101. The Educated Experiment

Foreign. Welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell, where we're cracking the code of the driven mind that we've been blessed with. That's right. You and I, we've got that running mind. And that's why we jump on here once a week and slow that baby down and talk a little bit about a concept, an idea thought to interrupt that driven mind. Today, episode 101, the Educated Experiment. And one of the things that just want to jump in with here today is that, you know, oftentimes we think about experimenting as dangerous and, you know, kind of crazy and, oh, you know, scientists do that and all the different, like, you know, I'm. I'm not in the experiment business because I don't have the resources. I, you know, I didn't have some industry fund me for experimental research. And I'm going to go in the lab and kind of, you know, it's kind of how we think about it. But I want to challenge that, and I want to you really embrace a concept. What if. What if you're in the experimental business? What if experimenting is a part of what you do every day? And I think about that. I often joke, you know, as sales, like, when we're thinking about being a sales expert, we focus on, if you don't win the sale, then it's called failure. But when you put on your marketing hat and advertising hat, if you don't win the lead, it's called research. Right? So I love how we. How we can frame different things, and I think it's brilliant. Whoever came up with that concept, however many years ago, like, oh, no, when we fail in marketing, it's called research. It's called education. It's called experimenting. When we fail in all of the other areas of the business, it's called failure. It's like, hang on, wait a minute. And today I want you to kind of think about where are you experimenting or where are you holding back when it comes to experimenting? And so there's one caveat that I want to make sure that we're clear on. If I'm going to experiment, then that means that I need to be mindful as well of how I evaluate that experiment. So if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down. Experiment, and then just draw a line or something next to that. And I want you to write, evaluate. Don't judge. Okay? So when I experiment in a new sector, a new sales process, a new marketing area, maybe some new technology, investing in a different area of the business, investing in, you know, maybe it's even coaching or training or consulting or, you know, adding a new team member, adding a new position, delegating some leadership, adding a new manager, whatever that might look like. There's an experiment involved. And the challenge is that oftentimes we don't really evaluate. We judge based on the results we got. Oh, that person was terrible. Oh, damn me. I shouldn't have hired that person. I should have known better. Judge, judge, judge. That's destructive. That's not going to help you or anybody. It's not going to help you move forward in a positive way. And so I want you to really challenge that and go, well, hang on. Where can I really be focused on evaluating my results from my experiment? You know, if we do take on that, you know, that science example or, you know, if somebody's in the lab, you know, you're not judging yourself in an experiment. You're seeing what cells are doing together and what, you know, what's happening in the petri dish. Okay, check it out. It's been a long time since I was in chemistry in high school, and I barely got myself through that class. Butbut the point is, we're making experiments every day. So let's make educated experiments to the best of our ability. And then what we learn becomes valuable assets to the business. Okay, so I want to talk about one of the biggest challenges. Then I want to talk about benefits. And so one of the biggest challenges that we have with experimenting in any way, shape or form is our own belief about failure. If I'm going to experiment, I'm going to fail, period. I'm not going to fail every time. It might not be the first time, but I will quote, fail what the world considers failure, what the world considers setbacks. You know, one of the episodes we recorded, I don't have it in front of me right now what number it is, but look for it. It was called setbacks are the setup or the setback is the setup. I think one of the episodes that I recorded where the world calls it a setback, I call it the setup. And that's what we're talking about here. When you experiment, you might get a result you're not looking for. That's what the collective agreement in the world calls failure, calls mistake calls, all these different things. And I want to challenge yourself, to help you challenge yourself of what is your belief around failure, because your mindset around failure is going to be massive. If you're going to be effective and gain educated experiment value one, we need to think about what that looks like, obviously, you got to make sure you have the resource available to do some experimenting. What's fascinating, back at the beginning of March, Amazon reported that they were going to close all of their brick and mortar stores. Obviously, we know they started as an online bookstore, and then, what's wild, everything was online. And then back in 2015, they opened their first bookshop in Seattle. Seattle. And they were like, yeah, let's try this brick and mortar thing. And then they kind of evolved and they've tried all kinds of different areas of retail. They've got different bookstores. They've got their. They call their four star stores where they only carry product in there that's rated at four stars or better. They've tried convenience stores that don't have cashiers. Obviously they bought Whole Foods. They've done all these different kinds of things. And I remember when I shared with the lovely Christy, Amazon's closing all its stores, she's like, when can we go to the four star store? She likes? You check out some cool stuff and whatever. And we're blessed. In Phoenix, Scottsdale area where we live, we're able to have, we had that four star store as well as a bookstore in the Quarter. The Scottsdale Quarter is an outdoor mall here. But nonetheless, as they close those, I look at that and it's like, man, they ended up having 68 brick and mortar stores, and yet it only represented 3% of their sales in the quarter before they decided to close it all. And so you look at that and go, man, that's crazy. Oh, my gosh. Da, da, da, da, da. But I look at it and go, you know, they've been experimenting for a while. And all that other retail experimenting they did certainly came in to help with their Whole Foods division and all the different things. And so a lot of people look and judge very quickly. But what if you're just evaluating instead of judging? Like I said earlier, obviously we're not Amazon. We don't have those types of resources available. But we can be strategic with resource deployment and really decide what do I want to learn from the market? Because the market votes with their checkbooks and they vote with their attention. When we look and put a marketing piece in front of somebody, they vote with their attention. If we put a sales opportunity in front of somebody, they vote with their checkbooks. It takes attention to get the checkbook vote. So it all begins there. And so, you know, when it comes to experimenting, I just want you to think about this a little bit differently in your own business and maybe even go Back and reframe some areas where you're like, I don't know how that felt or what that did, you know. So the challenge is how you think about failure benefits. Let's touch on that here for a moment before I release you today. So one of the biggest benefits is you gain applicable knowledge. And so you have a different level to do is to know know, to, you know, have an experience fulfills all kinds of talking about it, you know. And here we are over 100 episodes into our time together in leadership, in a nutshell. And yes, we're just having a conversation every week, but I'm having a conversation hoping to get you to do something, to try something, to invest in activity or slow down a mind, perhaps through meditation, perhaps through journaling, whatever that may be. I want you to take action, not just sit here and hang out together or listen to it in the car. I want you to do something that changes your behavior. And when you experiment, you gain applicable knowledge. I was recently talking to a client of the Blue Collar Success group that was saying like, man, he's going through a challenging time. And he's like, it just doesn't bother me like it used to. And I asked him straight away, I said, what's changed for you? And it's a younger business, about a five year old company and has grown very rapidly since inception. We've been blessed to help them from day one. And as they've continued to grow, he said, you know, I think it's just, I've been at it long enough and I've been going through the ups and the downs and it doesn't matter how many trucks or what revenue levels. Why would I ride the emotional rollercoaster is what I call it. And one of my main focuses in life is helping people elevate their consciousness level to smooth out emotional regulation and just have more fun, be happier. And if you're in business and you're a leader of any kind, you're going to have some ups and downs, right? And so it was just really powerful to hear him say that. So he's experimented in all kinds of different ways, therefore he's got more knowledge. And now he's like, you know, I just decide I'm not going to get all wound up over certain things. That used to wind me up. You know, I had another client that was in the process of making an acquisition. We looked at the numbers, we looked at the team, we looked at the location, the geography. You know, we went through all the entire evaluation and I was like, yeah, you know, it's. It's going to be an investment for sure. And this client said this to me. He said, kenny, I want to do this for the experience. And I said, all right, get ready, because you're going to get some experience. Right? And we were basing a lot of that acquisition on a service manager that was in place in the acquired company. And we got about six weeks, eight weeks down the road, and things were very toxic with that new manager, and they ended up parting ways, and that manager went on their own and went to try to compete with them and all these different types of things. And so it wasn't an I told you so. It was more of an emotional regulation moment when I was working with the client and said, hey, remember, we did this for the education, so we're getting that education now. And, you know, and there was kind of a laugh and a reminder like, yeah, that'sthat's a good point. And so that's what we're doing in life. Everything we do is for education. When we win, we get education. When we, quote, lose, we get education. But I want you to think about the educated experiment. And where else do you need to experiment? Because the number one benefit that you get from experimenting is confidence. And confidence is powerful. And I talk about it with confidence. Cash. It's the most important asset you have. I don't care how much cash is in your wallet at the moment. What I care about is how much confidence you have in your heart, in your being, your confidence in yourself, the confidence to continue to move forward, the confidence to lead people in the face of uncertainty. That's what it's going to take. And we're going to have a lot of uncertainty over the next several years, my friend. And that's good. It's really good. It shakes up markets, it shakes up people, it shakes up the status quo, and it continues we've heard forever. Oh, the only thing that is consistent is the consistency of change. Yeah. I wrote the Six Dimensions of Change 2.0. As I had elevated my consciousness from when I originally wrote that book, and I updated the content, I changed some things in there from my new belief system and was like, change is going to happen. And as that continues, I'm not looking for some cliche statement. I'm looking for you to elevate your consciousness. And elevating consciousness gives you more confidence. And as you have more confidence, you'll experiment more. And as you experiment, you get education that turns to confidence. And then when you have that confidence, you'll experiment more. And then you get education that turns to confidence. And what an amazing cycle, my friend. It's time for you to do some more experimenting. But don't forget, evaluate. Don't judge. I'm Kenny Chapman, your host of leadership in a nutshell. I'm super honored to have you. Episode 101, the Educated Experiment. Do me a favor. Share this with somebody. Make sure you have peers listening, your leadership teams, so on and so forth until we talk. Make it a better than fantastic day. I'll see you next, Sam.