Evan Carmichael explains how Airbnb grew by starting with a perfect experience for one customer, then scaling it. He built his own content series by designing formats he wanted first, treating himself as the customer. Start with one person, perfect it, and growth follows naturally.
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is start with the perfect experience. Over to you, Brian Chesky. I wake up every morning with espresso to keep me going.
And Paul Graham said something to me that I'll never forget. He's now written an essay about it. He said, do things that don't scale. And it's counterintuitive. And what that meant for us was we were able to go door to door meeting every one of our users, trying to provide an amazing experience. And if we had only relegated ourselves to a bedroom or our office apartment, you know, because that's the only thing that seems scalable, we would never have created an amazing experience. And oftentimes the best methodology is to start with the perfect experience with just one person, get that right, and then figure out how to scale something great instead of scaling something not so great and then trying to improve it. That's really hard to do.
When I make videos on this YouTube channel, I don't sit down and think, What's gonna be a hot video? What video is gonna make me a lot of money or drive me a lot of traffic? Most of the videos that I make on this channel start with me, and I try to create a perfect experience for myself. This Enspresso series I started for me because I wanted to have motivation and excitement every single morning, not just at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when I happen to watch some video or happen to read a book or happen to have a conversation. I wanted to bake it in to my regular morning experience to have something that excites me and motivates me what motivates me. So I designed the Espresso series as the perfect experience for me. What do I want to see every morning? I designed the Top 10 series and the Mentor Me series to try to introduce myself to new big thinkers and new entrepreneurs who are doing amazing things and spend a little bit more time with them. And hopefully by being around them a little bit more, some of the way that they think, some of their beliefs, some of their actions start to rub off on me. And little by little, the more I spend time watching them, listening to them, hanging around them, the more that's going to rub off on me and make me a better version of myself. I started the Believe Life Series because I wanted something beyond just business. I wanted something on the weekends to help me think about my life as a whole. You know, I wanted things to think about relationship and stress and all the things that we've talked about in the Believe Life Series. It started with me. Like, I wanted it for me, for my life. I wanted to create the perfect experience for myself. I wasn't happy with what was out there, and so I designed it for me, and I share it with you guys, and thankfully you like it and appreciate it. So when you're thinking about your next product or service, think about creating the perfect experience for someone, whether it's yourself because you are your own customer, or your customer out there who is not yourself. Think about how can I make the best possible solution just for them. And if you hit that right, then the growth will take care of itself. So the question of the day today is, what are you doing to improve the experience for your customer? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm curious to find out, excited to see what you guys are up to, and I will join in the conversation. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. ¡Muy bueno, baby!
