Howard Tiersky - Business Digital Transformation

Welcome to another edition of the Small Business Show. How are you doing, Dave?

I'm good, man. It's a crazy week traveling. I was away last week. I actually had to go pick up my son in Oregon. It was great being able to get away, but it has been a while since I've been away for that long and the disruption, settling back in especially. I took off eight days after we hired a new employee and. Oh, yeah, sure, you know, and so it really was the wrong time for all of it, but it was the right time. It was the time. So it was like, okay, we'll just figure it out and make it work. Then I came back and of course there's a big Apple event. So that is disruptive. And I mean, it's all good. It's just, you know, it's the why, right?

We're here to figure all this stuff out.

To figure it all out. Yeah. And then of course, teaching my class, which has been that I am learning so much, I am making so many mistakes every week. It is fantastic. And thankfully my students, we're doing a project that is fun, so an interesting to most of them. So that, that's been good. But, but I am, I am screwing this thing up left and right and, and just having a blast with it.

Next time you're going to be way better.

Oh, I'm definitely going to be way. They told me. I talked to my, my boss, I guess it's weird for me to say that word if, I don't know, a few weeks ago, halfway point of the semester or something. And he's like, how's it going? I'm like, ah, the Zoom thing sucks because some people have to attend on Zoom if they're Covid results aren't in the right order. And you know, I mean, it's how it works. It's the world we're currently in. And I'm like. And I'm like, plus, I'm just figuring this out. I said it's weird because my. I'm used to either talking to fans of mine who are there and want to hear me, or I'm used to talking to people I pay, AKA my employees. And so I'm used to having very attentive audiences. That is not the case with students. Even though, like, they're paying to be there, they should be like fully engaged, but they're not. So some of them are not. So that's been interesting, learning how to extract attention from them. And the guy said to me, he's like, oh yeah. He says it Usually takes three semesters for a class for a teacher to figure out how to teach a specific class.

Oh, okay.

Wow. Okay. Talk about failure built into the process. Like, there you go. It's all an experiment. It's fine. But I'm used to winging it. Like, that's my life. So, you know, it's been interesting. There's things I know now that I wish I knew at the beginning of the semester, but that's how.

Like always.

Like always, right?

Like always.

Exactly.

Yeah. Well, cool. We have a great guest today. I'm really excited to talk to Howard Tiersky. He's the CEO of from a digital transformation agency, and he's just got some great things to say that are extremely valuable to all of us. Some things that seem so obvious, but when you kind of lay them out, like, wow, that's really a powerful statement about large companies that maybe we interact as consumers of and as well our own small businesses and how we can eliminate friction and problems when customers want to interact with us. So it's going to be a great show.

Yeah. Honestly, when I saw his title, I thought, what has Shannon done? Like, who is this person? But it didn't take me two minutes into the interview and I realized, oh, wait a minute. I want to be the one that learns the most from this episode because I have things to learn in this regard. So, yep, yeah, it's great.

It's definitely valuable, and I'm looking forward to jumping right into it.

Absolutely. Well, I'm ready to small business. Are you ready to small business?

Always ready to small business, Dave.

Yeah, man. He is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton, and this is episode 324 of the Small Business Show.

All right, so joining us for this episode of the Small Business show is Howard Tiersky, CEO of From a company that. And I love this description, describes itself as a digital transformation agency. So Howard's here is going to help us learn about successful digital product launches and how to get our company ready for what they call the digital future. Howard, thanks so much for joining us today.

Oh, thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. Yeah.

I'm really interested to learn about your business after digging through your website. There's a lot to learn. So give us a little backstory about from. And your involvement in digital product and content development.

Sure. Well, I started in digital pretty much when our modern digital era started. I was working at a. At Ernst and Young Consulting in the early 90s, and actually I was running their graphics department was my job. And I started to get Involved in. I was doing things like CD ROM production and things like that, doing digital video. And then all of a sudden this, this Internet thing shifted from being something that was just totally geeky and academic to something that had potential commercial applications. And they started grabbing me and saying, you know, you need to come to us with two clients because somebody needs to talk about this and you're the person who knows at least about Photoshop or something graphical. And so I sort of found myself shifted from a role being kind of in an internal creative department as part of a large consulting company, to all of a sudden being in front of clients. And before I knew it, I was flying around the world speaking to large Fortune 1000 global 1000 type companies and explaining to them, what is the Internet? Why on earth would you ever want to have a website? I mean, this sounds like an absurd question today, but there was a time when a lot of companies were like, I don't know if it's for us, we're not really a high tech company. Long, long time ago. And then the rest, it was just a journey. From there I started doing. It's fascinating to think about how to use these new digital tools to help companies initially just communicate their message and connect with their customers and their employees and others. And of course, a few years forward, E commerce became practical and now it was about how do we, how do we try to extend their business through digital? And now, gosh, it's become the center. Digital has become the center of so many people's lives that our company's customers or employees, that it's essential to think about everything in a digital context.

Look at us here. I mean, Shannon and I both are in the digital world. We have been for decades.

Absolutely.

We talk about, on your website you talk about digital transformation, the digital future. But what a transformation back then, you know, going from like you said, CD ROM development, this kind of stuff, and telling people, hey, this is going to be the future, and having them kind of look at you like, are you sure? You know, so that those terms as digital future, digital transformation, expand on these topics and share with us, if you will, why they are so crucial for businesses of all sizes to embrace.

Sure. Well, let's start with the topic of digital transformation. That's a term that gets thrown around a lot and so much so it can seem meaningless. But let me just offer my own quick definition of it. What I observe, and I'm guessing when I say this, everyone listening will have sort of just say, yeah, that's an obvious observation. Is that There's a massive digital transformation that's been going on in the world. Forget any given company for a moment. Our lives have been changed and the way in which we engage in most of the tasks that make up our life, from raising our kids to doing our work, to meeting our friends, to ordering shop, groceries, shopping, nearly everything we do has been significantly shifted as a result of digital tools, digital connectivity, apps, mobile websites, things like that. And so that's to me, that I call the digital transformation of the world that's happening. And it's the digital transformation of your customer and the people who are your employees, your prospective employees. And there's not much you're going to be able to do about that as a business. But then there's the second sort of inner layer of digital transformation, and which is the space in which I focus my energy, which is how does a company need to change to adapt to the fact that the world around them has changed? Because it doesn't take much thinking to realize that if the world changes dramatically and you haven't changed your customer experience, your value proposition, I mean, that's not a recipe for future success. And so a lot of the work that I do is really about helping companies take the measure of what are their customers needs today, recognizing that those needs are shifting and evolving all the time. So it's a continuously moving thing. And then considering how well or not well their current method of interacting with their customers matches that and making the changes necessary. So for example, working with aaa, the American Automobile association, around roadside assistance, and historically most people use their phone to call when they need a tow from aaa. And clearly the future has to be something much more uber like. And so we worked on a huge project with them to create a much more and with a lot of success so far, to create a much more.

I'll say you've had a lot of success with that. I've taken advantage of the results of that and it's fantastic. Oh, I was so pleasantly surprised that I could get the entire process done without having to wait on hold. I just launched the app and said I needed service, I need a battery, my battery's dead, I need to jump and yada yada yada and boom, like they're on their way.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I mean, I should say I'm sorry your battery died, but other than that, the rest of it sounds awesome.

Yeah, you can track them right to your location. So I mean, you're just so much closer connected and maybe that's the point. There's just that divide is so much smaller than that, like you said, waiting.

On the phone, you know.

So this is a great example because when I saw, you know, that we had you coming on the show and it says CEO from the digital transformation agency, my first thought was, do they still have any business? Like, didn't everybody already? Doesn't everybody that needs a website already have a website? Like, aren't we all using email already? Right. Like, I was looking at it very, like at first level, very simplistically. And then I read on Wikipedia, digital transformation, the definition they say is it's the adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses through replacing non digital or manual processes with digital processes. And one of the examples they use is going paperless. And it's like, well, wait a minute, I've been digital. Like, literally our business has always been digital. We sell ads on websites and podcasts, but we still have some work to do to go paperless inside. There are things that even all digital native companies do that aren't fully digital. And so as soon as I started thinking about it in those terms, it was like, oh, yeah, but he's got a lot of business. And then when you mentioned aaa, it's like, oh, of course there's lots of work to be done in this regard. Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. There is a lot. Because businesses, especially large companies, are complex and have hundreds or thousands of processes. And how many banks, when you want to open a new account still FedEx, use something with a bunch of places you have to sign where the little sticky tabs are.

Oh, wait, before we leave, you can do this on the show or we can do it pre show. Before I let you hang up or post show. I guess pre show, given linear time has already happened. But I want to know the names of the banks that you've worked with, because I want to stop working with banks that have not transformed.

Well, I'll tell you, two of our largest financial services clients have been JPMorgan Chase and Transamerica. So I encourage you to give them your business.

That's awesome.

All right.

And now you mentioned also as you were talking here in the last few minutes about employee side, are you helping companies do this digital transformation with how they interact with their employees as well?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, and it's truly essential. There's many studies that show that particularly as companies fight for this next generation of talent, which means millennials and younger, the digital savvy of a company is an important consideration in terms of recruiting someone in terms of retaining an employee. Employees don't want to feel like they're working for a company that just doesn't get it because that means they don't understand those individuals. Digital has become so important, particularly to the younger generations. But it's probably. It's true for everybody, really. But it's especially true as you get younger and younger. It's not just something they want. It's not just like a need, like a preference. It's so fundamental to who they are that if you don't seem like. If it seems like you don't get it, then you just don't get them. It's that important to their identity. So it really demonstrates the wrong thing to your employees if they come in and they see that you're not with it in a digital sense. And it suggests that, you know, often that you don't respect their time and energy because if you're asking them to do things in a less efficient way, in a less digitally. Either in a less digital way, which can be the case, or simply in a less digitally elegant way, meaning you may have 50 different digital tools and applications and you say, well, what's wrong? You know, it's all digital. Yeah, it's all digital, but everything has a different login and a different user interface and works totally differently and is disconnected. And you have to copy, paste information from one system to the other. That may all be digital, but that's not a complete digital transformation. And that still sends the message that you're not very good at digital.

That's interesting.

It's a stunning observation of attracting talent to your point, where it's like, well, these folks, especially younger, they want this. It's just part of who they are. My son, who's 19, is going to college, working part time for this place, and he jumps online, picks his shifts out of. He makes his own hours. I'm just like, how does that, you know, how does that even work fundamentally? But I can just see it's so second nature or first nature to him. He's like, oh, it's way better because I pick my own hours. There's always plenty of people. They release the shifts every Friday and we just jump on it and they're gone.

That's a great. No, that, like, I never, I experienced it moving from having to like, call and book airline tickets on the phone where someone's literally reading you. The times. The people that haven't done this in the last. People that have only booked airline tickets in the last 15 years won't know what I'm talking about? But kids, you can ask your parents. It used to be that you'd call and they would literally list you. Here's all the flights, here's the times. And you'd be writing it down. It was terrible. And then obviously, once you could do that online, it was like, okay, I never want to call anybody again about this. I just want to see all my options. I never once thought about doing that for, like you just described with your son, Shannon.

Fascinating.

You know, for hours. But, of course, that's way better.

Yeah. And, you know, so much this, so much so that this is starting to redefine the nature of employment. And that's what we mean talking about, of course, things like the gig economy. And this is. This is where digital transformation really starts to be profound. It's not just about, I think your. Dave, your Wikipedia example, I can't remember exactly what their definition was, but it's not just. See, I don't. I don't accept the idea that digital transformation is mainly about just taking processes and making them digital. Some people use the term digitization to refer to that personally. Listen, I'm not big into terms and having an argument about what this term means or what that term means, but I would say that success today is not about taking what you did before and just turning it into the digital equivalent. But if you look at what somebody like Uber is doing because of what they can do through digital, they can create a whole company that provides. As my friend Tom Goodwin has famously said repeatedly, they're the world's largest transportation company, and they don't own any vehicles. Just like the world's largest retailers like ebay and Alibaba, don't stock any merchandise. And the world's largest hotelier, Airbnb, doesn't own any properties. And so all of a sudden, you can completely rethink business. And if you look at the way Uber handles drivers, instead of going off and hiring people and then saying, wait, you're a new employee, it's just like, okay, if you want to do work for you, just interface with us digitally in this way, and you can work however much you want, whenever you want. And while I'm sure not every company will move to that model, my daughter's in college now, actually, Shannon. My daughter's the same age as your son, actually. She's 19. And, you know, other people are other friends or whatever, may be working at the local cafe and whatnot, you know, for 12 bucks an hour, whatever else, she's on upwork. Taking assignments, doing graphic design for people around the world for three times more money than other people are making, working at the local general store or whatever in the small town that our college is in. That's the digital future.

It totally is. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And the fact that young people, my kids are the same age, 19 and 21, I think. Yeah, 19 and 21.

Don't get it wrong, Dave. If they're listening on the line, figure this out.

No, I got it. Yeah, I got it. But the fact that they are, like you said, they're native to this Shannon. Right. This is a first language to them. So it makes sense that why you don't have to work for someone that's in your town. You can work for somebody that's remote and that, you know, the pandemic doesn't. Pandemic changed that for older people. It was already happening for people that were younger.

Yeah, absolutely. Being part. Feeling like you're part of a real global society is something that these kids started to experience even at a younger. Like I'll take my same daughter who, you know, does graphic design and illustration and that's the job she's getting on upwork. When she was learning illustration, she mostly learned to draw and create design through watching things like YouTube videos when she was starting at 10, 11 years old. And she started participating in communities of other kids who were critiquing each other's designs. And so she like online discussion boards. And so she developed a whole network of friends all over the world who were 12 and 13 year old aspiring artists just like she was. They draw things on their iPads or their iPhones, they post it online, they'd comment on each other's things. And she has friends in Australia and South Africa and Russia all over the place that she's connected with through this common interest without any kind of geographic barriers. And that's digital transformation of friendship, right? Yes.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I consider myself really fortunate. I grew up online even though I'm, you know, almost 50. I grew up with bulletin boards and we found we figured out ways of connecting long distance without it costing anybody any money. Then those are stories we won't tell. But, but it create, it allowed us to create those communities. And I still have some of those friends to this day. In fact, some of them are business associates to this day. And, and now everybody grows. That that was a very rare thing when I was growing up. It is a very common thing. It is the way things work. It's not just common. That's right. It's how things are right now. Yeah, yeah.

And you know, I had this question I was going to ask you, but I think you've already answered it. And so I just want to point it out. You know, your business and front primarily works with large enterprise customers, but these all are very applicable for small business owners as well. How they connect with their employees, which we talk a lot about on the show, but in their customers and making it ease of use. And to your point, Howard, even creating a new type of business using this digital transformation that they never perhaps would have had been able to raise the capital and the resources to do before this.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, and you're right, we do. Our sort of structure of our business is that we mainly work with large brands, but we are a relatively small business. We have just shy of 100 employees. So you know, we're certainly not the size companies that are our target customers. And also I've been interested, you know, I published a book earlier this year, Winning Digital Customers and I hear a lot. And it is written for. It's written with sort of executives, people running. Well, not just executives, but people involved in digital at all levels really, in either marketing or product development or it at largely large companies. And most of the examples in the book are drawn from my experience working with them. But I hear often from people in small business that say that they're applying the book to work that they're doing. So it's kind of interesting because I'm thinking to myself all the examples are very enterprise oriented, but I guess they're able to adapt and apply the same principles. So that's rewarding. I'm always happy for things to be useful more broadly than we initially necessarily targeted them.

Yeah, that's outstanding.

Digging out those nuggets there. So let's talk about the book, Winning Digital Customers. What prompted you to write the book? Is this something you've always wanted to do or just was the timing right?

Yeah, well, a few things. I have always wanted to write a book and this is probably the fourth or so book that I started. I have several half written books on different business topics that relate to things like user experience. So I was happy to finish one. And so yes, it has been a goal of mine for a long time. And in addition to that, well, there's a couple other motivations from a business perspective. I think books are a fantastic tool. I think that one of the new sort of in our digital world, I think that the power of brands has been reduced. I think that people again, especially these new Generations of customers are very cynical about brands. There are exceptions, of course. There are brands that are just gold brands, like a Disney or a Nike or something like that. But very, very few businesses are going to develop a brand like that. But most brands, people are cynical about and doubtful about the claims that brands make what they believe is their experience. And they connect with people more than they connect with a logo or a brand. And so this idea of authority marketing, which a lot of people talk about, it's not my specific area of expertise, but I really believe that for my business and the work that I do, it's maybe a more effective way to market, to provide value, to provide content, to provide knowledge to people and connect that. Even if that means that 99% of the people who get the book can absolutely use the book. We try to make the book as sort of a standalone as possible, meaning it's not like we keep half the information secret. You read the book and you only get halfway there. And if you want to really know how to use it, you have to hire us. It's not like that at all. In fact, it's the opposite. In addition to the book, when you buy the book, there's access to a website that contains all kinds of videos and templates. And it's like, how can I give you as much as possible so that if you're doing this type of work at your company, you can do it yourself. But having said that, there's always people who get started along a path like that and they go, you know, I could really use some help.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.

And it can be a small percentage and still be meaningful. So I think that when you ask why I wrote the book, part of it was for that reason because I wanted to write a book. I wanted to get it out there and make it beneficial to people. But from a business perspective, I also believe that it would be a powerful marketing tool. And it has proven to be.

No, that's excellent. So one of the things I love, the information that your folks sent over to us when we were getting ready to book you on the show was talking about some reasons why products fail. These kind of transformative products. And one of the examples I've had direct experience with that you talked about was this new elevator systemology or however you want to talk about it. And I've been in Manhattan with crowds of people standing around these new inputs on elevators and watched fast and fascinating how so many people didn't understand them. So I'd love to talk about some of these reasons why products fail. And maybe, maybe you can expand on that example.

Yeah, of course. Sure. Happy to. Well, first of all, most products fail. And so it's important for anyone who's creating something new to know that the, you know, that's the reality out there. And we all have to be, you know, I think successful products are developed with, with a certain expectation and acceptance of some degree of what one might call failure and meaning you may launch new product and it might not do so well initially. Most products, especially digital products, are successful not because someone was sort of perfect in their initial conception of the product, but because you got something out there, as we often call a minimum viable product, as Eric Ries and the lean mindset of product development says, and evolved and iterated based on customer feedback. So ebay started out as a site for just people who collect PEZ dispensers. It didn't start out as conceived as it is today. And you'll find Facebook started out as basically a dating tool for kids on the Harvard campus. So most digital products that are successful start off with a different concept than what you know today as a successful product. So I think that's one key part of it is just to know and accept that you'll never be able to avoid unsuccessful steps. And it's really only failure at the point that you give up. But there's going to be setbacks and there's going to be things that you launch that will not be. You won't just create something and everyone will come flocking to it like you've just brought them the nirvana. But there are some things you can definitely do to reduce the likelihood of failure. And when we talk about the reasons products fail, fundamentally, there are three main reasons products fail. And I'll tell you what they are. And when I do, you're going to say, well, that sounds very obvious. But still, it's helpful to have a model and say, well, wait a minute, I should make sure I'm thinking about these three things. And then of course, the devil's in the details of saying, okay, well, how do I avoid each of these three things? And there are many techniques to go to the next level to say, I can take many steps in my process to try to prevent failure. So the first is it's the wrong idea. The product that you've launched just, there's just not a need for it or the way that you've conceived it, the user interface or what have you, or the fundamental. It's just not solving A problem for people. And I'm sure we all see many examples of this every day. You walk into the old Sharper Image and half the items you're there. It's like, why? Okay, it's a coffee warmer that plugs into my computer USB port. I mean, does the world really need this?

The ultimate toaster fridge.

Right, Right. Exactly. Exactly. And of course, I might look at a product and judge it and think that there's not a market for it, but of course, I could be wrong. And likewise, I might have an idea for a product and believe there is a market for it. And there may be me and my mom, but that's probably not enough of a market to make that product successful. Which is why one of the first things we talk about in my book is how to do customer research. Because there are relatively easy ways to find out what your customers or the customers you're targeting, what they need. And once you have an idea for something that might fill a point of pain or a problem, they have techniques to test whether your idea is right. Because first, successful products usually solve a point of pain that people have. First, you have to understand what point of pain are you solving for? And the second is you have to come up with a hypothesis of something that will solve that pain. And you may or may not be right. You might be right about the pain, you might be wrong about the solution. And the elevator example, which is in my book, and for those who aren't familiar, haven't read the book, or aren't familiar with exactly what Dave was referring to, you may have been in one of these buildings, like a tall office building, where instead of the traditional up and down buttons to call an elevator, there's a keypad, like a 0 to 10, 0 to 9 keypad. And what you have to do in those buildings is enter the floor. You're going to like going to 33rd floor. You type 33 enter. And then it will tell you a letter, usually of where to go, like G. And then, you know, okay, you got to go to the letter that elevator named, letter G. And then you go there, and eventually the elevator shows up and you get in, and then there's no. No buttons to push the elevator.

It just takes you the most efficient path because it knows where you're going.

In theory, it is right. And right.

If everybody. If everybody before they walked up heard your 30 second explanation of why the system was built, it would succeed, right? But people don't get to hear that. They show up and they're like, why the Heck, am I here?

Yes. Well, that's true. Although most of these systems have some sort of little placard above them that basically say the same thing I just said. But the problem is that people don't want to have to spend their energy relearning how to use an elevator. They have already learned how to use elevators, and we have not provided them. We are not solving a problem for the user, for the customer, at least not a way that is obvious to.

Them, not in a way that they are aware. That's right. We are solving a problem for them. They just. Not in the way that they would expect.

Right. Or not in a way that creates enough additional value. Because that's. You know, there's something I call innovation friction. Right. We've all learned new things at one time. You know, people are our ages. I'm a couple years even older than you, Dave. You know, I didn't know how to use a Kindle. I didn't know how to use an iPhone. I didn't know how to use an iPad. There was a time when I didn't know how to use a computer mouse, although I was a kid. And we all learned new things because the thing gave us enough value back that we wanted to learn it because the effort to learn it was a good value compared to the benefit.

The Steve Jobs killer app. Right. Were not for VisiCalc, the computer may never have caught on.

Well, exactly.

But with a spreadsheet. Okay, wait a minute. Now I'm willing to invest my time in learning that stupid device because of what it's going to give me back.

Precisely. Precisely. And so. But it goes to that point that the customer has to understand that this is helping me with something I care about, because if they don't, and we're all on kind of reason number one still here about why products fail, then they're going to reject it. Or in the case of the elevators, you have a different situation because someone's like, I have to get to the 26th floor. And I reject the idea that I have to learn how to reuse an elevator. But. But you have just created a situation where I am forced to learn it or else I cannot get where I want to go. And now I'm just mad or annoyed or frustrated or confused. So you can also just. If you force the person, then you generate negative emotions, which has other problems. And the funny thing is about those elevators is they really do substantially speed up the operating of the elevators in the building.

Of course.

But either people don't understand that enough or they just don't care enough for it to be worth it. So that's the first reason products fail. And I think that's where you always want to start. You always want to start and go, well, wait a minute, before I launch a product, is this really solving a problem for people or is it just an idea I think is cool? And ideas that just, you think are cool are almost never going to work. Then the second reason the products fail is poor execution. You can have an idea for a product that you know, if you executed it successfully, everybody would love it, but maybe it's just not quite as fast as you want, or it's kind of clunky, or it's ugly, or it just doesn't work quite right or something like that. It just the vision of what you wanted to do just wasn't really fulfilled. And that gap between the vision and the reality, that's the execution gap. And some products just fail there.

We talk all the time here. We like to say if that ideas are worthless or a better way to say it, a catchier way to say it is if you want an idea to be worth a hundred bucks, write it on the back of $100 bill. The value is in the execution.

Right, Right, right. Yeah. That's the funny thing about ideas because on the one hand, nothing great ever happens without first starting with the idea. But on the other hand, the idea by itself, as you say, is the dime a dozen and then the third. But. So there's many ways to avoid execution failure. But let me maybe touch on that before I talk about the third, if that's good, I think. But one way I always like to look at it is there's only one reason for execution. Failure of every execution that's ever occurred, every failure of execution, they all occur for the single same reason, the unforeseen. Because whatever reason your product failed, maybe it was a technology problem, maybe it was a customer adoption problem, marketing problem. It was unforeseen. Had it been foreseen, surely you would have either fixed the problem and not had the execution failure, or you would not have gone down that path. You would have said, there is an irresolvable problem here. I'm not going to build and launch this product. There is a foreseen problem. That means it makes no sense. The only exception to this, which I speak about in my book is the movie and play the producers in which they intentionally try to make a Broadway flop.

Yes, yes.

And of course the irony is they fail and it is successful. So Even.

Yes, that's right. Yeah.

But anyway, so that's, you know, I think then it comes down to okay, well, how can you avoid the unforeseen? And there's a ton in my book about this. But it's a combination of bringing the right diversity of people looking for different types of risks that can occur and different types of execution analysis that really help you do your best to make sure that you've understood all the possible problems that you can encounter along the way. And testing various types of testing so that if you have a problem, you discover it as early as possible so you can do something about it.

Yeah, that's terrific. Super valuable information. So all these things we're talking about, you know, they all take action. We have to get up and do and start and we really embrace that on the show and we talk about action all the time because kind of Dave's hundred dollar idea concept there. Is there something that, you know, some tip you can leave us with today for our listeners, some action item that they could start as it relates to digital transformation, Something that they could do today to get on that path? Sure.

Well, I mean, just buy my book, right? That's my first starting point.

That's a good one. I lob that meatball right to you.

Right. Just go right on Amazon, search for my name. Yeah, I know.

Actually you go to businessshow. Co. We've already got it in the, we put it in the show notes for you there.

No, to be honest, buying my book won't help you much unless you take action as you said, Dave. So I don't even know that that counts as action. Yeah, I think. Well, I have a five step process to digital transformation that I outlined in my book. And step one is called understand your customer. And I think that the first step to digital transformation is not about technology in any way, shape or form, but it is about engaging in activities that will help you understand what's going on with your customer right now. In what way are you successfully meeting your needs? In what way are you dissatisfying them or confusing them or frustrating them? And what are the needs that they may have in your domain generally, but which they may not even blame you for? For example, Uber came along and is such a better solution than car service or a taxi. But when I was taking taxis all around New York City, it never occurred to me when I arrived at my destination and then I had to pay the cab driver, that those extra 10, 15 seconds of paying the cab driver were a burden. It just seemed like well, you know, it's part of the deal. Right. But actually, you know, they are. I'm there. I'm at the place I want to be.

It's time to go.

It's right there outside the door. Nope, you got to do this other thing. Right. And you realize once you have Uber that, like, wow, the guy pulls up, and as soon as that car is stopped, I'm out the car to my flight or to climb the Statue of Liberty or to the date I'm going on or whatever I'm doing. Without that, it's over. Right?

That's right, exactly.

So, you know, when you find those points of pain, and obviously Uber solves many other points of pain, like just finding a taxi cabin in the first place in New York City and rain and all that.

Well, and telling them where you're going, like, I mean, there's lots of problems they solve. Who wants to.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, I was going to say we forget that that's one of the things Uber solves, because as soon as you have it, you just take it for granted. It's like, oh, I don't need to negotiate with you and try and explain how where I'm going. I've already put it into a digital device that's now that's it on YouTube.

And that's actually two different points of pain. One is people don't like to talk to other people in many contexts.

Right.

Like, we don't really want to get on the phone and call a call center, and we don't really want to talk to the driver most of the time. It's an extra thing we have to do. So it saves you from that unneeded social interaction. And I don't mean to imply that everybody is antisocial, but usually it's. The cab driver is not the person you're looking to develop a relationship with. I'm sure there are with.

With. With rider ratings, though. You kind of want to talk to these people so that they. They feel like they should give you five stars. That's a whole other thing.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Uber. Uber almost incensed the driver, too. That's true. It creates. Well, you know. Yeah, Yeah.

I always get into a conversation with the driver because I want him to make sure they give me. I want to get picked up next.

Time I see drawers yelling. You're very influenced by those rating systems. I see. I understand.

Yeah, good stuff.

But. But, you know, and then it also saves you the. The. The point of pain, of worrying whether the driver knows where he's going, whether he's going the right way. You can literally see the route he's going on. And it also saves you the pain of wondering when you're going to get there. It, you know, multiple. And see, that's. And that's why it's such a great example, because you might say, well, my customers are perfectly happy, you know, New Yorkers who flagged on a cab and get in the cab and tell them where to go, you know, they weren't necessarily complaining. They might have been complaining about some things, about cab drivers, they're rude, they, you know, whatever. But, but, but when you do the right kind of customer research and you look at what are all those points of effort that your customer is having to exert? What we like to do is create what we call an effort map. What is everything you need to do in order to get your outcome? You know, the perfect form of Uber would be you snap your fingers and the app automatically teleports you to your destination. They're not there yet. Right. You still have to do some effort with Uber, but, but we don't have the technology to solve every point of effort. But when you map out everything your customer has to do to buy a cake from your bakery or order pizza, or buy shoes at your shoe store, or get you to fix their toilet if it's broken, or whatever your business is, what's every point of pain or effort that they have to exert and then go, hmm, which of these might I be able to remove? And I mean, I mentioned pizza. I think I'll give you an example. There's a pizza restaurant in our town that we like. We've gone there, ordered from there for years, but they don't have any, like, electronic ordering. You got to call them up, you know, tell them what you want. And they do actually keep your credit card on file. So I'll give them credit for that. You know, they remember that they see from your phone number who you are and they have your credit card on file, so that's something. But you still got to call them up and tell them what pizza you want. Domino's, in contrast, remembers the last pizza you ordered. And if you just text them the pizza emoji, that's all you have to do, text them the pizza emoji. And they will text you back, okay, Howard, you want two extra thick crust cheese pizzas, just like last time, delivered to blah, blah, blah, address just like last time, charged to this credit card just like last time. Is that right? Please press Y To confirm. So I've got to type two characters, the pizza emoji and the Y. And once I do that, the pizza is essentially on its way. And so that's so much.

I mean, their audience is high people. So you gotta think about this.

It works, man. It works.

Absolutely. Yeah.

But it makes me, as somebody who prefers the pizza, and here's the irony from the other place, sometimes be lazy enough to say, you know what? I know it's less healthy. I know it's less good. I'm going to order the Domino's Pizza because it saves me the, what, three minutes of effort. And I think that's one of the things that companies, as they think about digital transformation is they don't realize that it can become more important than what they think is their core value proposition. And Accenture does studies every year in the auto industry, and they ask customers what is the most important consideration when buying a car. And, of course, there are many different considerations. And they study this. And it was already, like, three or four years ago when the digital features of the car, like the GPS navigation and things like that, the trajectory, that was becoming more and more and more important every year. Obviously, years ago, it didn't exist. It crossed the level of the importance of the driving performance of the vehicle. And so consumers said if you had to rank things, the digital capabilities, like it interfaces with my phone and all that were more important than. It accelerates, well, braking, steering, and that's how important digital can be.

Yeah, that's terrific. Well, there's a ton of stuff to unpack here. A lot to learn in this episode. There's a lot more. More to learn. The book is Winning Digital Customers. You can learn more about it at. From Digital, of course, you can find it on Amazon. It's a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Howard, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your expertise with us today. It's fascinating.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, man.

I love that. That was awesome. What a great, perfect energy match for what we like to do on this show.

Yeah. And, you know, frankly, when we first started talking about having them on the show, I was like, well, you know, they kind of work with these big companies, but the more I looked into it and, you know, looked into the book, this is really a road map on how to become a big company, especially in this age where we're all embracing digital. And some of the things that he talked about, about connecting with your, you know, employees as well as your. Your customers. And, like, the examples that you talked.

About, well, and even when he said you might be digital, but, you know, you've got this system here and that system there and that system there, it's like, oh, my gosh. He just described not just my small business, but probably the small business of almost everyone listening. Like, we. If you're listening to this podcast, you are probably more digitally inclined than the average business owner. I could be wrong about that, but I would think so. But we all, especially as small business owners, you know, you create something or adopt some system and then it's like, okay, that's working for this. Great. And then you forget about it because it's on autopilot and you work on the next thing that you need to make efficient. But his idea of zooming out a little bit more and saying, wait, what if we tied all those systems together? You're right. That's your path as a small business owner to becoming a less small business owner because you've just eliminated so much friction for your whole team that now you can have more team members. So, yeah, it's great.

I love it in looking at those, even those little small friction points and eliminating those. And I love the tagline to the book, you know, winning Digital Customers and the tag, you know, the antidote to irrelevance.

Yeah.

You know, so that's great. I highly recommend it. We'll link it in the show notes and that's great. I love.

That's great. Yeah, Innovation, friction. That was my key phrase takeaway from this. I love that idea and it's a good one for us all to think about. So, yeah, great stuff. Thanks, Howard. Thanks, everybody for listening. Make sure send us your questions, your comments, your thoughts. Feedbackusinessshow.co. we would love to hear from you. We, not we would. We love to hear from you. It's simply a truth. We really do. And. And we can't wait to hear what you think. So thanks for listening and go leave us a review. Businessshow co.

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