QFF 40+ years of being an innovator, a builder, and one of the creators of the Jobs-To-Be-Done theory. Now helping small-medium business owners attract customers, piquing their interest through supply-side value and demand-side value. (Bob Moesta)

Welcome to our weekly Quick Fire Friday podcast. I'm the host, Rob Cameron. In less than 20 minutes a week, we'll give you an introduction to an expert or business owner with deep experience in what they do. We'll leave you with at least one action you can implement in your business immediately. Well, Bob, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for staying up late at night. Your time to join.

Join us. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Like, I have. I'm actually doing quite a bit of work down in Australia, New Zealand, so this is kind of a usual thing for me. So I'm happy to be able to kind of provide. There's people down there that would love to hear more about what I talk about, so I'm happy to be that. Be here and talk.

Absolutely. And I guess that's how you came to be on the podcast, because you've been on a couple of the earlier podcasts with Troy and some other guests, and they were really well received. So we were. We were excited to talk to you again. Look, I won't overdo the introductions because again, you have.

They can read it if they want to read it. That's right.

You've been on some previous podcasts. But a couple of things that I just wanted to touch on. And look, this is purely from a personal perspective, but I was really excited to see, I guess, that you've been educated by people such as Dr. Clayton Christensen, you'd worked with Deming. I mean, these are absolute legends of the game.

Yeah. So this is my office, and these are my mentors who sit on the wall looking down at me every single day. These are paintings that I do. So I'm dyslexic, and so when I go to bed at night, I paint instead of read. And so these are paintings of Dr. Deming and Clay and Dr. Taguchi and Dr. Willie Moore. And to be honest, it's a. I just wrote a book about my learning to build, how they taught me how to build things. Like, I was pretty much told I would be a baggage handler at the airport because I can't read and I can't write. And so my mom basically helped me figure out a different path. And in the end, I've met these people who poured their knowledge into me. And since then, I've worked on over 3,500 different products, everything from radar system for the Patriot Missile to Pokemon, Mac and Cheese, and Base Camp, and just about everything in between.

Yeah. And. And I understand I've got you to thank for pointing me to which Side of the car I fill up with fuel. That was.

Yeah, that was one of those projects I did when I was very young. But it was. Dr. Deming would always complain about how he would think about information as poor quality. If you gave somebody the wrong information at the wrong time or in the wrong moment or if you didn't have the information. And so he was the one who kind of said, like, this is a problem where I just wanted to get out of it. But in the end, it was like driving into a gas station and not knowing which side it is on. You start to realize, like, there's a lot of timing issues. You pull it around the wrong side. You do. And so in 1987, I was given the test to basically solve that problem. And then by 92, it took almost three years or five years to do. But I helped build me and a team, basically. We got the arrow that's on the gas fuel gauge that basically tells you which side the filler cap is on. I. I always say that that's probably one of the greatest innovations I've ever done that will pro. Probably get me into heaven.

Yes. Well, you. You would get a vote from me. I find that particularly useful. And it's amazing how often you find yourself in an unfamiliar car and pulling up to refuel, and that's a super helpful little invention look. And I guess the other thing that you're really well known for is the. The jobs to be done framework, which I guess a tool that helps pick, I guess, the mind of the customer when you're trying to think through sort of service and. And product delivery innovation.

So this is. This. Is this. A lot of it roots from the notion of Deming, where Deming would always say, nothing is random, everything is caused. We're just not smart enough to know all the causes. And so at the very core of it is that people don't buy products. They hire them to make progress in their life. And then when you frame things that way, it's like, what caused somebody to say, today's the day I need a new mattress, the day I need a lawyer, or, today's the day I want a new house. And most people, they don't think about it that way. They think more about kind of like, what can they sell? As opposed to, why do people buy? And the jobs to be done framework just kind of flips that lens and makes you kind of look at it through the customer's eye first and say, what's causing me to say, today's the day I need to do something different. It's a powerful thing because it's enabled me to work on so many different things. I've applied it to everything from product and software and retail, everything between. I'm writing a new book. Yeah, I've got some partners I'm writing a new book on, which is what causes employees to hire a new company. Right. And because they don't randomly leave, they leave for a reason and they go to a new place for a reason. Can we understand the progress employees are trying to make? And so it's really taking that frame and wrapping it around. It kind of say, like, what progress are employees trying to make? And understand that employees hire companies more than companies hire employees.

Well, particularly at the moment, that seems to be a common theme. There's a real, to use a cliche, it's a war for talent from a company's point of view. So really you're getting hired.

I think half the problem though is most people don't know what they want.

Right?

Most employees don't know what they want. And I think of a job description is almost like a unicorn and a resume is like Wonder Woman. And they're trying to talk about what the work is, but nobody knows what the real work is anyways. And so you start to realize that it's all trade offs. And so can we actually help people start to realize what, you know, what progress are you trying to make and what are you willing to give up in order to get? And most people try what everything. And they either don't leave or they leave because it's so bad. But then they take the first job they get, which has nothing to do with what they really want to do, and they end up in the same position or in a worse position than they did when they started because they didn't take the time. And so that's really what we're. I've worked on, I've been doing interviews on that for almost five, six years and I've done, I've helped over a thousand people kind of find either new, new work or to be asked. Half of them found new work and half of them actually redefined the job they were in to make sure they loved it.

Yeah, interesting. So, Bob, I guess there's so much I could talk to you about. But because we've got a fairly focused podcast today, as mentioned, I thought perhaps the best way to approach this is to throw a couple of scenarios at you and you tell me how you would go about thinking through some of these problems and what are some of the tools and frameworks you might turn to to help you develop answers to these questions. And again, our audience is largely small to medium sized business owners who are looking to grow their business without too much stress and hassle, you know, as as little as practically you can take on. And so I thought maybe I'll throw you an example which is relating to a client I was actually dealing with only a couple of days ago. And they're a relatively small residential house builder. Nothing particularly stand out about the way they do things or what they do. They've typically built around sort of five, six houses a year for the last five years. Certainly they've been in a growing market, but they've never really been able to stretch themselves beyond that capacity. So they're finding themselves a little bit stuck. Now. I had my way of thinking around this and I came up with my list of recommendations. But I'm fascinated to know how would someone like you approach this scenario? What would be the things that you look at and how would you look to help them unlock how they might grow this business?

Yeah, so this is, I would say so. I've also done seven startups. And so it's one of those things where I think small businesses like the salt of the earth or the heart of kind of real industries, and most people think of all the big guys, but it's all the small guys, small people who basically run, like you said, building five homes. It all is part of the bigger picture. And so to me it's very important to understand kind of how these businesses work because they have a very different scale, right?

Absolutely.

The first thing for me is I always start that there's two sides to value. There's value from the customer side and then there's value from the operations to deliver that value to the customer. So there's what I call supply side value, which is profit and demand side value, which is price, what people are willing to pay you in order to do the things you want. And with home building, it's one of those things where what's interesting is that there's a lot of data and a lot of analysis about what houses are selling and the features of the houses and the size and the, and all those different aspects. But what I found is the very first thing that I did, to be honest, I've actually built homes and took a home builder from 75 homes to 400 homes.

Wow.

And one of the first things that I did was I sat down and talked to people about why in the world did they buy our home? So I didn't talk to people who wanted to buy a home. I talked to people who bought my home or bought one of my homes or to be honest, I talked to people who bought a competitor's home. And what I want to do is I don't want to understand the house they bought. I want to understand why they moved, what caused them to say today's the day. And then two is what are the outcomes that they were hoping were going to happen by doing that. And so when I worked in Japan, one of the things they talked about was how do I understand the requirements of the consumer without ever talking about the solution. And so what that means is, for example, one of the groups that we build houses for was downsizers. Think of like your parents, right? And like what causes your parents to say, today's the day, I'm going to downsize. And you start to realize there's sets of things. It's kind of like, well, the kids are all gone, all the maintenance. At some point in time, there's stairs, there's a lot of stairs. Laundry's in the basement, it's on the second floor. Like all these things kind of add up that say, you know what, what we should start to look for a new house. And you start to realize it has nothing to do with the house they're going to buy. It has to do with the problems they have in their current house or their current living situation. Boy, we live a long way from the kids. And so part of it is being able to understand what is the causing mechanisms to literally get people ready to say they're ready to move. And by understanding that, you actually talk to people who bought the house. The second thing is to really then understand the outcomes that they want. And they'll say, oh, I want enough room for everybody. Well, what does that mean? You have to learn how to unpack to get past what they say is like, I want to make sure that we have places we can be apart. I want to have places big enough we can be together. You start to actually understand what is the life that they're imagining as they move into that new house. And so I'll interview anxieties that you had and what were the habits that you had to give up, what were the trade offs you had to make in order to make this happen. And like, so, for example, one of the things I realized was it was very, very that like for the people we were talking about, one of the biggest struggling moments was how were they going to move all their stuff Almost you know, 3000 square feet of stuff into 1500 square feet, which was my condo. Well, it turns out that they had too much stuff, and I'd have people buy the condo and then cancel it because at some point in time they go, we just can't clean out the closets. So I actually raised the price and included moving and two years of storage and a place to sort all the boxes when your kids came to visit. And it increased my sales over 22%.

Wow. Isn't that fascinating? You weren't looking at the core products, so to speak. You were looking at what were the problems that people were experiencing, what were the outcomes they wanted and thought around. How do we deliver solutions to those.

Right. The other thing that I learned was, for example, they'd say, we're ready to downsize. I just don't want to host the holidays anymore. I'd be like, well, what are you talking about? Well, look, I've done it for 40 years. It's time for my kids to take over. I don't want a dining room. I'm like, okay, So I design a new condo with no dining room. Turns out nobody bought it. Turns out that the dining room table is the emotional parents lives, and if they don't know where it's going to go, they don't know how to move. And so what happened, though? I had a big second suite. I actually cut the suite down and added a small little dining room. Actually, it was so small the dining room table would fit, but you really couldn't eat around it.

Right.

But it increased sales 16%.

Yeah. Interesting.

Because they didn't. So. So I'm trying to find the frictional factors that are holding them back from moving. Right. The other thing I learned was that it's like, what was going on in their lives. And one of the things is I was talking to a couple that sold their house, and after talking to them, they're like, yeah, that turns out that over 90% of the people that I was selling to had the first thought of moving between Thanksgiving and New Year's. U.S. thanksgiving and New Year's. So November to January. And yet I never would before. I never advertised during that timeframe because it turns out nobody moves during that timeframe. But it turns out that everybody's thinking about moving during that timeframe. Right. And then what I also learned was, is somebody would say, like, well, you know, we went and looked and we looked at a couple and then we got a real estate agent. And I'm like, huh? What do you mean? Like, nobody Randomly gets a real estate agent. So, like, what was going on? And, like, I don't know. It just seemed like it was time. Well, when was it? It was February. And this is where I learned crib criminal and intelligence interrogation methods in my twenties. And so I. I would basically move into interrogation mode and go like, well, what do you mean?

You.

You. You hired. Did you know the realtor? It's like, oh, yeah, it was a friend. We knew him forever. I'm like, okay, well, when was it? It's like, oh, it's the middle of the month. Was it a weekend or a weekday? It's like, oh, it was a weekday. I'm like, where were you? It's like, oh, they came to my house, and here's the question I asked that was really bizarre. I said, what were you wearing? And they laughed and looked at me, and they said, oh, we had just come from a funeral. I said, what do you mean you came from a past? One of our best friends just passed, and we realized that the spouse of the other was going to have to move without them. And on the way home, we had this conversation that said, boy, we wouldn't want that to happen. We got to get on this, because if we don't move, I don't want you to have to move without me or me to move without you. We got to do this together. And so I heard it once, and then I said, all right, well, let me go talk to a few more people. I heard again. I heard it again. Turns out that. But I moved my advertising from the real estate section to the obituaries, and I got a 37% increase in traffic and a 70% reduction of my cost. Because at some point, who wants to advertise in the obituaries? Nobody. But it turns out that's when they're thinking about moving.

Wow. I can't say I would have picked that.

Right.

That's fascinating.

So the thing is, what you asked what I would do is that I don't have the answers. I don't know the answers. I don't know the magic bullet. But what I do know is by talking to people who bought my product and understanding what context they were in and what outcomes they wanted and why they picked me over somebody else. In terms of the outcomes, it helps me understand how to go find other people like them. And that's. That's probably my little cheat.

Yeah, no, that. That's fantastic.

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I think what you're saying is really understand who your customers are. And I mean, this is all stuff that anyone studying any business at any point would have heard. But I guess it's the approach that you take which perhaps opens up some different insights.

The way I would change it a little bit, because most people want to study who people are, and I don't really care about who people are. I want to care about why they did what they did. And what you realize is somebody can be in one behavior or be tagged as a certain demographic or a Persona, but the reality is it doesn't cause them. Just because I'm 57 and I live in this zip code and I drive this car, it doesn't cause me to buy the New York Times. And so too much. We're actually building the world on correlation as opposed to causation. And so to me, the difference is that what we're doing is we're going deeper beyond the correlation to get to what causes people to do what they do. And the interesting part is most of the time it's like, well, we could never know all the causes. I get that. But if I can find out 20% of the causes that get me 80% of the results, it works pretty well. It's called the Pareto Principle. Right.

That's a great distinction. Yeah. So we're talking to our customers not to understand who they are and I guess the traditional demographics and all of that sort of stuff. We're trying to understand why they did what they did. And that's going to help us, I guess, number one, be able to find more people in a similar situation. And secondly, it helps us design our product or service to better fit what it is they're actually trying to accomplish.

That's right. That's exactly right.

Excellent.

The way I think about it is there's the five W's and two H is who, what, when, where, why, how, and how much. And I think of a market as not just who, but who, when, where, and why. And those four things then help me determine what, how, and how much.

Okay.

Most people, they come up with an idea and then they say, who can I sell it to? And what I do is. The way that I try to do is I try to go Find people. As long as people are struggling, they're going to want to do something better. And if people aren't struggling, they're never going to see your product. And so to me, I start with, where do people struggle? Why do what causes people to do things? And then by understanding that, then I can figure out what to go build. Too many times we're building a house and then trying to find somebody to buy it. I'm actually focusing on people who need a new house, and then I'm going to build it for them.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Fantastic.

I call it flipping the lens from the supply side, which is the greatest lie I was told in college, which was, build it and they will come. It's just a lie. It doesn't happen. Yeah, right. What you really have to do is you have to figure out, what problem do they have and how do you actually build something to solve their problem? That's the most important thing.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so do we all have to go out and study military interrogation techniques to learn how to do this, or is there.

No. So. So two things. There's a. There's a book that guy wrote. His name's Chris Voss. He wrote a great book. Never Split the Difference.

Chris Voss Never Split the Difference.

And he talks about all these different ways in which to actually talk to people. And so when I learned it back almost, God, 30 years ago. Thirty years? Yeah, 30 years ago, like, I learned all these things. But when he wrote his book, it has all the different techniques and tools. And again, when I talk to people, I want them to say no more than yes. And what I mean by that is a lot of times I'll say, like, so, do you like blue? They'll say yes. I don't know what to say after that, but I'll say, do you like birds that like. I'll get very specific and to the point where I know I'm wrong, and they'll say, no, I like this better. And so I'm always trying to get people to tell me the answer no so they can elaborate on the answer. So it's learning to frame your questions differently. It's really good. Innovators, entrepreneurs know how to ask really good questions, and they're obsessed with being able to understand what. To see it from other people's perspective as opposed to their own.

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. And look, I'm going to just dive into this one more time with another. Another scenario. And let's say we've got a Sort of suburban legal firm that's looking to grow their business. I think you're going to tell me we should go and to who's buying from them currently, potentially, who's not buying from them. Is there any difference in the approach from what you've just explained around the house builder or so in this scenario.

I would actually look at that. I would go talk to them about people who have. What caused somebody to say, today's the day, I need a lawyer. Right. It's not random. And so part of it is, can we know what those are? But the interesting part to me in this one would be is can I actually figure out people who need a lawyer but don't know what to do do? It's how actually LegalZoom was actually formed. There's a whole bunch of people who need a lawyer, but they can't afford a lawyer. So can you actually, actually figure out a way to actually create either self service or what we call the underserved market by actually offering something that's not necessarily as good as the full service, but half service is better than nothing?

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Right. And so. And so part of this is if you want to grow, like, how many people want a lawyer but don't even know how to find one? How many people actually don't even know they need a lawyer till it's too late? Can we actually make it so people understand when they knew it? So this is why you see a lot of lawyers doing educational things or being around creating a will when they have a baby. Or like people that say, today's the day I need a will or I need a. Like most of the people, it's kind of like a bank. Nobody wants a loan, they want a new car, nobody wants a lawyer. They want to protect themselves. And so part of it is they actually move past your product and understand what's the outcome they're truly seeking.

Yeah. Fantastic.

It's a very different perspective. I'll say that most people kind of tilt their head at me and kind of go, huh? And then when they think about it a little bit harder. Like, I should try that.

Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think what you've said makes a lot of sense. It's been great. Bob, what resources would you point to? Small business owners who may want to dive into this a little bit more.

Yeah, so there's a couple. So I have a podcast that I do. It's called the Circuit Breaker. And it's just like me and my business partner of 17 years just kind of riffing on different topics like this around different things. But I've written a couple books and I think the one that's most useful, I think for the small business owner is something called demand side sales and that most people hate to sell. It makes you feel icky. And I wrote it around this notion of like, but if we flip the lens and say, I'm not selling, I'm trying to help somebody make progress, I'm trying to help somebody do something better, all of a sudden it's like, I'm not actually selling, I'm helping. And you feel way better about it. And so I've wrapped. One of the reasons why I wrote that book was this whole notion of basically you can go to business school, at least here in the United States, and you never have to take a sales. How is that possible? I've done, like I said, seven startups and I. Literally the hardest part of any business I've built was selling, and yet it's never part of any business program. That's crazy. Yeah, I wrote this. Yeah. So I wrote this book. Where is it? Hold on. I got. So I wrote this book called Demand side Sales.

Demand side sales. Fantastic.

Yes, 101. And it really is about. It says, demand side sales, Stop selling and start helping your customers make progress. And I think for small businesses, it's written. It actually has the home buying story in it. It has some of those examples and it's got frameworks, kind of will help you change that conversation. It doesn't go into great depth like Chris Voss does in through the interview techniques, but it gives you like a process and some procedures to kind of think about that. And it's a pretty easy read.

Brilliant. No, that sounds great.

And then I just launched a new book called Learning to Build. So what's interesting is I have a company that all I do is I talk and then they record it and then they edit it and turn it into a book. And so most of my books, I didn't really write them, I just spoke them. And when you read it, see that it sounds like me talking to you.

Excellent.

But this one is really about the 5 kind of bedrock skills of entrepreneurs and innovators. As I look back through my years of creating things and doing things, it's kind of like, what are those really essential skills that people aren't really kind of framing and it helps people understand. Like one is called empathetic perspective is really good. Innovators and entrepreneurs can see things from other people's perspective. Unjudging so they'll say, oh, this is how finance is going to say this. Oh, this is what the bank is going to say. Oh, this is what the customer is going to say. And they can see the world with less of a bias to it and they can connect dots and see where the conflicts are going to arise because they have this uncanny ability to uncover demand, not create demand, but to uncover it. And they have some version of cause and effect so they can see how things work. And I think one of the most important things is really good entrepreneurs and innovators. They prototype to learn. They don't prototype to verify, meaning most people are taught to build something to prove to others. And my thing is I build things because I don't know. And that's really, really powerful. And then the last thing is really about identifying and managing trade offs. So that's called learning to build. And that's another resource. Both are on Amazon, Kindle and Print.

Brilliant.

I'm working on the audible, but the audible is not out yet.

So last question for you, Bob. But if you had one piece of advice for a small business owner looking to grow that they should be doing when they get into the office tomorrow morning, what would that piece of advice be?

Being able to understand the struggling moments that you solve in people's lives.

Yeah.

All innovation and that customers don't change or switch or do something new without a struggle is to become very, very intimate and clear about the struggling moments that people have and how you solve them. And if you can do that, that itself will give you better language to market. It will talk about features that you need to add. It will talk about partnerships you need to go build. It'll help you understand that entire journey. But it all has to start with what is the struggling moment your customer is trying to solve.

Yeah, I think you've put that really well. Bob, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate the interview.

Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me on.

My pleasure.

Cheers.

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