you can have people on your team remind you and put the card in front of your face. You can automate it in some way, too.

I think the point is that, you know, again, just. Just merely delivering on expectations, that's the ante to play. And so that's where the fun begins. You know, it's good to be competent, of course, like that, but that, that's a given. So now we got to say, how can we stand out? And it doesn't take that much extra effort to stand out.

In any realm. I think it's really cool to add a little extra something that is a little creative, a little fun, a little playful that adds delight to the experience of the other person on the other end, the recipient or recipients of the whole thing. Hey, before we talk about getting started, I want to remind our listeners about our sponsor, Clarion Technology. You may need help to develop your technology solutions. Maybe you've tapped out all your local resources or you're just, just you've got, you're moving, you're adding some technology. To a business that's not been pretty technical and you want to find the right kind of partner. Well, there's a partner in our world who's a scaling up company just like our listeners and viewers are and they do digital transformation work. So they help you develop your technology, they've got the expertise, they have a business model that's right sized for companies like ours. They have great cost balance, you know, appropriate to this kind of mid market sector. They've got a great agile process and they can throw resource at your problem, ramping it up and down to suit your development. Going from like major development and launches to maintenance and that kind of thing over time. I suggest you check them out and see if they're a fit for you. Clarion Technologies is the company and we'll put a link right up there. Bitly Clarion Technology is the link for some information. They'll get in touch with you and see if they can help you. Talk now to us if you would about getting started because I think we all like, we have these ideas, we're not sure when to begin. The more we think about it it gets bigger and bigger. Right. There's some issues there.

So one of the other, we've covered several of them but one of the other principles that I covered in the book is that start before you're ready. Ready, start before you're ready. And so the notion is, you know, most of us unfortunately we see an opportunity or a challenge and we wait, we wait for permission, we wait for a directive from a colleague or a boss, we wait do we have a bulletproof game plan or ideal conditions. But there's an inherent risk in waiting and that it we may lose an opportunity altogether or at least at best we, you know, we're giving up a head start. So I think that what I've seen anyway is the most innovative people do the opposite. They jump in knowing full well they don't have a roadmap to the, to the finish line. They're going to have to be nimble and course correct and adapt along the way. They're going to have to adapt to changing conditions and kind of find their path forward. But they don't wait because they don't want to give up cycles, they don't want to give up learning opportunities and they want to dive in. And so I think for each of us that's a real opportunity for us to dive in. Now by the way, diving in doesn't have to be taking on inappropriate levels of risk because the first pushback of course Is, wait a minute, start before I'm ready. I'm going to. I'm going to screw something up and have a negative outcome. The way we start before we're ready isn't by putting everything you've got on one idea and clenching your teeth and hoping for the best. When you get started before you're ready, the notion is you start, but you start with little experiments. So if you have an idea, hey, I'm going to pursue some opportunity. Don't go like all in and bet the farm. Try like running four crude experiments that are fixed time, fixed money experiments, like 15 bucks in 10 minutes. And so the way you start before you're ready is get started now, don't give up time, but start with little teeny experiments that over time you can refine and that way you can enjoy. You get your cake and eat it too. You get to start before you're ready, but you're not overly taking on too much risk.

You know, we have a client that is dealing with this right now, and they have a really interesting possible breakthrough idea in their business. Their category and other engineers in the upside of the company are like, oh, my God, wait a minute. If we do this within too rushed of a fashion, we're going to get overwhelmed with all of these kinds of issues. And then that's going to create cascading. We're just going to always be behind the gun and they're thinking about their sort of core business and how overwhelming it can be sometimes. And the CEO came in and he said, let's stop, guys, stop. We're going to have one, two, a handful of people who are going to try this new thing. It's not going to be. And if it is, then we'll hire a whole boatload of people and solve this. We'll throw some resource at it for a while. We get caught up. But we got to put something crude out there and get started right now and see if we can get anybody to even try this new approach, this new thing, which could lead to a breakthrough. But it's not going to happen. The moment we announce it, the moment we open the doors. At that point, people are going to go, huh? And one or two are going to start.

Think about how musicians or artists ultimately achieve greatness. It wasn't like, oh, I'm just going to practice in a closed room and never play with anybody else until I'm perfect and then I'm going to show up in Carnegie Hall. No, you play dumpy bars, you play for your friends, you play on the street, you learn your skill, you adapt, you do cycles, and over time, you sort of work your way up into the championship that you want. And that's the exact same thing in business too. It's not, you know, sitting off in stealth mode, quote, unquote, and wait until you got it perfect. It's you get started in the real world and you figure it out. And I don't remember, it may have been Lincoln that said the quote, that the secret to his success was that he, he bit off more than he could chew and chewed as fast as he could. I kind of like that.

I like that a lot. You know, I think there's a lot to that. And, and for people who are taking inspiration from the tech sector that you're talking about, they're like starting in stealth mode and that kind of thing. You know, don't forget that they're very often like the stealth mode is just to get to the demo stage, right, where you're just showing a crude demonstration of the core functionality or the mvp, the minimum viable product, right? That thing, that kind of crappy. But it's enough different if you think about that first iPhone, right? A massive breakthrough in elegance and ease and that kind of thing. The beginning one was like, kind of crappy. There's a whole bunch of things that it couldn't do that other products out at the time could do. And it didn't have the App Store and it only had a small handful of things and like that kind of thing. But I was using, you know, one of the more functional devices at the time. I saw the thing, I'm like, oh, that's so elegant. I want that. I was ready and I was thinking about how do I give up the functionality and the use cases that I have right now or work around that to take that sexy new thing.

One of the other stories that I love from the book is a guy I interviewed named Greg Schwartz. So Greg is the COO and co founder of a company called StockX. StockX is a global marketplace for. It started out with like collectible tennis shoes. Now they call themselves the stock market of things. But when he started, here's this idea, like, hey, we're going to start selling shoes online. Who are you competing against? Ebay and Foot Locker and Nike and Amazon? Like, oh my God, who's going to do that? And they had a little different twist and. But when he started, if they waited, he told me in the interview, he would have never gotten to where they are now when they started. Literally, he would place Shoes online, like run down to a retailer, buy stuff himself, like they were. It was really scrappy and messy, but they tested the market and they refined it as they went. Even recently, he entered the Asian markets and you know, originally as they said, oh, it's going to take three years, double bit characters, blah, blah, blah. And he said, how can we get there fast and now and crude and we'll adapt as we go. Incidentally, this company we're very proud of, I actually was an early investor, but they are here in Detroit, Michigan, not in Silicon Valley. And this is a startup that was born in 2015. Here we are today. And the company just raised capital at a $3.8 billion valuation. So once again, it pays to start before you're ready.

It really does. And I think it also underscores the notion that your innovation, your breakthrough, your big wins aren't only coming from places like the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. There's certainly massive, massive success in this sector. There's a reason for the reputation, the capital, the mindset, the human capital. All of that is concentrated in the Bay Area where I live and consequently with the companies that we've worked with. But, but there's a ton all over the world and every place around the world is wanting to be the whatever valley or that kind of thing, silicon alley, silicon, etc. And, and technology doesn't even, I mean it. Innovation and breakthroughs don't even have to be technology led necessarily, but that looking for opportunity wherever you are in any industry is, is so cool. And thinking of those little breakthroughs I think is awesome.

Couldn't agree more. And by the way, back to our judo flip concept, you know, if the, if the obvious approach is start your company in San Francisco or New York, maybe the less obvious approach is started in Detroit. People told me all the time, you're crazy, Detroit, what's the matter with you, there's no talent, etc. And I said, yeah, you know what? There may be fewer engineers, but think about the ratio between companies hiring engineers and a number of engineers in Silicon Valley. In other words, good luck overpaying to get a D level engineer when you're competing with Google and Facebook here in Detroit. Yeah, there's fewer engineers, but there are far fewer companies chasing them. So in fact, the ratio plays to our favor. We have lower cost of labor and it works out great. So my only point is when you see something that is, oh, that's dogma, that's just the way things are. To me, those are like fighting words and Then I just. My first instinct is, what if I did the opposite of that? What would that look like?

You know, it's such a great way to think. I have a friend here in California who was telling me recently about their investment strategy of looking for opportunities in places like Detroit and even smaller, more forgotten communities around the Midwest and in some old industrial parts of the country. And I'm like, isn't that interesting? He's looking for opportunity in places that are not at all fashionable. He's like, stay away from some of these other places. There's too much attention, too much heat. There's no value left there. The value opportunities are in some of these places that are forgotten. So it's going against the grain, right, being a local area. Yeah.

And I think we can apply the same thing, by the way, to any challenge, whether it's investing. But think about recruiting. You know, instead of doing the exact same thing, trying to be the next Google or whatever, do the opposite. You know what? If you're trying to create better engagement or morale, just look what everyone else is doing and say, how can I do something different? Instead of follow the leader.

Yeah, it's really brilliant. So before we run out of time, let me tell folks that if you want more information, you want to get the book that you can of course, go to Amazon or wherever they get the book, but go to Josh's website, joshlinkner.com and find Josh there. And all of. I mean, you've got multiple books and lots of groovy stuff there. Anything else to say about what they'll find@joshlinkner.com?

Well, first of all, thanks for being with you. What a pleasure. And I wish everyone continued success as they scale up. It's a fascinating time that we're living in right now, and I think a real opportunity for companies that are scaling up to take on the larger entities and see some greatness. But I would say actually check out Big Little breakthroughs dot com. Yes, you can buy the book there. But even if you don't want to buy the book, there's a bunch of free stuff. There's a whole toolkit. In fact, think of it as your sort of central ground zero for innovation. So there's a free assessment tool, there's a quick start guide, there's downloadable worksheets, there's a bunch of techniques. So if you're looking for a little help getting your creativity rolling, either yourself or organizationally, check out big little breakthroughs. It's all free. There's nothing to pay for. But I think it could be a useful resource if you if you choose.

That's awesome. Big thanks. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks to Lucy Summers producing the show, getting things ready, scaled, produced, out the door, in and out, scheduled, etc. If our show helped you share it with somebody else right now like it subscribe to get them every week on any platform. You can also drop us an email info scalingcoach.com that email again info scalingcoach.com feedback requests if we can help you find a coach in your area. Anything like that. Big thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework and the original Rockefeller Habits. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions. Our show notes are written up by Ein Kadina and proofread by Tim McGowan. I want to thank everyone for tuning in, for downloading, for listening, for watching. Thanks again. We'll talk to you next time. Keep scaling up. That's our show.