Whether we like it or not, trends will always be a part of any business or industry, and our only response is continuous innovation. Sam Salah and Travis Revelle will pool their experiences on doing the slightest innovations on how you do business and bring change to customer relations that generate returns and profit.
Key Takeaways To Listen For
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Sam Salah and Travis Revelle
Former corporate executive Travis Revelle made the switch to entrepreneurship in the internet and healthcare sectors, founding many successful businesses and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients.
Sam Salah is a well-known businessperson and a lifelong serial entrepreneur with interests in everything from technology to high-performance vehicles.
This is an episode that is suitable for the C-Suite, entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers, and front-line employees because each of them is a wealth of material and a powerhouse when combined.
Connect with Sam and Travis
LinkedIn: Travis Revelle | Sam Salah
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
Whether we like it or not, trends will always be a part of any business or industry, and our only response is continuous innovation. Sam Salah and Travis Revelle will pool their experiences on doing the slightest innovations on how you do business and bring change to customer relations that generate returns and profit.
Key Takeaways To Listen For
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Sam Salah and Travis Revelle
Former corporate executive Travis Revelle made the switch to entrepreneurship in the internet and healthcare sectors, founding many successful businesses and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients.
Sam Salah is a well-known businessperson and a lifelong serial entrepreneur with interests in everything from technology to high-performance vehicles.
This is an episode that is suitable for the C-Suite, entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers, and front-line employees because each of them is a wealth of material and a powerhouse when combined.
Connect with Sam and Travis
LinkedIn: Travis Revelle | Sam Salah
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
[00:00:00] Sam Salah
We did it way better than they did. You know, our leadership and everything. So you can be innovative in a forest of everyone like you, and you could separate yourself. It's just, you gotta get down to the nitty nitty details.
[00:00:15] Dr. Nate Salah
You may have heard the phrase innovate or die, which can be a daunting proposition for any business. Large, small, anywhere in between. But we need not despair if we only understand what innovation is and how innovation is manifested in organizational context. I've invited innovation experts back to the show, Sam and Travis to cohost this highly relevant business Monday topic to give us the tools we need to thrive as business leaders.
[00:00:48]
I can't wait for you to listen in. I'm Dr. Nate Salah and this is A Call to Leadership.
[00:00:54]
One reason people go into business is because they wanna make a difference. They want to bring something to the marketplace that's new. And I think all of us can agree that we came into the business world as far as entrepreneurs, because we thought we could affect change. And I've said this many times, if we don't need change, we don't need change, We don't need leaders.
[00:01:16]
Right. And leadership is about change progress. Tell me what you think. Let's just kick this off about this statement that Steve Jobs made long ago. If Apple is gonna win, it's gonna win on innovation. What does that mean to you? I mean, is innovation because, and let me preface it and step back a couple, couple notches.
[00:01:33]
People think innovation has to be like world-changing, right? But innovation, it's just an idea. It can be a small and incremental as, Wow, you know what? Let's change the packaging. It could be going to Mars. and anywhere in between.
[00:01:51] Sam Salah
I think innovation separates you from your competition.
[00:01:54]
Correct. Period. Whether that's branding or ideas or you create something that changes how we do things. It separates you from everyone else. That's why it's difficult to innovate. People can innovate, but to have like impactful innovation that changes how we do things is com is to why you have the Musks and the Bezos and the Jobs.
[00:02:18]
Those are the guys who change how we now, like you said, innovation could be, the change of packaging or how you do things. And that's all gonna have a direct catalyst to growth and hopefully a better idea or a better business or whatever it shall be. But I think that innovation is difficult, but it's also, when done properly would change how you're perceived and how well you do.
[00:02:44] Dr. Nate Salah
Well let's go back to when you started your cell phone source. Okay. Were you thinking innovation, doing it differently? Yes. Standing out in the crowd? Yeah.
[00:02:51] Sam Salah
So initially, cuz everybody's selling the same thing, so it's like, okay, well we all have the same product. It's a commodity. So, it's presentation that, do my stores look better than everyone else's stores? Do my employees look better than everyone else's employees? Do my packaging, everything from that employee's dress code to the packaging on my walls, were they all uniform? Were they stocked? Were we, was our sales process, the best sales process were we talking to people when they walked in right away.
[00:03:19]
So that was how I separated myself from the rest. Right? Plus, I think that your business is a representation of yourself and you want the best representation of yourself because that's your vision. So I'm sure Travis, and you'd say the same way thing, that when you felt like you weren't delivering effectively that customer experience and your vision of what like my cell phone stores. Right. Which sounds very like, Oh, cell phone stores is are everywhere. But no, this was like my life.
[00:03:56] Travis Revelle
And you gotta go back 20 years too. I mean, 20 years ago. Right.
[00:04:00] Dr. Nate Salah
It was innovative cell phones. Yeah, it was. It was an innovation. Right,
[00:04:02] Sam Salah
Right, right. Correct. So, if that employee did not deliver the experience that I felt like measured up to my vision and what I wanted to deliver, I took that seriously.
[00:04:13]
If I walked into a store, Travis would say the same thing. You know, stuff was on the floor, employees out a dress code, customers not being serviced properly. Just the displays in the window were promotions were wrong or we just seen that it was just like, ding, ding this is wrong.
[00:04:30]
I mean, so to innovate, I would say to what I did was to create a brand within multiple, so everyone had the same commodity. But how I separated myself was building a brand that people recognized, different that stood out from everyone else. So that was my logos, my colors, my product presentation, my customer service, all those things all fed into that innovation that separated me from my competition and why I was in business to this day and 95% are not. Now. Has that changed? Is my vision the same? No, I've diversified. I've gone on different things. I'm doing different things, but still a part of my overall vision, that's why I have it right.
[00:05:21]
But I still hold my employees to that level. Like if I walk into a store and it's not the way it should be. I'm very passionate with my team to fix it, and that's all part of making sure my vision for my company is being delivered properly by the leadership and people that work for me.
[00:05:43] Travis Revelle
Yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know why somebody would start a business to say, Hey, I'm gonna do it exactly the same way as this guy.
[00:05:49] Dr. Nate Salah
I was thinking the same exact thing. Like, Here's my vision. My vision is we're gonna do it just like they do it.
[00:05:53] Travis Revelle
Right. It makes no sense. Right. So yes, I think that innovation is key to entrepreneurship, but I also think that when people hear the word innovation, they think, How am I gonna create an iPhone?
[00:06:06] Sam Salah
Right? Cause it's Such a, it seems like innovation. This word is like, it's ethereal.
[00:06:11] Dr. Nate Salah
It's so, Yeah. Like that. Huge, huge. It's disruptive and it's not necessarily the case. You don't need to, In fact, it's almost never the case.
[00:06:19] Travis Revelle
Yeah. 99.99% of the time, it's never the case. And I would challenge you like right, like somebody has a business and you think you can do just a little bit better. That's innovation. A process. You create a process.
[00:06:30] Dr. Nate Salah
I'm just going to treat my customer. I did it today a
[00:06:33] Sam Salah
little bit different. Did it this week.
[00:06:34] Travis Revelle
I mean, I think everybody innovates, but again, that word has lost its meaning over the years because if it's not this, I'm disrupting a industry, then that's the only way to innovate. No innovating is you're gonna greet your customers better, you're gonna provide better customer service. You know,
[00:06:53] Dr. Nate Salah
Start doing DocuSign. I mean, geez, just us doing DocuSign, changing your logo,
[00:06:58] Travis Revelle
Right? Like, I'm gonna do changing your branding. But I don't know if anybody successful who looked at an industry and said, I'm gonna do it like they do it.
[00:07:06]
Yeah. Because why? Why would a customer come by from you? You know what I mean? So I think inevitably if you're starting a business, you think you can do it better than what's out there and provide a better experience or a better product or whatever. And if you can invent the iPhone, great. Right. But like the chances of that are zero. Right. You know, realistically. Yeah. So like how can you just make your four walls or whatever industry you're in, how can you just make it a little bit better? Like half an inch is movement. Right?
[00:07:33] Dr. Nate Salah
Like, it's funny you bring that up because when I worked at my MBA, I thought, okay, this was really expensive and the only, what I gained out of it were three words. Do it better. Do it better. Literally an entire master's degree in business administration. Now I'm tongue and cheek right? Right. Cause I teach MBA students and there's a lot to learn. But if you look at the overarching goal, That was the takeaway, right? And it's like, okay, well how can I stand out in the crowd? And it doesn't have to be world changer, world-altering, like you said, Sam, I love that, that it's like an extension of your own ideals, your own personality, and then you gotta know yourself. Like, how am I different? Like, I mean, you were so different in the cell phone, you were cell phone Sam, right?
[00:08:13] Sam Salah
Yeah, So you can have, so like within, I feel like you know our HPJ, right? Which is everything performance, everything's innovation.
[00:08:23] Dr. Nate Salah
car business.
[00:08:23] Sam Salah
Right. So we're doing things that are the first to do. You are innovating. I'm innovating. But that was, that's, yeah. That's, we're, we're innovating every day.
[00:08:33] Travis Revelle
Yeah. I mean, that's big. But I think that you were innovative just when you had a mall kiosk and you said, Hey, we want to greet the customers within three seconds. Right. Or whatever it is. Right. That was innovative for me. Doing it better, doing it better.
[00:08:47] Dr. Nate Salah
Or even at HPJ when you started, you're like, Why did you want to, You mean you weren't thinking, Well, we're gonna put the first, you know, manual transmission in a GT 500. Right. At the time when you started, you were thinking, we love cars. We love how we can make cars super cool and fast, and we think we can do it in a way that is representative of a better experience for our customers.
[00:09:08] Travis Revelle
Let's go ahead and do better. We're gonna innovate, you know?
[00:09:10] Sam Salah
Yeah, yeah. And it's not even, it wasn't faster. It's actually not even better, but it's just different. Yeah. But you do it one time. Like we put, when the 2020 came out, we put twin turbos on the first one ever taking, completely changing the way the force, you know, going to twin turbos from supercharge to twin turbos is wild on a car, like on a new platform, on a car, like that, So why though?
[00:09:35]
Right? Why you did it? What We did it. And then what did that create? It created more people watching, more people following, more people interested in what we're doing, which in turn will have a ripple effect with all aspects of your business. So in any kind of business, if you do something different, something that your competitors aren't doing, which is something you should strive to do as an entrepreneur is how are you gonna do things differently? And I think that it's a lot harder in a traditional business, like a cell phone business, right? they're everywhere. How are you gonna do it differently? Right? But when you're in like a completely like niche market, like performance or niche market like something else, you might look at the ROI on something like that and say it's not there in the first one you do. But it's there from the ripple effects, from doing something that different and that wild, right? So you can do, I think that innovation, if you can pull it off, Musk level changing the way something's done, if you can think about that and deliver on it. I mean, yeah. That's obviously the lottery. I think it's a lottery. It's a lottery.
[00:10:49] Dr. Nate Salah
It's a lightning stream. And that's what, that's actually what Bezo said. He said Amazon won the lottery. And for the few companies, you know, the handful of companies out of the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of them, that's fantastic. But for the overwhelming majority of people, innovation looks different. Mm-hmm. It looks like, well, first of all, it's true. It doesn't have to look like something that's daunting. It doesn't have to look like something that's overwhelming.
[00:11:13] Sam Salah
I mean, I have a direct revenue benefit.
[00:11:16] Dr. Nate Salah
Not, well, not necessarily like immediate.
[00:11:18]
Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, even the recognition that you got, let's just use that as an example from the manual transmission that you're working on for the GT 500, right?
[00:11:28]
So you've got innovation happening in your organization based on your desire to not only stand out in the crowd, but because your passion for what you do.
[00:11:38]
And I think that's a good place to start with, like innovation is like, you know, what do I truly like? Where, where am I passionate about?
[00:11:45] Sam Salah
You could simplify it though. How can I do it differently? Yeah, I was gonna say,
[00:11:48] Travis Revelle
That's what you gotta ask yourself. Literally look at your business and say, where is the one yard I can do better? Right? Like, where's the inch I can, I can grow better? Right? Maybe it's shaving a few seconds off of checking out a customer, right? Like, it just, it's the smallest little things. And I think people get so trapped in the mindset, especially today, where it's like, Oh, it's gotta be massive. It's gotta change the world.
[00:12:14]
Change the world a quarter inch at a time. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like change your world, your four walls a little bit better, right?
[00:12:21] Sam Salah
I think if you had like three grocery stores right here and they're all like within a block of each other. Each one of them is competing. Correct. They all have the same groceries. So you can either compete multiple ways, price maybe one thing, Right, But then go beyond that. So you might say, Well, I can't really differentiate myself. We're i'll just kind of grocery stores. But what can you change?
[00:12:46] Travis Revelle
Change the way that the customer feels when they come in your store.
[00:12:48] Sam Salah
Exactly. Exactly, you know, the customer's name.
[00:12:58] Dr. Nate Salah
Perfect example. And that actually happens to me like there's, and I dunno if it happens to you guys too, but like, I have a preferred grocery I mean, there's a grocery store I prefer to go locally. And it's because of the way I feel in the store. The shelves just look a little bit better the way the layout is. I enjoy it. I mean just the, even the where the carts are placed, the kind of carts they have.
[00:13:10] Sam Salah
Yeah, I was gonna say placement too of your products and stuff.
[00:13:13] Travis Revelle
And then you walk in the same one. Right. Like let's say you go into a Walgreens, Walgreens cracks me up with this and I legitimately. People for Christmas and stuff buy me Walgreens gift cards. It's probably my favorite store in the whole wide world.
[00:13:24] Sam Salah
I love Walgreens too. I go to Walgreens all the time.
[00:13:25] Travis Revelle
I love, I'm in Walgreens five days a week for just the randomest stuff, right? But I go into the Walgreens is right down the street from my house. If I go to a Walgreens that is three miles for me, and it is a completely different, everything is different. The different way you walk in the door, different layout. I imagine is different control, probably. I'm miserable, you know what I mean, cause you don't know where you're, I dunno where I'm going. Like, this is not my store, You know what I mean? Like, this is my brand, but it's not my store. But like, anybody in a business can innovate every single day.
[00:13:55] Sam Salah
Yeah. And if you're not, you're dying.
[00:13.56] Travis Revelle
Yeah. If you're not, you're gonna die.
[00:13:57] Dr. Nate Salah
Right. Well, that's the next question. Evolve or die. Is it, Is it innovate and die? I mean, Do we? Yes. I think the answer is unequivocally yes.
[00:14:05]
Yes. And it's not only us to say that it's proven in the marketplace. You've got companies like a Woolworth or a Kodak or just go down the list that are bigger companies that, Yeah. I mean, and look at Sears. Yeah, Sears.
[00:14:15] Sam Salah
All like literally staple stores that were just grown up. You were just always knew where there, Yeah.
[00:14:20] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. Didn't you used to work at Circuit City? You sure did. They didn't all either. Service of the art.
[00:14:26] Travis Revelle
I mean, so I mean, if, here's the way, look at it. If you're not gonna innovate, somebody is right. Somebody's going to innovate. Doesn't mean we have to get caught up in this. Oh my God, I gotta change the world.
[00:14:37]
I have to disrupt my industry. It's just you need to do a little bit better every single day, and it can be the most minute things, but if we're not trying to get better, we're stagnant. And you can only be stagnant for so long before you start to fall behind and then you die. Right? I mean,
[00:14:54] Sam Salah
yeah. I mean, business isn't gonna be like, you know, entrepreneurship is so difficult and there is no, the room for error when you're, when you have stiff competition or whatever industry you’re in.
[00:15:08]
Is low and you have to, coming from the tech industry, me and you, we change was like expected. you know, we all 90 days. 90 days like, two year business model window. two to three years, you know, that's just tech.
[00:15:22]
That's just, we know Right. You know, but we're constantly having to change. I mean, you'd sell one product, 55 dealers sold the same product, but you wanted to do it better. How would you do that? You had a company culture that was sales driven that was rewarding, and we did that differently than the other 59 guys, and we did it way better than they did.
[00:15:44]
You know what I mean? You know, leadership and everything, so you can be innovative in a forest of everyone like you, and you could separate yourself. It's just, you gotta get down to the nitty. Nitty details.
[00:15:56] Dr. Nate Salah
And you don't even have to be in tech. I mean, I think about like, I mean, even accounting in tax, right?
[00:16:01]
You think how much innovation is really necessary. I know. It's like everybody's like, Oh, I wanna talk about taxes. But it's true. You think, well, there can't be much innovation in such a bureaucratic industry. But the truth is, yes, there is. In fact, years ago I would go to the tax conferences and some of my colleagues, they would not be electronically filing returns. They'd still be mailing them. Like, What are you not e-filing for? Oh, you know, that's all for the birds. I'm like, No, it's new. It's the way it should be. It's moving forward. It's progressing in clients, customers want that. They want easier. They want more secure. and then comes the new technology age where people are more remote.
[00:16:43]
So we got on the bandwagon of the remote calling in. Yeah. And the secured DocuSigning and all that in the server environment, whatnot. And then the pandemic comes, and of course then nobody's going anywhere, but my colleagues who are still doing it the old way, they're not getting any clients.
[00:17:02]
Yeah. Because they didn't change. They didn't innovate and now we're probably like 60 40 remote and DocuSign versus the way it used to be. And had we not pivoted and made that change in a very bureaucratic industry, we'd be 60% less overall sales. 60%. Yeah. It's huge. That's going outta business.
[00:17:22]
That's innovate or die. Die. Yeah. And the shift is so minimal. I mean, it was so minimal and actually it's easier, like easier to do business that way.
[00:17:32] Sam Salah
Amazon, I think is the ultimate example of innovation that annihilated everyone else, all their competition who didn't innovate. So how long did it take for Walmart to focus on walmart.com? Target to focus target.com. Yeah. You know a Best Buy now. They don't have anything, like a lot of what you want is not on the shelf. They go, go online and order it, through a website.
[00:17:57] Dr. Nate Salah
And I think they're also like stocking for Amazon now. Yeah.
[00:18:00] Sam Salah
Again, innovation, that's, I mean, can't beat him, join 'em. Right. And there's nothing wrong with that. Right. You know what I mean? But I think that, look what Amazon did, man. I mean, we don’t go anywhere anymore to buy anything. The vast majority of people, malls are, are not even anything anymore. Like it's, So could malls of been more innovative to kind of survive? Could Circuit City been more innovative to survive? Best Buys obviously had challenges. so elite innovation will crush your competition. Not even, We talked, we're talking about little things, but let's say, let's say like the highest level of changing in processes, changing in how people do things. If you can figure that out, it's gonna be difficult. You can deliver and execute on that.
[00:18:49] Travis Revelle
That's lottery. That's it, right? You're lottery. But I think people can do this, the small things too in their industry to just move it forward and like you said, Yeah. Like it's small changes over time. When you look back five years later, it's significant.
[00:19:02]
You've completely changed how you do business, but it didn't feel like that because you just were on the cutting edge of DocuSign. Right. Which right today you're like, it doesn't DocuSign, Right? Yeah. But like when you did it, like, it was like, Oh, whoa, I can just Sign this on my phone with my finger, like crazy.
[00:19:20] Dr. Nate Salah
And it was my realtor that I think I was refinancing at one of my rental properties and I was like, Oh, this is so much easier. We need to do this at our office. And so I think that's part of innovation. People, somebody want, Wait, be thinking right now. Well, I don't even know where to begin.
[00:19:32]
And I hear what you're saying, you guys, it makes total sense. I know I need to do it, but where do I begin? And I think one of the answers I'd love to hear what you have to say is just like what I said with the realtor, look outside of your purview of your organization, even your industry, and start to see what others are doing that could, you can pull into your realm. Yeah. And add a value, add a differentiation strategy. Not only that, but also just might make your job a little easier.
[00:19:59] Travis Revelle
I'm gonna tell you right now when I am looking at a company, if a company calls me and they want my services from consulting, right, One of the first things that I do is I just go spend a couple days in that company following frontline employees to figure out where can I create a little bit of efficiencies, Right?
[00:20:20]
And it may be two minutes here, or 30 seconds here, or three minutes here, or four you right? But over the course of a couple weeks, right? Like I've saved this person a couple hours. Right, Like that couple hours, all of a sudden on an basis you're talking about less employees, right? Like that's less overhead I have to pay because I've become more efficient.
[00:20:42]
And so nothing that I suggest is earth-shattering, you know what I mean? Like it's not earth shattering. It's the most Mundane. Yeah. Process. How can we just get a little bit faster, a little bit better, a little bit easier, Right? But those little small changes add up and over the course, like you said, over the course of a year.
[00:21:06]
You're talking about hundreds of hours that are saved, which is directly a major impact on the bottom line. Yeah. Most people in business will try to say, Oh, I can be a little bit cheaper. Right? Like they go into a price war with somebody. Right. And that's fine. Like you can win for an amount of time. Right. Like it's, Hey, can I basically outlive my competitor at this price? Right. You know what I mean. But after a while, right? Like, you can't cut. You can't cut, like there's nowhere to cut. And so I think in my mind, innovation is always efficiencies within your organization. right? And then once you've bled that all the way out, right?
[00:21:45]
Then it's like, okay, how can I market myself better? Or how can I make the experience that the customer has just a little bit better, right? Like, go to Nordstrom. Why, why do people go to Nordstrom over going to, yeah. Macy's, right?
[00:21:59] Sam Salah
A hundred, I could come up with, you know, file
[00:22:02] Travis Revelle
How you feel when you go in, when you walk in the door. You know what I mean?
[00:22:06] Sam Salah
Macy’s feels like a, like a just wholesale clothing store with stuff everywhere piled up everywhere.
[00:22:12] Travis Revelle
Clothes mostly, right? I mean, like, I mean, let's just, the same brands, same stuff, but the layout's different people ask for your first name, you know what I mean? Like
[00:22:23] Sam Salah
You notice that though, because you're Background. I'm a retailer, a retail guy. Yeah.
[00:22:28] Travis Revelle
But if you, if you ask my wife who isn't a retailer, Right? Which store would you rather walk into? Right? Macy's or Nordstrom? She's gonna say Nordstrom. And she might not really even understand why she's saying Nordstrom. Right? Like she won't know like the details like you and I do because we're retailers and we're like, Okay, we, we look at this. But it's how she feels. Yeah. She feels happier Buying for there.
[00:22:50] Dr. Nate Salah
And that feeling has a direct relationship with revenue. Absolutely. Yeah. And margins for that matter, right? Absolutely. You can. I mean, Nordstrom's is more expensive than Macy's. Yeah. Apple is more expensive than Samsung. Right? In general.
[00:23:05]
Not these days. Not these days. There's some, yeah. They're starting to change a little bit. Yeah. Because maybe, if Apple's gonna win, it's gonna win with innovation is something that maybe Apple needs to start hearing again. Absolutely.
[00:23:16] Travis Revelle
They need to read this book by Steve Jobs.
[00:23:19] Sam Salah
Yeah. I mean, get some ideas there, right. I think the saving grace of Apple is their operating, the simplicity of their operating system, and that's the only thing that's kept them.
[00:23:29] Dr. Nate Salah
And the ecosystem. I still,
[00:23:31] Travis Revelle
the only reason I'm still there is cuz I don't wanna have to learn something new,
[00:23:33] Dr. Nate Salah
The ecosystem. But that was part of, but that was part of the innovation that Steve Jobs created.
[00:23:37] Travis Revelle
That was innovative. And then that was what, 15 years ago? Yeah. Right. I mean, so you can, you can make these innovations and I think you, you said something important about the ripple effect, right? Like small thing, ripple effect. It also can happen in the negative, right? Like you do something. You jump on a bandwagon too quick, you change something in a negative way. And that also has a ripple effect that six months from now, right? You can be in a total different scenario than what you were.
[00:24:06] Dr. Nate Salah
It's a good example that's Disney right now because they're facing some trouble in this incremental change as far as like, the political aspect of it and how they're approaching, some of their new films that are coming out.
[00:24:19]
And I think they're trying to do the right thing, but the market isn't receiving it as well as they had hoped. And also they're feeling backlashes from political, from Florida, you know, to be specific. Right. I mean, there's some pitfalls. Yep. As well, if you're not approaching innovation in a way that is market receptive. Even if there are those in your industry or even in your company who say, Hey, let's do this, let's do this. Yeah, it can be a challenge.
[00:24:45] Travis Revelle
Absolutely. It can be detrimental.
[00:24:47] Dr. Nate Salah
It could be a detrimental challenge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it could be a detrimental challenge, especially if you lose touch with your base.
[00:24:53] Travis Revelle
Absolutely. And I think that's what's so key, right? When you're an entrepreneur and you're looking to innovate, you have to know your customer, right? You have to know who you're selling to. You have to know who your core audience is, your core purchaser is, and you're trying to make their experience better.
[00:25:08]
You're not necessarily trying to translate your feelings to that customer. Right. But it's, it's, how do we make it a better experience for the consumer at the end of the day?
[00:25:19] Dr. Nate Salah
I'm glad you brought that up, because the customer's the hero. Make the customer the hero, not you in your organization. Yeah. Right. because it's their experience that matters most and. Because the customer only is going to do business with you if you know what they want and need, if you meet those needs and if you stand out in the crowd. And so it's, it sounds pretty straightforward.
[00:25:42] Travis Revelle
It's business 101, literally, Right? Like introductory to business. Right. An introductory to capitalism, right? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Find what somebody wants. Give it to 'em. Enterprise, find it. Right. And, I think In our current culture, right? And I'm not gonna use Walt culture and I'm not gonna use it in negative connotation or a positive connotation, right?
[00:26:03]
I think, I think that businesses, right, some businesses are on a very slippery slope. And you can talk about Disney, You can take it to, I've read so many things lately about Chipotle, right? With Union, they had a store that was unionizing and they didn't like that, so they closed the store down.
[00:26:17]
Right. Starbucks is doing the same thing right now. Right? They're closing stores that are trying to unionize. Right. And I think, right, like there can be a backlash there, right? Like there's a large pro-union. People in this country who wanna shop at union places, and there are people who are like, Oh, you know what? I'm against unions. And so you have to be cautious because when you pick a side, you are picking a side, you know, And there is a certain amount of your population that's going to like that. There's another part of your population that isn't going to like it. And if you don't know your customer right, you shouldn't pick sides.
[00:26:51] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. And I think back to jobs where he said, you know, people vote with their wallets. Yeah. They wanna pick. And there's so much competition that it's so easy to lose a customer because you may have misjudged or maybe even misspoken or misaligned how you perceive what the market needs and what you actually deliver to it.
[00:27:12] Travis Revelle
And people have a lot of choices. Yeah. You know, I mean, There's a lot of choices out there right now. But there's also, that's also I think for entrepreneurs, right? Like, because there are so many choices, and I think that consumers are looking right, They want to do business with people who they feel value what they value. They value what they value, right? So I think that right now there is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to understand what's missing in the market and to go out there, because the thing about entrepreneurs is we're nimble. Right. We can make these changes quickly. Yeah. Right. We're not a large, Fortune 50 company with all this bureaucracy and oh, it takes us, you know, we're gonna change in 2024, right?
[00:27:57]
Like, here's, here's our plan to change. No. We wake up one day and we say, You know what? This isn't working right. Like, I see an opportunity. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna make that change. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make it happen. You change right now, and I think that, you know, being an entrepreneur right now, you have to know this is my market. This is my target market. This is who's gonna buy my product. I want to innovate any way possible to make it a better environment for my consumer than my consumer feels good because that's who you're gonna buy from.
[00:28:25] Dr. Nate Salah
And be clear in that, like, you know, back to Bezos, he made the statement that, The Amazon consumer, he knows the Amazon consumer well enough to know that they will never want any of their products slower or more expensive.
[00:28:37]
So the flip of that is we are gonna make sure that we will get it to you faster and cheaper. And that's our 20 year march. Right. And it's like there's such clarity in that, right? And that's what you're seeing Amazon doing. And guess what it's doing? I mean, even more market share. I can't believe how many times that I've gone to a site and saw a product price and then I've gone to Amazon, I bought it on Amazon.
[00:28:58]
It's like, well, I get the shipping, It's all standardized. Right? I know what I'm getting and if I wanna return it. I mean, all of the, It's as easy as possible to do business with them and that tiny bit of innovation. Especially when it's like, Oh, you can have your product now this afternoon because we've got a warehouse up the street from your house.
[00:29:14] Travis Revelle
My wife and I like, will be like, Oh, we this this morning and it's here. You know what I mean? That's, I know, it's insane to me, you know, But like, it's innovation
[00:29:22] Dr. Nate Salah
But it's right back to what he said. Right? Absolutely. It’s back to the incremental innovation that the leader set forth based on knowing what my customer wants and needs. And it's not like we're all about Amazon, right.
[00:29:32]
I mean, there's some problems with Amazon as well because, I mean, I've talked with Amazon employees in the warehouse and I know that there's certain things that Amazon needs to fix about that as well as, I mean, they've done a great job of monopolizing, you know, sort of making them all of the, of the internet and they can't get in trouble for that because of the way they've gotten third party retailers.
[00:29:49]
But we have issues now with other businesses struggling too, but we don't sell. I mean, we don't sell ice anymore. other than little bags at the gas station because we've got refrigerators. you know, industries die. Yep. Things change and then we have to adapt.
[00:30:05] Sam Salah
Right. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's a ripple effect of innovation. People depends on what side of it you're on, you know?
[00:30:13] Dr. Nate Salah:
Yeah. And it can be really exciting, like Travis said, as entrepreneurs, we are nimble. we can wake up the next day and assess like, cause we're on ground level.
[00:30:22]
We can actually communicate with our customer that day and say, You know what, here's what I'm gonna deliver for you because this is what you said you needed more of in a new way and make that happen. You have it on the front lines, I'm sure every day.
[00:30:34] Travis Revelle
Every day. Well, here's a novel idea, right? Like you, you've got a business right now, Ask your customers. What could I do better? Like legitimately ask 'em. I mean, if I walked into Walgreens, right, or put whatever store in there and somebody said, Hey, can I have a minute of your time? I just wanna ask where we can do better. I'm absolutely gonna give that feedback, you know what I mean?
[00:30:53]
And I think that it's the old story, right? Like, you ask 10 people, four are gonna say yes, four are gonna say no, right? Automatically, and it's, you're really, you're really asking the two people who can actually make a decision. But I think like if you're sitting there as an entrepreneur, you're like, Man, this makes a lot of sense, but I have no idea where to start. Ask your consumer, Yeah, what could I do better for? Yeah.
[00:31:14] Dr. Nate Salah
What's really I like about that is that it rejects this notion, and you've heard the Henry Ford, if I would to asked more people what they wanted more of, and it would be faster horses because he was disrupting. we have to look at it and from that context, but we're not talking about disruptive innovation, not asking them what they want because they don't know it's asking what they want more of because we're looking at a feedback loop On how we can create a better experience. Right? Because some people will fall in line and say, Well, I'm not gonna ask my customer because you know, they don't know what they want. Yeah. They don't know what they want. Right. No, absolutely. That was actually the old way to do sales.
[00:31:49] Sam Salah
Yeah. You weren’t dictating what they wanted. That's how you would teach people how to sell. You're the professional,
[00:31:53] Dr. Nate Salah
but we know what they want. Just don't know how we, I mean, we deliver the product or the service. We know what they want, but it's a matter of improving that relationship, that experience I have, a student who was struggling with, retention, a client retention.
[00:32:07]
Right. I'm like, you gotta find out what's missing in this relationship. Right? Right. And if you're savvy enough, You should already know in some ways, you know, usually instinctually is probably right, but then it comes down to, hey, you know, where is it that, I mean, and you'd be surprised how many if you just ask a group of people as far as customers wise.
[00:32:28]
And not only that, ask your employees if you got people working for you. Have real conversations and say, Hey, what are you hearing on the front lines? Mm-hmm. right? Where are you struggling? Where are they struggling? And how can we create process improvements? How can we create relationship improvements? How can we innovate? Yeah, exactly. So it's not too difficult to have those conversations and that's to cost us nothing but a little bit of time. But really it's not a cost at all. It's an investment. Mm-hmm. I agree. As business owners. Yeah, I agree with that. So, As we close, do you think Apple's gonna win? Not a the good question.
[00:33:06] Sam Salah
So, I will say this, Let me, lemme take it first. They will win as long as the innovative competitors like Samsung and LG, which they haven't been able to do, to far innovate what they've already made, right? So the ecosystem of Apple is what I believe keeps Apple ahead and why mass users want to use iPhones over everything else because this with an Android is just even makes me uneasy
[00:33:39] Dr. Nate Salah
Well, I brought both of my, for our YouTube watchers or TikTok watchers, I brought, you can see now our podcast listeners, You can see my Apple iPad and my, what's that thing called? Surface Pro? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:48] Sam Salah
So the difference is Apple has created a brand that you want to be a part of, and you want to have all their products. Samsung has not, in my opinion, right, it has not created the brand image. I mean, let's Microsoft for that. Apple started out as like, it was almost like a status deal. Like remember a cult? Like you had an iPhone. It was like having a, Remember people who had Macs back in the day before you had Macs, I had a Blackberry Pearl when the iPhone came out.
[00:34:19]
You know what I mean? Like that was like Mac users were like a segment of people and they were just, were like cult following. And the iPhone was like, this was like a status thing to have this thing a hundred percent right? Yeah. But they created that brand and created brand loyalty from their customers. Me, which is I'm very brand loyal to Apple, you know what I mean?
[00:34:42] Dr. Nate Salah
Which was a Tiffany's move by the way. So Jobs would out in front of Tiffany's with his crew as they were trying to figure out like how, how has this become a lifestyle brand that has commanded 30 to 40% higher margins for a lot of the stuff that maybe you can buy somewhere else.
[00:34:57] Travis Revelle
That blue box man. That blue box. That blue box. But here's what I'm gonna say. Apple's gonna die. Microsoft is gonna die. Right? Like all these companies will die. And I know people are gonna be like, Oh my God, there's no way. I guarantee you, if you went back to 1950 and you said Sears is gonna die, people would be like, No way.
[00:35:14]
Which is gonna die. I eat lunch there every day, like that's the only place I go. Kmarts, Kmart. I remember Kmarts were everywhere. But eventually, right, there's gonna be another company that's gonna come along that's going to innovate and they're gonna do it a little bit better. And there will be the fanboys like me and Sam who hold on right to the very end. But eventually we're gonna be like this is so much easier.
[00:35:57] Dr. Nate Salah:
There'll be a new apple. Remember when there'll be a new apple,
[00:35:39] Sam Salah
be a new company, that there'll be a
[00:35:40] Travis Revelle
new Does it better there and Amazon will die.
[00:35:43] Dr. Nate Salah
In fact, I think Bezo said himself was like, one day he said, Amazon will die. And it's like, whoa. I mean, for the CEO and the founder of that company to say that it certainly is really humbling.
[00:35:53] Travis Revelle
It's humbling. Everything's going to die, right? I don't wanna be nihilists, right? But like, everything will die.
[00:35:58] Dr. Nate Salah
But something is born,
[00:35:59] Travis Revelle
but something is born. You know what I mean? Something better will come. And so, you know, whatever company you have, whatever business you're running right now, take comfort in the fact that one day it's gonna die.
[00:36:08]
You know what I mean? But also take comfort in the fact that you can change it, you can tweak it and, and let it live on as long as it possibly can. But at the end of the day, man, All these brands will be gone. There'll be new brands. There'll be new businesses and new companies, and New Bezos and new. Right? Like there's gonna be new guys. Yeah. And hopefully we're talking to one of 'em right now.
[00:36:27] Dr. Nate Salah
That'd be cool. Yeah. Well, my friend, we did it. I'm so honored. You were able to join me on this episode of A Call to Leadership. If you've been with me on this show listening in, you'll know this. But if you're new, you may not know that I created a free course for you, that you don't need to provide an email address.
You don't need to go anywhere but to stay right here in the podcast, I created the very first six episodes of the podcast because I wanted you to have the kind of value that you need to take advantage of to thrive as a leader. So if we haven't done that yet, listen episodes one through six. I'll see you on the next episode. I'm Dr. Nate Salah and this is A Call to Leadership.