The Human Side of Business Strategy

Welcome to Wabi Sabi. This is the art of imperfection. And well, this week, really, think actually I'm going to give this, I'm going to hand this over to you. I'm to hand ball this to Jim to kind of start this. Cause I think we want to make sure we, you know, maybe, uh, give praise or shout out to fellow listeners. Uh, I'll just pass it to you.

Sure. Well, thanks Lawrence. In today, we're going to have a bit more of a business theme. think we really like to do it we oscillate between business and personal. But so this will be a bit more of a uh business theme and we're going to talk about, you know, customers journeys and the like. But before I do that, I wanted to shout out to one of my coaching clients and an avid listener of this podcast. Actually, he telling me he's just launching his podcast very soon and This is to you, Jared. was, we were having a call during the week and I loved it because he said, you know, now just give me, help me get a good understanding of this. How the preparation, do you divide the tasks and times between how things are going and how much prep time are you doing? And I honestly, we full transparency. I've done that before in previous podcasts, but when we got together for this podcast, we wanted to keep the magic in the essence of improvisation alive. So I said to him, Jared. There are times where we are deciding on the topic as the countdown, the shot clock for recording starts. And I kid you not, I'm being totally honest. So sometimes when Lawrence is sharing something, it's the first time I'm hearing about it and we don't know, but I think what that does is it keeps us both sharp and we're not, we're not fluking it in that we're adapting to it, but we've got, I guess a trust of self to go. can go anywhere we need to go. And. Being able to be okay with that is, is I didn't realize that it's something that you develop where you just back yourself because even during last week, I had an interview with somebody and he sent through, goes, here's the list of questions that I'll ask. I'll go, dude, I don't care. Just do whatever. Just go. I don't, I don't need that. I actually think I function better if I am, um, thrown in there. Cause you'll get a more authentic experience. That's not rehearsed. So

Yes.

That's the context of it. You want to add to that before we start our topic today, Lawrence?

Well, I think this goes right into the topic, right? So the, the preference that I think when people are listening to this is like, Oh, wow, there must be, you know, like that's just amazing or they can't believe doing that. think at the end of the day, we have to realize is that it takes a lot of reps and sets to get to this point. Uh, I'm not saying that I'm anything special nor is Jim, but it's just that we were doing it because we want to keep the conversation raw and whatever comes to mind rather than preparing for a topic. Now there's certain instances that you do need to prepare. So let's contrast that with my daughter. She's 16 years old.

Yeah.

And she's starting a podcast herself, right? Her podcast is called The Scene, S-E-E-N. It's like, how do people become seen in their industry, in their world? And so she's been interviewing entrepreneurs. And what's been interesting is that, you know, I see her preparation. Like she goes, I read this book, I read this bio. And she's done a couple of interviews. She hasn't released her podcast yet, but a couple of interviews that she's done, what's really interesting for her is that the person being interviewed is like, Where did you even find that story? know, like she, so people are impressed with her interviewing skills at all, even though she has no background. And so in that realm, she's starting out, yeah, I think you do need to do a lot of prep. When I first started the Wellness Guys, long, long time ago, um yeah, was trying to do as much prep as possible, but I'm a slow reader, as we mentioned before, and it sucked. Like it really sucked to try to get an understanding. I wish I had chat GPT back then, right? Cause it's been so much easier to just chat. Someone's like, give me some breakdowns, get some questions ready.

Yep.

And I think that's a process that you can utilize now. But I think what I learned through those five, six years of the Wellness Guides was that I learned to just learn to listen. I learned to listen to people and try to guide the conversation. Because if I went back to my first one to two years of podcasting, the questions were there. I did the research, I did the questions, but the conversations were very stiff. Because I was so stuck in my head of asking the right questions, I never actually listened to what the person was saying.

Yeah.

So I couldn't adapt to the I was really just asking questions and not really having a conversation. And so I think that's where the evolution has been over those years. It's probably been 14 years now since I probably started that. so I think that's, so the reps and sets are there. So the experience is there, the natural conversation is there. So now if I was to, uh you know, advise, like say my daughter for anybody starting a podcast,

Hmm.

it's to do both, right? You do need to have some background of that person so you actually understand who you're interviewing. uh I think in this instance, in our podcast, we don't have to interview each other or a topic because we're only talking about topics that we actually kind of somewhat understand. And so that decreases the load of actually having to research a topic. And number two is that I would also suggest that you have conversations, right? I think that's where the authenticity comes into play, the natural raw uh language is there, we wanted to kind of create a podcast where when we're talking, you, I hope the listeners, you feel like you're actually in the room and just happen to listen to two people talk between the two of us.

100%. And we've been transparent about that from the, from the outset. And I agree with you totally. If you're trying to position yourself as a subject matter expert specifically about a topic, it makes sense that you communicate in sound bites information that's really relevant to someone and you can demonstrate that for them. It's different, know, like we, you know, the art of imperfection talks about when we deliberately tried to go, Hey, we've got a platform that we want to uh on and about. But we don't want it to be restrictive. Like we've got a very flexible schedule. Like even now, like today we were like, we're recording today. You, had a meeting that you're trying to catch too. Now if, if you had to go, we, would have gone, cool. No problem. That's so, but, that's because we've known in advance what that looked like. And, uh, but I agree. Like if, if someone's trying to start a podcast and the, and the standard and expectation of what that content is has to be really good. Um, you've got to, you've got to invest in that. We're really clear. It's very conversational based, but what we don't, what we haven't mentioned is that we may come together and talk for an hour once a week, but we're massive consumers of content everywhere else. So if you were going to follow us around with this books, podcasts, audio books, you know, YouTube clips that we're constantly immersing in that actually helps us become, I guess, comfortable in whatever we want to talk about. So that when we come together, we're just really just synthesizing it and downloading it. So it's not like that, this is the only input in there. We're kind of researching all week, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And I think this is leans itself to the topic. The topic that we're going to talk about today is really more about the customers or the client journey. Right. And, and this is exactly the thought process. We're just doing the live and you know, as we go through the podcast is that, know, when we first developed this particular podcast, well, we've got to think about the listener in mind, right. And the listener in mind is like, okay, what kind of journey do we want to take them on? You know, and what kind of, what kind of experience that we actually want to have or what want them to have, you know, in our particular product or service. And that's the thought process. We actually sat there and it goes, well, we want to have authentic conversations. want to have raw conversations. We don't want to be scripted. We don't want to be subject matter experts. We just want to have these, you know, really interesting conversations on what we learned or what we're going through personally, uh, that and the challenges that we're going through week to week. And that's sort of the, started from there. And I think that any business, you know, so now here's the transition, right? That any business that you're trying to build should look at that. It's like, what do you want your your client to experience. What is your customer's experience, you know, when they first notice you or when they first walk into your door for whatever product and services, how do you want that journey to look like? How do you want them to feel? And more importantly, how do you want them to end? Like what's the endpoint satisfaction that they walk away from? And basically, you just got to script that journey from between they walk in or discovering you to the endpoint of the outcome. What does that journey look like? And most people never think about that. Most people just think about how do I get more new clients, right? They don't even think about the results. And therefore it's like, it's a jumbled mess. And so I think if you are intentional about here's the ultimate client that we would love to see the outcome to be, and this is how they feel and how they will talk about us at the end, then it's a lot easier to script like a wall. If you want that and they walk in like this, so walk in blank, walk out blank, then you can draw a map because as long as they do this, then we're gonna be able to create that path. And that's the customer journey. Like think about IKEA. Like IKEA is like, you can't just go in and go, I just need that one item in aisle 10, right? That's not how IKEA works. IKEA works is you go in and you gotta go through the whole freaking gauntlet just to get to aisle number 10, to get that one item that I need to come all the way back out. Now there's shortcuts, right? But they're not shortcuts all the way through. It's just like, you gotta have stick with one path. And they force you down this path.

Yeah.

And that's how IKEA wants it. IKEA wants you to not just shop like a grocery store where I'll just pick up what's going on. No, they want you to go through the whole entire thing because you never know there might be a new idea for you to pick up that you might want. And that's how they increase their revenues and sales.

Yeah. And Amazon did it well by, identifying the customer journey and then taking friction points out. So that's what, that was the birth of the one click order. And, and that became the perpetual ordering process for so many people throughout the world. And how much simpler is that? It's like, you know, they identified that, that, people get on, they deliberate, they do this, they've got to go this. And if you add steps and complexity from a point of sale, you're going to be compromised. So they simplified. took out the friction and consequently had a massive impact in their revenues because they knew where people would get bottlenecked or stuck or have a second thought about something. And they just took that process out and just simplified their business model.

Yeah, so let's talk about the why. The why a customer journey is so important is one, the customer and the client actually gets a way better experience because it's intentionally crafted. So that's one. Two, is that you're going to get more, they're to have a much more, I could always say a better experience, which means that they're most likely going to repeat and become a frequent customer, which then becomes a client. And three, you get to simplify your process and flow. it'll make it so much easier. You're going to have to create some obviously systematization, but once you create the systemization, you only have to do it once and then hopefully just got to check the accountability that's there. And so for all these reasons, I think, and also increased probability and so on and so forth, like all these reasons are one of the, I think the benefits of creating a customer journey and mapping that out.

Yep. a practical example of that for us, well, years ago when we were practicing was we took over a practice and we wanted to take care of more families, uh, within the health power. We wanted to expand the number of people we saw, but our practice was on a main road, the really busy road and coming into the practice, the, the old owner didn't see a lot of kids. So the door handles were quite low. And we've walked into the practice and went, this isn't going to cut it. So we repainted the place, this bright big red door on, and we put the handles really quite high. honestly, it was for me really, was just, I'll tell you another one. is another, what we did, I just remembered what you just said. When we painted the place the first time, we got one of those little mirrors, know, those mirrors that you stick on the back of the door.

Let's face it, that's really for you.

And I put one on the back of this door that was on there and I put it up there. The problem was I did it to my height. And so everybody who came in then had to jump off and they're like, dude, what's with the mirror? So we to get another one that was a little bit lower, but that's another story. That was just me. So I'm not in charge of too many technical.

That's not thinking through the customer's story. That's thinking from the owner's perspective.

That was pretty much, pretty much perfect example. Right. So, um, thanks for reminding me about that. Well, that was, uh, that's good. That's an example of how to do it and how not to do it. Um, and so what we did is we just took one that was lower and we said, we're now, um, adapting to all ranges of people heights. And then we go, just got back on track with pretty much, pretty much, but you should have said, you should have heard how much, um, pushback we had people like, that's ridiculous. Why have you got a door? Blah, blah, blah. We hadn't put.

This practice caters for all heights.

Uh, they hadn't put themselves into the mind and the fears and the concerns of who ended up being our avatar, who really wanted to market to that was moms and young families. So can you imagine the thought of coming into a practice and, your little three or four or five year old could get up outside and run out into the, we'd never forgive ourselves. And so by being able to articulate that people just went, that makes so much sense. But until you think it through from that lens. You don't even know something. You don't even know what you don't know. And to me, this is the whole process of immersing yourself into the avatar and finding a solution for them so that they come home and they go, this is my place. This is where I belong. I feel safe. I want to transact and work with you.

I remember still talking about babies and stuff and you know, we were pretty proud of our practice to be, you know, seeing a bunch of kids. think we might know my practice is probably about 20 % kids. You know, I've never really want to see more than that. It was about that. And, you know, it was not until I became a father and had a child and go into various restaurants and service providers and realize that you go to the toilet and you got to change your little baby and there's no like proper change table.

Yeah.

or like there's no space. You're like, this is ridiculous. I remember thinking to myself, this is ridiculous. How is, how can a business survive like this then not have proper change tables? And I went, wait a second, we don't even have proper change tables. I didn't even think. So I remember actually going out there that weekend and just going to probably IKEA to go buy a proper change table and actually dedicated a room for that just in case, you know, when they needed is rather, rather than just sort of thinking that.

Yeah. Yeah.

you know, it's okay to just change it on a sink, you know, and no table or on the floor. Because until I went through that experience, what I didn't do, what I should have done was think through the lens and the eyes of what a parent would go through, what a mother would go through of a young child. I never did that. I didn't take that extra step. I came from a male, right, who had never had a kid, who never had a family with young babies and what the pains and the fears and the frustrations that were going through. And I didn't do that. hence, like, you know, it's not until I went through that experience and then experienced how difficult it is, and then you start to reflect on like, oh, this is why, this is why it's so important. And I have to put it back on, you know, the mistake that I had to make within my own practice in business.

Yeah. And even when people are launching businesses, you know, quite often, particularly the IT field sphere, they'll have a beta testing group, particularly where they'll actually launch something and then they'll have an initial pilot program or a group of people that will run through it to find out what it's like, identify what they found easy or difficult to interact, to navigate, and then find solutions for them. And that's, that's in an essence, what the customer journey is, is about optimization and minimizing the frustrations that would go. You've got a great product, but this is annoying me since this functionality here is not working here. And as a result of that, that would stop me from wanting to do work with this any further.

Yeah, so before I became a chiropractor, I actually studied ergonomics in university. So ergonomics is basically fitting, you know, your environments and your workspace to ensure it's a reduction of any injuries and preventions of any injuries, especially with repetitive strains. So I used to work with, you know, large companies like Boeing and, you know, and General Electric to kind of really find solutions for workers to, you know, reduce their workloads or injuries to backs and.

Ha!

a lot of office works, right? Cause a lot of repetitive strain injuries and into the wrist and typing in the mouse work. And, know, and that to me is, is, is thinking that through because oftentimes like we create a new device and the new thing is new tech is like, awesome. Right. I'd say in the mouse, you know, the keyboard, this is a typical thing. I remember the one thing I kind of think about is you think about the keyboard, um, the core TT keyboard itself, you know, this is going back. Now this is going back 30 years of information now. So I don't know if this is still true, but the core TT bar, the reason why it's called core T is because those are the first, uh, one, two, four, six letters on the keyboard, right? So you've looked at a keyboard now it's Q W E R T Y that's called the core TT board. Um, the reason why that keyboard was designed, I don't know if anybody knows this, the keyboard was designed based on that, the road, you know, that arrangement of letters is because of the typewriter. And the reason why is the typewriter, if anybody's old enough to remember what a typewriter is, that if you type too fast, those keys used to get stuck. And so therefore you print from any going any faster. So then they had to design a keyboard to have the most used keys furthest apart from each other. So they wouldn't would slow down the typist. That was the design. So the existing keyboard that we use in 2025 is designed so that to actually prevent and slow the typist down, not to make it easier. Right. And so here, was a perfect designer where design flaw is in place. Now here's the challenge. We're so used to the QWERTY keyboard, uh QWERTY keyboard, and it's been like this for decades. there is a brand new keyboard out there, but guess what? It's very difficult to change because you're so used to one thing and no one wants change. And so even though like from a design perspective, even though from the customer perspective to reduce, you know, repetitive strain injuries would be to not use a QWERTY uh keyboard, but the difficult and challenge is going against

Yep.

you know, change and going against what you're used to is very challenging. And so sometimes like, so the main story is, I think I want to come to this, which is there are human designs or there's human things that people want and desire and try to go against it to try to think you're going to outsmart them or want them to do a certain way doesn't always work. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it forced, you know, something that you creating is so unique that people will go out of their way to go, you know, uh, buy that. cookie because it's so unique or design or willing to pay, you know, hundreds of dollars for a box of cookies versus, um, you know, I think the last crumb, I think that's, it's the, big store in a sort of big brand in the U S that people are willing to do that. But oftentimes it go against the grain of what people are naturally instinctively know what to do or how to do it, uh, can be really challenging. So sometimes he's got to think through is like, what is the normal thing to do? And like you said about the door situation with the kids, you know, grabbing the lower handle. Yeah, that's dangerous, but no one thought about that. Maybe it was because it was designed, you know, a long time ago, the way I have so many of those stories that we can kind of dive, dive into even the, the, size of the road, the Y, the reason why the car is the size it is now is, you know, due to, you know, two, two assets, two horses ass, which we can talk about that maybe later on as we get to that.

Yeah. But it's, you know, this whole thing, um, you know, what I, what I thought I wanted to focus on this was this was stimulated for me in two separate conversations, both of them with both my boys, my sons, because, um, a young son's, they've is, uh, moved back to Melbourne now and he's been sitting with what he wants to do. And, know, he's got a foot for a 25 year old, he's got such a diverse range of business skills. And so what he has, he's looking to. bring those set of skills and he could go back into real estate, which he's definitely doing that, but he's actually going to follow the entrepreneurial bug and launch his own consulting company. And particularly within the skillsets of training people and identifying particular problems that show up in training of people within specific industries that he's got a solution for. we were talking about this, okay, so what kind of problems are you trying to solve? Why are you doing that? How is this unique, et cetera? How is this better different to whatever is out there? So we went through that process and then another conversation. I'll just mention to you just before we got on to record Lawrence's, our oldest son's now at this point of moment is in Qatar. He's in Qatar for the Qatar economic forum. And this is like the biggest, if you're a fan boy in the finance world, this is where you want to be. But you know, this is your Taylor Swift equivalent because he's Every mover and shaker prime ministers, presidents of countries are there. And because it is pitching to such a high standard, the expectations and the customer journey of that experience is phenomenal from the check-ins to there's no lining up. There has to be on there. So I think a really important process to really get clear on is whenever you're starting a business. It's important to identify where your target market is and at what price point, because there are certain things that are tolerable at a lower price point that aren't going to be accepted at a higher price point. And that in itself is basically what you're looking for is simplification and getting rid of complexity. So do you want to deep dive into that one as well and identifying what expectations you have when you're paying more for a service?

Well, the higher the service, when you got a high tech, high price ticket point, uh you, you, expectation is, is a lot higher. Uh, it comes from not only the venue that you choose, uh, the hotels, the, food, the service, everything else. And I've been in some high, you know, uh, high valued, you know, events and the expectation is there. mean, I work, so I'll give you an example when we're at the tiger 21, a global conference, uh, every year in this past year was in Miami. The challenge for them is that, you know, they have over a thousand delegates that come across around the world and these are the ultra high net worth individuals. They can afford any hotel they want. So they have to find the balance of having a five star or even a six star hotel experience for all their guests, including like not just the conference center, but also they also have to have uh a venue large enough to host a thousand people. And so I know that the struggle was always been like to find these venues across the world. they, mean, Vegas would be the most obvious choice. But they don't want to go to Vegas just because of the connotation and the one Vegas kind of stands for. And I think next year is the first time they've ever, if they finally relented because it's the only place where they can actually host more than a thousand people. guess they have to turn away so many people every year. But you know, so I can tell you what the event like when you first walk in the events, like there are snacks everywhere. You know, it looks like you go into Google or Facebook um and you've got free food everywhere. Right. So snacks, you know, know, energy bars, everything, whatever you want. free water, free drinks, all that stuff is all there. Cause that's expected. You're paying for a high value thing. If take a thing, that's all expected that you shouldn't have to pay extra for. You know, we had the Lamborghini, you know, experience. I we got to test drive. There was at least what eight Lamborghinis. We all got to test drive to sit there and drive around and drive around Miami for, you know, not a Boca Raton. Sorry, I was in Boca Raton for, you know, half an hour. And you know, there was no like we need a test drive. There's no like paperwork. There was Yeah, sure. Paper sign here. That's about it. Like it wasn't like, Oh, give me your license, go show that it wasn't like all this hard thing that you would have to do to drive a Lamborghini. No, that's all covered through the insurance or whatever, which is reducing the friction point because these guys are not waiting. You know, they they book a time they want to be there and let's let's go. I think so just little things like that the food has got to be high quality and most of the people are now not just into fast food, they want healthy food, good quality, but healthy food. So they're They've got to put those options on the table. you know, those type of venues and those are the venue, the food, the experience, the speakers have to be, you know, top notch. know, a couple of years ago we had two presidents, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on the same stage. You know, those are the expectations that these members are expecting. So when you have a high quality event, that's what's expected. But if you have no different though, let's kind of change venues, right? So if I had, if your target, if you're a holiday inn. your target audience isn't that demographic, which I told you about doesn't mean they won't stay there. It just means that that's not the target audience, right? The holiday in is not as very different than say, a Hilton or Sheraton, which is sort of mid range to maybe even to like obviously a St. Regis or Four Seasons, like each one of them are knows their lane, they know what they're who they're catering towards. And they built their hotels accordingly. If I'm paying for a five star experience, say a day um a W hotel, that's perfect example, right? A W hotel, it's typically a five star hotel, but it's typically very loud, very bold, very in your face color music. It is, it is not the typical standard box hotel that you see at a single region. They're both luxurious, but they're catering to different markets, right? One is more young hip, they're going for the artist, they're going for the you know, the entrepreneur, they're going for uh the musicians, the fashion, uh, versus like the four seasons, they're going for old money or people who want but Butler service and so on and so forth. It's actually, it's actually in their brief. So I have a chance. I actually have a copy of the W playbook, right? Cause I got really friends with the general manager and the W Bali and he told me here's the, it's a document. It's a massive document to go through and basically has every detail from the color, the way the font or the, the font is used. the logo is used in certain places, what you have to name, and then the color schemes, but W hotels are different everywhere, so they don't have that one specific color scheme, but it has to fall within these type of range. um But it's really designed specifically for the artist, for the fashion, for the music, and they're very clear on who their target audiences are. And hence, when you walk into a W hotel, whether it be in New York or in Bali, is going to be very different experience than when you walk into a Four Seasons in Sydney or Four Seasons in New York. Not right or wrong, they're just catering to two different experiences. And I think the point you and I are both making is just understanding your core customer and core audience allows you then to cater and design something that alienates the people that are not within the target audience. Meaning like, you're going to get the target audience plus maybe the outskirts of that. but it's going to be distasteful for the people who are not within the audience range. I think sometimes, oftentimes, I think businesses don't like that. They don't like to alienate certain groups. They feel like I need to cater to everyone, but then it becomes very bland and it never actually focuses on trying to, then the message is lost.

Yeah. And if you come go into one of those places that you are the target market for, you look at it and go, I feel really, this is great. This is really cool. You feel like you're coming home. And I had this wonderful experience just before we left, uh, Barcelona to come to, uh, here in Scotland where Bertini and I went to this burrito place and it was like, I love, if I'm going to, if I go and get a burrito, I love exposed brick. love timber. I love that kind of, I feel like I can relax in that kind of a place.

Mm-hmm.

So I've gone in, ordered this amazing burrito, was still one of the best burritos I've ever had. I sat down there playing music from the eighties and I've turned around to present. said, this is amazing. I really liked this place. And she goes, why do you think you like this? It was like, cause I was the target market. was like, it was really catering at the time of the day. Now later on in that day, I went in there at a different time and it was like, and like the music was different. The lighting was different. The, the crew was different. It was really interesting. even within a burrito place, they could understand who were, who they were seeing at different times of the day. And they were, um, optimizing or specifying that specifically, but you know, this stuff's been around for a long time. remember going to Disneyland years ago and, uh, hearing, uh, and going to the merry-go-round there in Disneyland and. I read a story or heard a story coming, which one it was that the way they had aligned the merry-go-round, wanted the castle behind and it just wasn't lined up really, really properly. And because they knew so many people took photos there, what, um, what the Disney corporation did is they basically collapse or, uh, basically rebuilt the castle and moved it across a couple of inches so that the perfect photos could be taken.

Hmm.

And what they, that attention to detail, if, if, if you're a kind of a person and even in the castle, they had all the colors and they were, there was this whole scenario about they had the color green and green represented green with envy. And I remember talking to someone about this and they said, if you're a person who that kind of detail matters for, you really notice it. So if you're kind of person like me, who's oblivious, we've talked about my lack of, yeah, he's laughing, you know, food.

Food. I know where you're going for it.

And yeah, I know, I know, but, but, but to me, I'll have a lower barrier for acceptance because to me that doesn't matter. But there's things that are really important to me that I pay attention to. If I go out to dinner with you, Lawrence, you're going to notice things that I don't notice because they are important to you and how well someone treats you and identifies those things will determine whether that's your place or not.

Yeah, like for my wife is exactly sort of like you. doesn't care. She's just like, she's, you know, food is just food. It's just like energy. She said if there was a pill, she would take it, um, to, avoid having to cook and eat. Whereas my, my daughter and I, just enjoy just going to a place and just, know, loving and enjoying like the mastery of just the presentation of a meal and also the, the, and the taste of it. And then the ambiance, my wife actually does love the ambiance. I made a mistake of like just choosing a brunch place because she likes brunch. And I took her to for her on her birthday and for a brunch, at least, you know, we were having dinner as well, but we were going to a brunch place in the morning and I just randomly chose a place and it was like, the food looks pretty good. And thinking that the food mattered, right? And the food does matter to her, but here's the thing. It was in this dingy kind of environment, no ambience whatsoever. And I'm like, Oh, forgot about that part of the, of the customer.

Yeah.

in this case, the client's journey that what was the important, I factored one part of it, which was, you know, decent, good breakfast food, brunch and porn, but then factor that third element, which was like ambiance. Um, and I think that really matters. And there is, um, in there's, don't, I don't know how this actually fits in, just because you talked about like how Disney moved something, I saw something yesterday. I didn't even know how true this actually is, but I saw this little reel. thought it was fascinating. Do you know, have ever been to London and look at the London landscape and the skyline and look at the lines and all those, there's all these unusual buildings, right? Shaped like the Gherkin. You also got like, you know, the, you know, these weird buildings all around. And the video suggested is like, do you ever know why they're there like that? It's because like back in the 19, I don't know, thirties or early 1800s or whatever, when things, St. Paul cathedral was built in London. think St. Paul's cathedral in London. It's like the main Basilica.

Yep.

And basically there was a written rule that you cannot obstruct the view from certain points of the streets that lead into the view of St. Paul's because it was the largest building at the time. And so now, you know, when London got bigger and bigger and taller and taller, these buildings are built in a way so that it doesn't obstruct the view of certain angles. That's why these buildings have like a slant off this way or a slant off this way. And I was like, that is a fascinating way of like, creating the city and it's turned into the city of these unusual shapes because of that reason, because of that one rule that was back set up 100 years ago or whatever. But that's probably thinking long term in terms of the customer journey of the experience of London over time.

They're town planners, know, like there's a lot of, you know, like the saddest thing for me, like when I visited Greece a couple years ago, and when you go to places like Greece too, when they've developed things, they've kind of haven't preserved the, what I loved about living in Barcelona is they preserved the old buildings in a way that was quite, um in keeping with the history of it. Whereas what I found in certain parts of Greece, that wasn't the case. You'd have an old versus a new structure and it just doesn't look right. It was not sympathetic to the period. And so if you're an architecture buff, or if you've got really, if you got interested in this, you know, I used to have a client who was a part of the Heritage Society and the preservation of old buildings in keeping with how they originally, it was really important to them as a charter. So, They would make sure that, you know, they were on council. If someone wanted to pull down a building or put an extension that just didn't look right, they would object to that because it would detract. that's what, you know, whenever you, you try and develop a house, they always look at it and say, is this going to preserve the streetscape? Is this going to detract from the architecture whole area? That's kind of like a customer journey or a subject or a suburb journey as well. And that's what, that's what I take from you is the town planners have this responsibility when they're updating and innovating that they're going.

It is.

How are we updating this? How are we preserving the balance between old and new so that it's still, you know, basically we haven't lost our soul or essence of our city.

Well, I think I can think of three areas at the top of my head that does that. Okay, Santorini, like you talk about Greece, all the buildings have to be white. I mean, there's also not just aesthetic reasons for it, but there's also like, you know, temperature, you know, reasons for why everything's white and blue. But there's, know, keeping up with the thing, I'm sure there's a rule within Santorini, I would imagine. I don't know for a fact. Yeah.

Actually, yeah, there is in there. So as you said, about the whiteness and the heights are definitely one.

Yeah, yes. In the height and the white and also blue, that's gonna be important, Another place is Morocco. Morocco is a similar thing. I think the color is like a reddish, inside at least the main square and the old square, like everything has to be this reddish or orange color. And the walls, and that would be another place. And the third place I can think of is actually Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, right? A lot of those old suburbs, the outside. has to be maintained the old way of the building was, but inside is all modern. Like I've been to lots of places in Melbourne, lot of friends who have been in Melbourne, like on the outside, like, oh, this is an old house, whatever. But when you go inside, it's all modern, it's all beautiful, but the outside stays that heritage site. And there's a lot of debates around that. like those are three classical examples, like where the city council had decided that they want to keep sort of that heritage and keeping with it, you know, rather than just building these modern.

Yep. Yep.

buildings is that they know they want to keep that preserve some of the history that's there in that area. So I think those are important elements.

You mentioned about Melbourne, obviously my hometown back when we lived in Australia and um that you've got the laneways which are fantastic. You you walk around these laneways in the city and these beautiful uh lanes, you've got bars and cafes, there's a graffiti and they're preserved, right? Because that's the experience. People love going to Melbourne for that. But the other thing that I remember just when you were saying that we lived in Ascotvale, which was at one stage, which is kind of right next to the um racetrack.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

where they run the Melbourne Cup. And you used to have a whole lot of places that, you know, there were stables in there and that there's old laneways. So at the back of our place, there was this cobblestone laneway that you couldn't buy. You couldn't do anything to, it had to be kept. The council specified that you couldn't obstruct it. You couldn't do this. You couldn't, um because they wanted to preserve that old charm of that suburb. And yeah, so it was more just confirmation of what you were basically saying in there, but they were very strict in terms of what colors we could paint the house. We had to submit to council when we wanted to do extensions at one stage. This is the um the color we want. If it wasn't the right heritage, green would get knocked back.

Yeah, and I think if all these examples we've shown is really the key element is consistency, right? It has to have that consistency. And I think that, you from a business point of view, I think it's one of the most important consistency needs to be is like you, if you want people to see and perceive you in a certain way, it has to be across the board, right? It can't just be in one thing. And so what I mean by that is we've seen this where you can go get a website designer and design the most beautiful website. you know, in the world and it looks fantastic and you might attract certain people to come to your business because of that website. But when they, if they show up though, you know, let's just say it's a, you know, luxurious feel with black and gold kind of, you know, coloring and fonts and design. You look like, oh my God, this is going to be spectacular. And they show up and it's like this, you know, your door has got like, you know, bars on it and you got paint that's peeling off and you know, you got old lights and you know, light fixtures broken and you know, things are, that doesn't match like the experience that they had when they first initially got there. So these are, so most people think about just the aesthetics of like when people show up to your practice or business or whatever, but you got to think about like the continuity of that, which is like before they even show up, what are they doing? And then after them, they show up, what are they doing? I think we need people need to see that. So, you know, when you go into any business now, what's the first thing you're going to do if I'm going to, if I'm to send you to a restaurant or hotel, what's the first thing you do? You're going to go, right? more likely to go on Google Maps before they even go on the website, right? So that means your Google Maps, even though it's not fully in your control, but it is something like choosing the right pictures to show up on that Google Map is gonna be important, right? Which means then you have control over, so say you're a restaurant nowadays, more important than it ever was like 20 years ago, the way you design that plate, right? And how that food is displayed. is so important now because that dictates what people post up on Google Maps or Facebook or Instagram about your restaurant, which then is almost internal or external marketing without you having to do anything about it, all because you design the plate. How many times have you ever seen this amazing drink or this amazing dessert? And because like you saw, it was so unusual and that creativity is what gains the traction and that becomes the picture on your Google Maps, which then becomes like, then they'll click on the link. to maybe do on your website, that has to stay consistent. When they show up, they're gonna have to do that. I remember just hearing a story maybe like two weeks ago, where they talked about this where 11 Madison Park, right, which was the went from number 50 to number one restaurant in the world, right, owned by Will Godera, who wrote the book Unreasonable Hospitality, which we talked about, we can come back to him in a second. Great guy. one of the things that he there was the one thing I was reading about it was that they recognized um the diff, they spent, think was something ridiculous. I'm gonna just make up a number here, but let's say it was like something about like $400,000 per year or something crazy like that type of number to maintain the bathroom of that restaurant. Okay, whatever, even if it's $100,000, it's just ridiculous. Why? Because they found, right, and I'm sure you've been there where we, the restaurant, the food, amazing. And then you go to the bathroom, you're like, ooh. oh

Hmm.

It's dirty, it's not clean, things are not working. And there's all of sudden your thought, right? Because the bathroom is the last thing most people want to fix or make it better because you focus on the food and the restaurant. But that continuity needs to be there. And so they recognize that, and that's one of the things that they actually spend a lot of time and energy and effort on to ensure they get from number 50 to number one restaurant in the world is because they thought through the whole entire process and the whole entire uh journey.

Yep. Yeah. My coach, uh, I've mentioned before John Hymwood came and did a practice evaluation for us. Uh, yeah. And I remember him coming in and going, okay, who do you want to be focused on? Who do we work on? And afterwards he said something like one of the kids had gone to the bathroom and there was some paper on the floor. And he said, you know what? You could deliver the highest service. He goes, but you will lose people from your practice.

I remember him used to do that. Yeah.

If, if that happens, you know, if you go in and, and, and you don't pay attention. So was a really big reminder that sometimes we focus on what we see, but we don't know what the blind spots are. And that's the whole thing about secret shoppers and people coming in who've got a different lens who aren't enamored with the business. can give you a really objective perspective of what it's like for them dealing with you. You know, like if you've got someone and you, you know, we, we did that. We'd ask someone to call up our practice and see what. the whole experience was like without team, our staff, we use that for training purposes. You could get real live feedback about what you're like, what it's like doing that for you. So that has moved a lot. There's a lot more people doing online stuff so that you've got to go, okay, well, I need to invest in the infrastructure and the technology to make that process seamless because it doesn't happen. Clearly like you and I, Lawrence were from the age of dial-up internet and And you'd have to just dial up and wait and wait and wait. Now, if something takes more than like half a second to load, you're like, I'm going to smash my computer. It's taking quite too long. So things change and things adapt. And I want to bring it back to what you talking about. Cause you can have a really good customer journey based on your current reality. But what happened is that you also have to have an awareness. So this is what we've talked about before about AI and the changing landscape. You have to also have an awareness around where trends are going as well too, because you may be fitting the mold now, but if you, if your experiences were all in dining and for a period of time that had to go and basically during COVID had to be more delivered. How do you deliver a high quality meal at a high end restaurant to someone at home who can't do that? How, otherwise if, so there, was a lot of innovating and adapting. on the fly for a lot of these high-end service-based companies during COVID, some of them were able to adapt, but some weren't.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it's challenging. It's very, very challenging during that time because, know, it's very difficult because most of the high end restaurants and high end experiences actually you being experiencing, you know, the the being there in the restaurant. And so when you try to, you know, create a I remember they were very inventive. They used to like create a home cook pack. You know, they can send you a whole pack and then you can call home and cook that meal. But you realize it's just not the same. Right. But they tried. At least they tried.

Yep. Yes.

and it's difficult. so it's, the world is changing. And as much as we don't want to have to do all of these things, I still remember when we didn't have to have a website. Great. I remember you didn't have to like shoot videos or do any marketing or create content or yeah, I remember those days too. But unfortunately, if you want to survive in today's world, you have to do all that. And I think that the, it's, it's that continuity and that needs to be there all the way from the front end to the backend to, to everything that goes on. And I think that If you don't do that, if you don't stay consistent to it, this is hard work, right? It's super hard work, but it actually comes down to the details and how you make people feel. The details matter in every aspect. And this is why, you know, I talk to my clients, all of all, you know, my coaching clients all the time, which is like, it's gotta be the 1%. Like if you don't focus on the 1%, then you know, no one's gonna look at it. You're gonna think about, you know, I need more new patients. And the problem is that it's gonna break down somewhere. And it's, if you focus on the 1%, you add them all together, that 1 % equals a whole and that. those all those holes is going to make the whole entire experience. And but people are too lazy and they focus on parts. And they don't get the whole experience and that for that's the unfortunate part. And I think that's if you can focus on the 1 % and you actually put some dedication towards that. It's a game changer, it can really literally change the way people perceive you how they you know, whether they stay or they whether refer out to people. It's all in that matter of things. And it's not just one thing is often it's hard.

Yeah.

I don't think it's good enough for restaurant nowadays to just have good food. Even though that's our primary objective. Most people are looking for an experience. Whether it be good food plus good atmosphere, good food plus good service. think, I wouldn't go back to a restaurant even if they had great food but terrible service. I'll probably go that once. But if they have good food, good atmosphere, great service on top of that and reasonable price, man, I'm going back to that place over and over and over again.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's finding that right combination in any business. It's like, whether you're a product or a service industry, it's like, can you find that right combination and consistently deliver on that? If you can't, that becomes a very big challenge. And, you know, in today's business, it's hard. With the introduction of AI and technology, we have to learn to adapt to those situations rather than just wishing how it used to be.

Yeah. And that's the leaky bucket that we're always told about is like identifying where, you know, if you, if you're constantly focusing on your input, but you're not finding a way to retain people and clients within your ecosystem or extended ecosystem or having them come back again and again, um, they're basically transactional. don't, they don't blast. They don't hang around there. And there's a, there's a principle that I, um, come across a lot, particularly in valuing and managing. Businesses is the the profitability of the profitability question. And so if you look at your turnover and You just work on because like you said most people focus on how do I get more new people into our our business our office our service delivery But you only need a 5 % increase in revenue and a 5 % decrease in costs To increase your profitability. It's a multiple of it. It'll end up being 25 % increase in profitability So if part of your loss of uh cost decrease is the cost of finding new customers, uh your profitability as a business goes up significantly. that into me, I think the biggest thing about uh the customer journey is about people being engaged and making a conscious decision to come back and interact with you again again, because a lot of our clients uh who are in the health space, They're not off one-off transactions. not, you're not buying a home once and maybe twice in your lifetime. For most people, it's like multiple times of a, sometimes of a week, uh a month, whatever. So you're getting people who coming back with to you again and again and again and again, and you have to keep having them fall in love with or reconfirm why they want to keep doing business with you every time. You know, we have this perspective, perspective sometimes that we did it once, once. And it's going to be right for life. And that doesn't happen because people then feel like, you just never make me feel special anymore. Or it's kind of like a relationship, right? A hundred percent. You've got to constantly keep showing up and showing them how valuable you are to them. So they stay engaged because if you don't people, um, it was told to me, I always thought that the people leave businesses, um, because of costs or money, but a lot of times it's perceived indifference.

relationship.

And if, if people don't feel like you care about them enough to take care of the most important things in their dealing with you, they'll go.

Yeah, I thought I just had to put a ring on it. I thought that was it.

That's it. Ta-da! Yeah, put a ring on it as a start and then keep basically keep, keep, keep, keep dazzling, keep showing up every day and, and helping them realize it was, you were worth the bet.

Then the work begins. That's where the work really begins. Why do you think I'm working out still every day? no, just joking. uh Yeah, no, I think this whole conversation, know, it's, I guess for me, it's to remind people how hard it is, because I know how hard it is, and I don't do it perfectly. There's so many things I just, you know, I'm uh missing to drop the ball on, and it's so easy to drop the ball on it, and I even know this stuff, and I know I put attention to it, and I still drop the ball. And so you can imagine if you don't even pay any attention to this, um it gets lost. And when you talked about profitability and stuff, I actually just developed a software for my clients, which I'll show you offline. um Just does that basically. If you just move this needle here, move this needle, this is the economical impact on you in your business. If you add one patient here or increase your PBA this way and just like it calculates everything for you. And I was like, wow, this is amazing to be able to demonstrate this ah to my clients. because it just goes to show you don't have to do a lot. That's I showed to one person today and they're like, oh, I didn't realize you can just move a couple of things. I'm like, yeah, that's what I've been trying to tell you. You don't have to go like this, chase this one bucket. Like there's multiple buckets here, multiple levers that you can pull. And if you pull all of them just a little bit, the multiplier effect of all these levers is exponential. But if you only honk us on one, then you're relying on that one to pay off and if it doesn't pay off, then you're kind of screwed. So I think this is why it's such an important element.

Yeah. Yeah.

kind of look at every aspect of your business, looking at every aspect. So to summarize, we're going to talk about one, we talked about knowing your customer clients, like knowing the target audience and knowing every fear, frustration, wants and desire for that particular audience so that you understand how they see the world. And then from there, you're going to be able to know what's the outcome, where are they starting from, and then you can map the journey along the way. um We also talked a lot about is designing those 1%, right? Mapping the journey, but understanding the 1 % and how that affects not only the customers, but also the that the ultimate impact on the secondary and tertiary effects on by doing that one thing, like the door method, the thing about the door, yeah, I didn't think about that with the lower handle. It's about the kids and opening that door, running into the streets. know, something happens. Yeah, that could be devastating, right? And just all you had to do was just move it a couple inches up and that changes the whole entire game. I mean, that's thinking in process. So sometimes it's about prevention, sometimes it's about enhancement, sometimes it's adding to the element of experience. But the other comment we made was consistency. Having consistency across the board, ensuring that everything from the beginning before they even met you to the moment that they walk into your business or product or have an experience with product and services, to the end, you expect that consistency. There's a difference between opening an Apple product back in the day, I don't know how it is now, but back in the day, the experience of opening that box where Johnny Ives designed that box and designed that feeling and that whooshed opening. to just opening, I don't know, another phone. It's just like, you look at it as like, oh, plastic cable, whatever, like it's just, it doesn't have the same appeal. And that's the thought and design. Now it's one second of experience, but that experience stays with you and you become more loyal to that particular brand. So anything you want to add to that, Joe Jim? All right.

No mate, I'm good. I think that's a good summary. I'm complete.

Well guys, this is our journey coming to an end for this particular episode. So please continue our Wabi Sabi journey, because life is not perfect and this is what the art of imperfection is all about. This is the Wabi Sabi journey and hope to see you on the next episode. Take care.