MBA883 The Working While Traveling Experiment P4: Learning From Businesses Abroad

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Heyo. Welcome to the $100 NBA show, the business podcast that brings you the best business lessons from the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA and webinar Ninja and it's part four of our working while Traveling experiment and I'm in Sicily. Ortigia, Sicily to be exact. And we are in week four of this experiment. Ortigia is a seriously charming little town off the eastern coast of Sicily. Highly recommend a visit. If you're just joining us on this eight part series, Nicole and I are embarking on an eight week trip. An eight week experiment to see if you can really travel the world while running and growing a business. Previously in our last episode in part three we were in Rome and we learned about how to apply your travel experiences in your business. Things that you do as you travel when you visit sites, museums, historical monuments. What can you learn from these experiences and how you can apply them? I give you three examples of my own experiences in that episode, so make sure you check out part three if you have not already. In today's episode we're in Artiga, Sicily. We're here for a few days and then we move on to the old country. Oristano, Sardinia. Fun fact, that's where Nicole's father's family's from, so we're going to be seeing some family there as well. It's going to be a lot of fun for both Nicole and I because it's both our first time in Sardinia. But it's not just about beautiful Sites. We're learning about business in each of these lessons, and in this lesson, we're going to learn about what you can learn from other businesses abroad. Most major cities around the world, whether it's Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, or Cairo for that matter, there is some sort of service industry, restaurants, hotels, transportation. And we all interact with these types of services when we're traveling. And these are our chances for us to learn more about how these cultures do business. What are some business practices or services that are just flat out normal to them, but it's a huge treat for us as foreigners? What are some of the business insights we can learn while traveling? And more importantly, how can we implement them in our business to give ourselves a competitive advantage? I'll be sharing three business practices I picked up already in my travels here in Italy and how we're going to be applying them in our business. I'll also show you my strategy of vetting these services or practices or insights and deciding if they're a stud or a dud and if we should use them in our business. There's a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Nicole and I run two businesses with a team of 21, soon to be 23, are making a couple hires this week. We've traveled for up to three weeks before, but in this experiment, we're going all in. Eight weeks of travel, 15 cities. We've been to Milan, Florence, Rome, Palermo, Sicily, and now Ortigia, Sicily, and move on to Orstano, Sicily, later on. And there's so much to learn when you're traveling. And yes, you're running a business and you're working on your business while you're traveling. But there's nothing wrong on picking up a few pointers, picking up a few practices that other businesses around the world do that really work. One of the worst things you could do as an entrepreneur is to live in a bubble. You gotta get out there, you gotta be exposed to different ways of doing things. Even if you don't apply these practices or these ideas, it opens up your mind to new ideas. It opens up and allows you to say, hey, that's a different way of doing things. Even though I wouldn't do that in my business or would it work for me? It makes me ask the question, what can I do differently? Now everybody knows that Italy is known for its incredibly delicious food. It's probably one of the biggest attractions to Italy, other than the great history and the weather and the coastline. Haven't been to Italy A few times. This is my third time, I could tell you. So one of the things you do not forget is the food. The level of quality at any restaurant, any little kiosk, even in Italy, is so high, it's incredible. I remember a few years back, we were in Turin and we had some panini sandwiches. I mean, they were five euros a piece. That's roughly five US dollars. And it was probably more delicious than a sandwich you could buy for like $30 in the States. It was incredible. This is the thing that you notice the most, the quality of their food. Even the simplest snack has the highest quality. Now, I'm sorry if I have your mouth watering right now, but I'm getting to a very important point. While I was in Rome, Nicole and I went out with some of Nicole's cousins, who are actually originally from Sardinia, but are living in Rome. And we went to a Sardinian restaurant. Now, this restaurant primarily focuses on seafood. And I kid you not, this was the best meal I've had in my entire life. And that's saying a lot because, hey, I'm a cultured guy. You know, I've eaten a lot of food, a lot of different kinds of food, a lot of different kinds of restaurants in my life. I seek out new cuisines. I'm very open to trying new things. You know, I come from a cultural background. My parents are Egyptian, where food is very important. It's love. I grew up in a very multicultural community where I got the chance to try very different types of foods from a young age. So it's not like I don't have a refined palate. But this food was incredible. This restaurant was incredible. Now, this wasn't some sort of fancy restaurant where you had to make a reservation months in advance. There's no Michelin stars or anything like that. It was just authentic Sardinian seafood. Incredible. If I'm in Rome, I will go to that restaurant. If anybody tells me they're going to Rome, I will implore them, you have to go to this restaurant. You're going to have an experience. And as I was enjoying that meal and wondering, do I have room for dessert? I started asking myself, wow, this business, this restaurant has me completely sold. And I wanted to dissect why. Why am I so in love with this restaurant, with this business? I want to reverse engineer it so I can apply the same things in our business. So I started to take down some notes. The first note I took down is that the quality of the ingredients were incredible. So if they served us bread on the table, Just simple table bread. It tasted incredible. It was freshly baked. Baked actually in the restaurant, if we had a seafood dish, they served us fish as one of the dishes. And that fish that was served was caught just a few hours ago, not defrosted a few hours ago. The vegetables in the salad were freshly cut. So just the pure quality of what they're serving is great. It's not complicated. It's not really expensive stuff. It was not the most expensive fish on the market. The vegetables they served us were in some sort of exotic vegetables, potatoes. The salad had some lettuce and tomatoes and some cucumbers. But what they served us was great quality. So that's point number one. So I asked myself, what are the ingredients in our business? Well, we have a business called Webinar Ninja, a webinar software. And that software has a whole bunch of ingredients. You can see the software as a meal. One dish of the meal is how to create a webinar. Another dish could be running a webinar. Another dish could be automated webinars. Another dish could be like a follow up sequence after the webinar. And within each dish there's ingredients, right? What makes a webinar? Well, there's video, there's chat, there's questions, there's polls, there's offers. They're showing my slides, all that kind of stuff right now, are the ingredients in each dish, are they good quality ingredients? You're like, Omar, this is software. What are you talking about? How do we know what's a good ingredient? Well, when it comes to software, it's the code, right? How well is this coded? Meaning how stable is the code? How well is it created? Is it reliable? Can I rely on the code? Can I rely on the software to do what I want it to do? Because after you eat a meal, you're satisfied because it tastes great and you don't feel horrible afterwards, right? That's the hallmark of a great dish. So what about with software is that when you use it, it's easy to use, it does the job you asked it to do, and after it's all said and done, you're like pleasantly surprised. Wow, that was easier than I thought it was. Wow, that turned out to be better than I thought it was going to be. And what I notice is that when I focused on the ingredients, I realized I'm focusing on what's really important in a product. A lot of us, we overanalyze, we overthink things and we focus on the wrong things. We focus on marketing the product rather than having a great product where you focus on the marketing. Before we even have a great product, we focus on the side features that don't really have anything to do with the purpose of your product. Say, for example, you're creating a course, and the course is titled how to get started in tennis. You know, you don't know anything about tennis and you want to play tennis. You want to be able to play tennis and just know the rules and be able to, you know, volley the ball back and forth, right? Beginner's course. A lot of us in this example will focus on the wrong things. We'll have a whole module or a whole page on our course on what the best sweatbands to buy on Amazon, so we can have our affiliate link and make money on the side there. But the course promise is just to be competent in tennis. That's not, you know, required. Let's focus on making sure we deliver on our promise. In my restaurant example, you know, the promise is a great meal, one that you will never forget. That's what you want to deliver, and that's what you want to do with your products. What are the main ingredients you need to have? Make sure those ingredients are quality. You deliver on those ingredients. And I really believe in Italy, when it comes to the food and beverage industry, they have this on lock. They know that the most important thing is the quality ingredients in what you're promising. Make sure you get the right things right. So that's example number one. How I took a situation, an experience of the way somebody in another culture does business and say, hey, they got something really right here. How can I apply it in my own business? How can I make sure I'm doing this? Example number two, Italy is known for its great cafe culture as well. They love a great coffee. And trust me, the coffee here is great. And there's cafes everywhere. And cafes here also serve more than just coffee. They serve a little bit of snack, a little bit of dessert, even a small lunch sometimes. Now, one of the things you'll notice is that a lot of cafes in America are in the West. They will have a certain system. When you're ordering right, you'll go up to the barista and you'll make an order. You'll place an order. Let's say you want two lattes and two croissants. The next thing the barista is going to say is, okay, that's X amount of dollars you pay the barista and you wait for your order to be ready, or they'll bring it to Your table. And this is just something that we're all just used to in the west, that's the system. But in Italy, they don't do that. Hospitality is a big part of their culture, and that just seems a little bit rude to take your money before they even actually delivered on what you're here for. They think, hey, no, let me first serve you. Let me give you my best, and then you pay me. So you'd go up and you make your order, and they say, okay, great, have a seat and we'll bring it to you. And you don't pay then and there. You pay after you enjoyed your coffee and your croissant and had a little chat with your friend. Now, there's two things going on here. Number one, it's a different experience. If you've experienced this for the first time. You're going into the cafe, you're expecting to pay because you feel like, hey, I have to pay for this before I actually take it from you. And they're saying, no, just enjoy, Sit down, have the coffee, have the croissant. You know, take your time, and then pay me. So automatically, it's a little bit of a juxtaposition. It's automatically a bit of a shock to the system, like, oh, this is kind of cool. They're not asking for my money. They just feel like they can trust me. And there's this feeling of trust that happens immediately where you feel kind of like, hey, I owe them one. Right? That's a good position to be in as a business, where your customer feels like, hey, I owe you one. Hey, I really appreciate the way you're treating me. I want to reciprocate. It's very subtle, but it contributes to the overall experience at the cafe. And it's great because you enjoy your coffee, you have your croissant, you have your things, you have your chat, and then you get up and you pay, and it's all said and done, and it just feels great. The second thing that happens in this culture as well is that you do not feel rushed. Often in cafes in the west, you feel rushed. You feel like you have to finish up quickly, like they're trying to clear tables. Now, that may be true, but it's not a great experience. Part of the reason why you're going to a cafe is because you want to go out for coffee, right? You want to enjoy the actual environment. And in Italy and other cultures as well, they recognize that. They say, hey, let them enjoy. Let them stay as long as they like. And when they're ready to go, they'll go and they'll pay us again. They're focusing on each individual experience, making sure it's a great experience versus thinking about scaling so much and the masses of people. I'd be interested to see a split test and see how much of a difference does it make by rushing people out the door. Another kind of side benefit is that when everybody's kind of enjoying themselves and they're in the cafe and they're sitting and taking their time, the cafe is going to seem and look very full. And when you see a full cafe with a lot of people enjoying themselves, you tend to want to go inside that cafe. You're like, hey, that place is popping. That place looks like it's happening. I want to go and try their coffee now. This lends itself as well as having a little bit more of a refined experience. So what does all this have to do with your own business? How can I apply this learning or this experience the way they do business in my business? Well, number one, the idea of trust, the idea of giving the customer the benefit of the doubt and saying, hey, I trust you. You're giving me a chance to serve you. Don't worry about the money right away. We will get that done. We'll take care of that later. And we do that at Webinar ninja with a 14 day trial. So if you signed up for Webinar Ninja, you don't pay anything until day 15. We want you to enjoy the software, run a few webinars and really feel confident with it. Then on day 15, you're charged. And it's our way of saying, hey, just jump in, start using the software. We will charge you when you have a chance to play with it a little bit, to have an experience. So I highly recommend if you have any sort of soft product, whether it's a course or a software, to offer a trial, it really helps. It really breaks that barrier and build trust with your audience. The other thing that we picked up is, you know, not rushing people out the door or not really making people feel like they're constricted. So as much as you can in your business, try to give them as much freedom as possible, whether it's unlimited amount of webinars they can create or if you have a course to allow them to have lifetime access to that course or a generous money back guarantee or refund policy if you have clothing that they need to try on first. So give them a little leeway and allow them to really enjoy the process of purchasing from you these are great examples of how different cultures really take on business in a different way.

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We are back with our third example of how other cultures do business in a special way and how we can learn from that and apply it in our own businesses. I'm also going to be covering after this example, my process of actually getting these out of my experiences and seeing how I can apply them in my business so you can do the same when you travel. What's the method to my madness? How do I actually get to the point where I'm extracting these ideas? So my third example is all about going above and beyond expectations. Now, of course, when you're selling a product or service, you have to actually deliver on what you promise. If you say you're going to give something, you have to give that something. If you promise to give that product in a certain amount of time or deliver it in a certain amount of time, you need to stick to that deadline in that time frame. This is a given. This is just so you can stay in business. That's why you could be credible and be an honest business person. Right? But the way to differentiate yourself is to go above and beyond that, to go above and beyond expectations. Now, in this experiment for most of our travel, Nicole and I are booking Airbnbs. We've been using Airbnbs for about four or five years now. Absolutely love the experience. It's not always perfect, but overall it's been a better experience than using hotels. Now with Airbnb, it's not a consistent experience, like going to a Hilton, for example. There's a certain standard that you're expecting with a Hilton, but very rarely are you surprised, pleasantly surprised. You just get what you pay for with Hilton. Really, you don't really get anything above and beyond with Airbnb. There's so much room because there's no standardization for you to go above and beyond. Now, our first stop in this trip was Milan. It was our first Airbnb, and whoa, did this host go above and beyond. Alessandro, our host in Milan, really took things to the next level. Now, there's certain things you expect. You know, a nice clean bed, some towels, a clean apartment, some decent WI fi. That's really what you expect. But Alessandro took it to the next level. He stocked the kitchen with enough food for really breakfast and lunch if he wanted to, plenty of coffee and snacks. He gave us a really concise list of places he highly recommends in Milan, made it easy for us to get around. He gave us a map with these places marked down. He also met us at his apartment when we checked in. So, well, before we even got there, he was communicating with us on WhatsApp. And on Airbnb, he assured us that, hey, I got your back. I'm gonna take care of you. Don't worry. When we got there, he took us out to a cute little cafe below the building, and he sat down and he told us all the wonderful places we should go to Milan. He asked us how many days we're here for, what do we enjoy? And he marked down on the map where to go. He treated us to coffee and actually a really delicious brownie too. He really just took care of us. He went way above and beyond. It was a rainy couple days in Milan, so he made sure that there were umbrellas in the actual apartment. So a day after we checked in, he texted us, hey, do you have any laundry? And we said, yeah, we do. He was happy to pick up all our laundry, wash it, dry it, and bring it back to us the day we checked out. So all our clothes were clean. When we packed it in our actual bags, I was like, whoa, this is incredible. There is no way in the world I'm not giving Alessandro five stars in a rave review. And you better believe it. Next time in Milan, I am making sure that I can book his place. Now there's A few things to learn here, A few things that I took away. Number one, did he have to do these things? No, he didn't. Did these things cost money and time? Yes, they did. But one of the things you have to understand in business is that retention is more important than conversion. He could have not done all these extra things and it could have been okay, but it would have been a memorable experience. I wouldn't be talking about it right now on the show and I probably wouldn't go back. I'll probably try somewhere else. But by investing a little bit of time and money, by, you know, giving us a little bit extra, whether it's those breakfast items or taking us out for coffee and showing us around, or the expense of doing our laundry, he ensured retention, that we are going to be a customer the next time we're in Milan, that we're going to refer him, that we're going to give him a great review. And Airbnb is all on reviews. You know, his, his reputation is really all about the reviews he receives from his guests. He has a long term vision with his, his business on Airbnb. So it made me reflect on our own business. What are we doing above and beyond? How are we pleasantly surprising our customers? What can we do so that we have better retention? We take care of the people that are actually our customers already and going above and beyond what's on the pricing page. So Nicole and I are working on a few things that we can add but not really advertise, some things that are going to pleasantly surprise our customers. And I guess you're going to have to be a customer to find out because then you won't be surprised. But the point is that we are really working hard on adding this input of business, of this practice in our business, because it has such a great effect on us. And you know what I'm talking about. You've had these experiences, but for some reason you let them slip. You let them slip out of your grasp and not use them in your own business. So let me tell you what I do to make sure that doesn't happen. Number one, I talked about this in the last episode. Journal. You have to journal on your trip. Even if you just dedicate five minutes a day to just write down what you did, some of the highlights, some of the things that kind of caught you by surprise, go ahead and journal it. If you don't like writing or typing in a journal, create an audio journal. In this example, I can just take a quick video with Alessandro, say, hey, I'm here with Alessandro. I had a great experience because, 1, 2, 3, 4. These are things he's done for us. What a great experience. I've learned a lot. Takes one minute. It's over. Alessandro will love you for it. Now I chose to journal. I like to write down things and allows me to remember them easily. But by journaling, you take down notes. The second thing is after you just document, you have to take some time to kind of reflect and extract the learning opportunities out of them. So after I document, after I journaled, I sat down and said, hey, what did I learn from these experiences? How can I apply them into my business? And that's kind of how we came up with this episode today. That's the beginning of the script or the outline of today's episode. The last point I want to make is that when you do this, when you document and then you reflect and then you actually write down the learning outcomes, the more you do this, the more attentive you will be of these opportunities. When you don't document, when you don't reflect, you kind of let them slip by and you just take them for face value and you don't really see how you can apply them in your business. But when you actually go through that practice, your radar is much more aware of what's going on, and you really take down these learning opportunities seriously. Guys, this experiment of working while traveling has been incredible, but it hasn't been perfect. I gotta be honest, there's been challenges, and that's what our next episode is all about. The challenges of working while traveling and how to deal with them. What do you do when you have a little mini crisis in your business and you're supposed to be going somewhere out in your travels, going to see a museum or going to see some park, but your business needs you? What do you do when you're stressed out about a problem and you're just not in the mood to do what you're planning to do in your trip? What happens when you and your significant other, whoever you're traveling with, your friend, are just on different wavelengths because of business? And what if you're in the middle of your traveling and you realize, hey, this is not working. I got to get back to work. I gotta go back to my office or home in order for me to do what I need to do? These are challenges we have to face. I'm gonna share with you the challenges I'm having in my journey, in my experiment right now of traveling and working in our next episode. So make sure you subscribe so you get part five of our Working While Traveling experiment. Thank you so much for listening to the show, guys. This has been an incredible experience. Not only this eight week experiment, but just how we've tried different things with this podcast. If you love what we're doing and love our episodes, please make sure to leave us an iTunes rating and review. Really helps. And read every single one of them. All right, that's it for me today guys. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Every interaction with a business, any kind of business as a customer, is an opportunity to learn. Whether it's a good interaction, a bad interaction, or just a mediocre experience, you can learn what to do or not to do. Take these as learning experiences. Take these as opportunities and apply them in your own business. All right, I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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